Unit 2: Major Licks & Chords

E Shape & Box 2-3

Let’s kick off with Hendrix’s favoured major chord shape, the E shape CAGED chord. This chord needs no introduction, but for those of you who play it as barre chord shapes, we will be altering that to develop our Hendrix style. Whenever you play this shape, you can play the pentatonic box 2 underneath it and box 3 to the right of it. Let’s have a look at those shapes:

But, Why?

For those of you asking why this is the case, let’s just break it down a little more. Essentially, Hendrix’s approach is simply to consider each chord its own little island. Rather than consider the chords a part of the overall key, and use notes from the key to play over them, he takes each of them as its own root and entity, separate from the key.

So, for example, if he plays an A major chord he will play an A major pentatonic scale. If he plays a G major chord, a G major pentatonic scale and so on. Even if these two chords were the 4th and 5th degree in the key of D major, he’d still keep them separate. This beautiful simplification allows us to simply attribute one shape to a chord and always be able to rely on it. How cool is that?

Lick One

In this lick, we are using the B major chord and the B major pentatonic scale shapes. It is so important to understand that you just need to transpose everything at the same time. It’s super easy once you get the hang of it!

Click on the tab icon to see the lick tabbed out in our super cool interactive tab player (this will allow you to slow down the tab and play along with the lick). Alternatively, play the backing track to hear the lick for yourself.

A Shape and Box 5 & 1

Now for the second major chord shape, Hendrix loves to use, the A shape CAGED chord. Alongside the strict A shape, he also uses the G shape with the major third in the root. This is a great trick, and sounds so awesome! Whenever you play this shape, you can play the pentatonic box 5 underneath it and box 1 to the right of it. Let’s have a look at those shapes in the fretboard diagrams.

Lick 2

In this lick, we are using the E major chord and the E major pentatonic scale shapes. It is so important to understand that you just need to transpose everything at the same time. It’s super easy once you get the hang of it!

Click on the tab icon to see the lick from this video tabbed out in our super cool interactive tab player (this will allow you to slow down the tab and play along with the lick). Alternatively, just click play on the backing track to hear the lick.

"The Snow Screams Lucy" Part 1

Let’s take the two licks we have learnt and apply them to a mini track in a Hendrix style. The most important thing to note is how we can break up the lick to fit into a variety of examples. Sometimes you can use the whole lick, other times its just one beat of it. This is our focus when learning this track. In this lesson, we will tackle the ‘A’ section of the track.

Remember that the theory is identical to the previous lessons. When you are on the A shape chord you can use that pentatonic box 5 and 1 to improvise, then when on the E shape chord you can use the box 2. Try to bear this in mind as you play through the first section!

Click on the tab to see the song tabbed out in our super cool interactive tab player (this will allow you to slow down the tab and play along with the lick). Alternatively, just click play on the backing tracks to hear it.

"The Snow Screams Lucy" Part 2

In this lesson, we will tackle the ‘B’ section of the track. This is shown in the tab, and we now move up to the higher end of the fretboard. Once again we utilise the licks and CAGED shapes we have learnt, and break them down to work in different bar lengths and timings.

Click on the tab to see the song tabbed out in our super cool interactive tab player (this will allow you to slow down the tab and play along with the lick). Alternatively, just click play on the backing tracks to hear it.

Improvising

In this final lesson of the unit, we look at how to take the core ideas and add your own flavour to them. We run through a variety of ideas, but here are the top things to remember: 1. Lay down the main groove first, and get a good feel for it before trying to add any licks. The licks come second. 2. Once you have a solid rhythm foundation, try adding one or two licks, quite sparsely to the track. Don’t over-do-it at this point, we want to keep the rhythm grounded. 3. As you get more confident, you can start to explore more licks in more places, and before you know it, you’re starting to sound like Hendrix! 4. Finally, above all else, remember that this is a rhythm part! Don’t fly off with an across the neck lead part in the space of 2 beats... Keep it simple, but keep it rhythmical.