 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with musicteacher.com and in this video we're going to be looking at some Jimi Hendrix style chordal embellishments. All the tones you're hearing in this video are coming from the Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 which is mic'd with a Lewitt Audio LCT 440 condenser microphone. So the Jimi Hendrix rhythm guitar style is something that does scare a lot of guitar players but in this video we're going to break down the basics of what he is doing and how you guys can get a little bit of this into your own playing. This approach is similar to that of other guitar players who were very influenced by Hendrix like John Mayer or Stevie Ray Vaughan. So if you're into any of those guys this will be a rhythm style that you'll be very familiar with. So before you start working through this lesson you need a good understanding of two key principles. The first of which is the chords that go into a major key. There is a video on the Blackstar Channel about how to construct a major key chord progression and also the major pentatonic scale. This is also very important for this and again there is a video on that on the Blackstar Channel. If you've already got a working understanding of those two principles then we can start combining them together in a rhythm guitar lead guitar crossover in the style of Jimi Hendrix. So here is the idea that we're going to break down in this lesson. So while that may look complicated on the surface there are just a few simple principles going into this that we can work with. Now the first thing we need to do is look at the slightly different way that I played chords there. So instead of playing my major chord like this I was playing it like this. This is a very common component in the Hendrix guitar stuff. So this is where we take a standard bar chord and we convert it into a triad with a root note played by our thumb. So to do this I'm basically taking this chord idea and I'm breaking out just a single major triad. So a triad is when we take a major or a minor chord or any chord for that matter and we just play the core elements of that chord. So a major triad is a one, a three and a five. So that's the seventh fret of the D, the sixth fret of the G and the fifth fret of the B. Those three notes together give me an A major chord. What I can also do to make this more of a Jimi Hendrix vibe is to play that triad but use my thumb to add this additional low A. So I've got this A note here on the low E string then I'm muting the A string with my thumb. I've got my major triad and then I'm muting the high E string. So this is a really common way of playing chords if you're into Jimi Hendrix or John Mayer or any of those players that I mentioned. The other thing I'm doing is playing a minor version of this chord. So if this is a major one and that's my third, you will remember when we talked about scales and chord progressions that the third is in the note that makes it major or minor. So I need to flatten that note into this shape. So I'm playing seven on the D, five on the G and B. That would be an A minor triad and I can also add the low note to this. Now I'm not going to be playing A minor as my chord here. What I'm going to be doing is I'm playing a simple progression from the A major scale of an A major chord, an F sharp minor, a D major and an E major. So if you think back to chord progressions from the A major family, that is a one, a six, a four and a five. A, F sharp minor, D and E. So those are the four chords I'm using to build this progression. So let's take a look at this section by section and break down exactly what I'm doing. So I'm starting with my A major chord. So I'm starting off by outlining the chord by playing the root note twice. Then I'm hitting the chord in its entirety and then playing the root note twice more. You'll notice the second time I played the root note I played it quicker than the first time. I'm also going to be outlining each of the chords in the progression in that same way. So remember that rhythm because you will be using that a lot in this lesson. So once I've outlined the chord I'm then adding this little lick. That first lick comes from the A major pentatonic scale first position. So I'm sticking in this upper region of the shape. I'm playing a double stop here on the fifth fret of the B and E and I'm hammering on to just the seven of the B. Then I'm playing the double stop once more. Then I'm playing another double stop shape here, the four on the G and the five on the B and I'm hammering on to the sixth of the G. So that's my first bar. That's my first chord there and playing the A major chord with that little lead lick on the tail end of it. This is something Hendricks would do a lot to connect different chords. So instead of just going from the A to the F sharp minor he would add these little fills in there to connect the chords in a melodic way. So once I've run down that phrase I'm then coming to that minor chord shape I showed you but on the second fret this is my F sharp minor chord. Now while I'm here I am outlining that chord in exactly the same way that I said earlier and now I need to add my little lead line which is this. Now this actually comes from what is officially the fifth shape of the major pentatonic scale. That sits around that F sharp minor shape. So here's what I'm doing. I'm starting