Joe Bonamassa Talks About The Eric Johnson Sounding Scale He Plays

[gflyer45]

This reminds me of a ski instructor I had when first trying to learn how to ski deep powder. He came swooshing down the hill with incredible dexterity, stopped on a dime in front of me, and said (and I'm not making this up)..."Do that".

[timmy47]

changing scale positions has nothing to do with modes or modal playing. its just playing in different positions.

[JamesCornelisonMusic]

bonamassa is unbelievably generous with the amount of information he shares

[hulldanfan]

Joe is the opposite of arrogant. His reverence to his guitar and musical influences is huge and he never stops talking about them and he constantly downplays his own abilities. A true gentleman !!

[jjeffj008]

ARROGANT? REALLY? I know him well enough to tell you that if anything (IF) there's a little frustration there, it's in his hesitancy/ability to explain what he's doing smoothly; as in a musical classroom type setting. It's easier for him to play it than explain it. IMO

He is super cool & nice guy.

[Richo18]

Look how relaxed his picking hand is! So good.

[torgos]

Forget it, he will not talk about his secrets. and I think it´s ok.

[stratthead]

I hear some arrogance in his interviews too. It's not as much the notes as it is the technique and he doesn't show that. All that's going on for this is to learn to group notes of the pentatonic in 3's and 5 note sequences. when doing those odd groups figure out which will use a down stroke sweep across two adjacent strings. It's a cool trick and instantly you'll sound like Eric Johnson if you do them with a bunch of pentatonics, throw in the occasional 2nd and you'll have an EJ cape on.

[MrJamessmithmusic]

@stratthead that 2 string sweep is called economic picking :)

[stratthead]

@MrJamessmithmusic .Well it's one form of it. But that's not the overall approach here, and why I avoid that umbrella term. To play these type of lines using economy picking would come out sounding different, without the same conviction. When I teach this style, I like to differentiate the two and show examples of playing the lick, both ways.

[MrJamessmithmusic]

@stratthead i agree i just posted it so people no what its called :)

[sweeptapper]

one thing he also does is to introduce the 2nd note in lets say A minor pentatonic, so A C D E G becomes A B C D E G, by using it an octave higher A C D E G B A C ect you can see how that "johnson sound" can be explored. Eric also likes to use the 2nd & 4th notes of chords in his melody lines, resulting in that suspended sound he uses often.

[tschuste2]

@sweeptapper I love suspended harmonies.

[xSnoweyexp]

Its the arrogance and attitude I seriously don't like, like he is really frustrated or something ! Maybe i'm wrong but thats how i think about Joe

[infinityjet]

@xSnoweyexp

joe is the nicest guy in the world..met him several times...so don't judge

[joeytruelove]

@xSnoweyexp I honestly think you're misreading Joe's streak of autism as arrogance. Autistic people are anything but arrogant, since they don't even know what arrogance is about nor the purpose that would serve - they just... 'are'. Most of them humble and giving by nature. They may however come across as distant minded and possibly even blunt in their ways, not being able to fully grasp what others may expect of them in social situations and often see things very litterarily.

[BlueSpawnRecords]

@joeytruelove Joe Bomasa is autistic? Really? Really? Where did you hear that?

[xSnoweyexp]

Eric johnson definately is my biggest guitar idol but for some reason i'm not a big Joe fan, his playing is really insane!! for some reason I don't like it , its like he almost plays too fuckin clean hahaha