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GuitarPlayer.com >> This Month >> Jimi Hendrix - Guitar Heroes A-z
Jimi Hendrix - Guitar Heroes A-Z
| October, 2007
What more can be said about our patron saint? Though we lost James Marshall Hendrix (1942-1970) some 37 years ago, this southpaw sonic visionary’s legacy continues to astound, confound, and inspire every successive generation of musicians to date. It’s not often that an artist becomes associated with a particular chord, but Jimi Hendrix and the 7#9 chord have become near synonymous. Examples 1 and 2 illustrate a pair of high-octane C# blues licks (dig that signature pre-bend-and-gradual-release maneuver in Ex. 2) played over the C#7#9 or C#m7 voicings shown in the grids. This key allows you to double the b3/#9 in the “Hendrix” chord with an open E string for a bigger-than-life Jimi jangle. (And remember, Hendrix almost always tuned down a half-step.)
Thriving on musical extremes, Hendrix mastered balls-out incendiary electric blues soloing, but tempered it with a gentler approach to his ballads, one that acknowledged R&B greats such as Curtis Mayfield and Pops Staples, and even country pianist Floyd Cramer. On the flip side of Hendrix’s universe, Examples 3 and 4 guide you through some characteristic Hendrix-style ballad moves derived from familiar A major, dominant, and minor chord shapes played in the fifth position. Similar partial-chord runs are applied to make magic over the Em-G-Am-Em progression in Ex. 5. Fly on, brother.
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