on the second fret of the D. So I'm doing a hammer on to the four, playing the two on the G and back to the four of the D. Then I'm playing the four of the G sliding that up to the sixth and then hitting the five on the B. So in the progression I played earlier I linked those two bars together and then I repeated them. So let's work on that first of all before we add the second half of this exercise in there. So I'm going to play the A major with the linking phrase into the F sharp minor with that linking phrase. If you always target this note here the fifth fret of the B with your index finger you're actually walking yourself back into that A major triad. So you can actually connect these in a really clever way with some forward planning. So here's how those two bars sound together. And then slowly just so you can hear each of the movements. So once I've gone through the A to F sharp minor twice I'm then going to my D and E chord which are up here at the 10th fret and the 12th. So I'm actually outlining each of these chords the same way as well but I'm adding a slightly different embellishment on the end. So once I've outlined the D chord in that same way. I'm doing a little strummed pattern here so I'm keeping this triad in place but I'm hammering on to the 12th fret here of the B string. This actually comes from the third shape of the A major pentatonic. So I'm hitting that 12th fret note there. So you'll notice on the first full strum after outlining the chord I hammered on to that 12th fret of the B then I did two strums with that finger in place and then on the next strum I pulled it off again. Now in this case to walk to the next chord I'm actually hitting that root note twice more again but then I'm moving for that E chord and doing exactly the same thing but this time the hammer on happens between the 12 and the 14 of the B which actually comes from the fourth shape of the major pentatonic. So I'm linking those two chords together in exactly the same way. When I come back to that E chord I'm actually closing this out a slightly different way so once I frame the chord I'm doing this lead line and this final lead lick also comes from the fourth shape of the major pentatonic. So I'm starting with the double stop on the 12 of the B and E with a hammer on to the 14 of the E and back to that double stop then a pull off from the 14 to the 12 on the B and then we resolve it back to this A note here on the 14 of the G. So here are the bars of D and E linked together and slowly. Now when I do those strum parts I'm not being too precious with my picking hand because I'm sort of holding the chord shape anyway so you don't have to just focus it in on the triad. You can kind of move it around the entire chord shape if that's a little bit easier keep it nice and loose that's really the trick. So the next thing to do now is link this all together so now we're going to play the A to the F sharp minor twice the D to the E twice with that final ending lick. And now I'll go for that slowly all the way through so you can see the whole thing in action broken down at a slow speed keep an eye on the picking hand to see how loose I'm being. I'm not being too precious with those notes I'm occasionally adding in accidental rakes as well that's cool because that's sort of part of that Hendrix vibe you want to keep it loose almost a little bit sloppy but while maintaining enough articulation so you can hear the melodies. So there you go there are some Jimmy Hendrix style chord progression with embellishment type ideas. Now this is an exercise you can use to start out with this kind of playing but really the whole aim of this is to show you how to do it. So when you're doing this yourself you can learn it as it is in this lesson using the provided tabs and then you can use your knowledge of chord progressions and minor or major pentatonic you could do this in minor key as well if you write a minor progression add your own embellishments. So think of a chord progression first so when I wrote this I wrote A to F sharp minor D to E as my progression then I embellished around those changes finding ways to walk from one to the other so as you do this yourself map out your progression use your pentatonic shapes in both major and minor depending on what key you're playing in to come up with your own linking phrases. This is a great way to get into that Jimmy Hendrix style chord playing mindset it's a tricky thing to start out with but once you've mapped out a few simple progressions it gets a lot easier and it really opens up the way you think about playing expressive and interesting rhythm guitar. Thank you all so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this lesson let me know down below in the comments how you guys have gotten on with this topic I'd love to hear how you've been getting on with this and while you're down there leave a comment to let us know if there are any other topics you'd like to see us talk about in future videos. Don't forget to check out all of the other guitar lessons on the Blackstar YouTube channel there's a ton of other stuff covering things like chord progressions different scale types and all sorts of other concepts as well and if you're looking for a guitar teacher please head to musicteacher.com and check out the database of great music teachers all around the country thanks for watching guys I will see you very soon