Jingle Bells by SRV

Intro & Tone

Ever heard Jingle Bells played as a Texas blues shuffle? We hadn't either, and we were shocked! Why not combine the most well-known Christmas melody with the heavy Texas style? So we did it! We can learn two really cool parts here, the core groove which really takes a step up from the basic chords, and the cool lead part that blends SRV licks with the Jingle Bells melody. Let's start with the tone.

The base of our tone is using a Fender 65 Deluxe Reverb style preset in TONEX by IK Multimedia. as you can see it's driven pretty high on the gain channel, and the EQ is pretty flat. We're also adding the Tube Screamer for the actual lead guitar part, which gives us that classic honky blues tone!

... And if anyone wants the exact Tonex patch, it's this:

As you'd expect, we used a Strat to record this part. In terms of pick up selection, I'm using the neck pick up for the lead part, and the 4th position (neck and middle) for the rhythm section. You can also switch to the bridge pickup for those extra-aggressive parts!

The Lead Guitar

For the lead guitar part, we are based in the key of E blues. I say E blues rather than E major as we're deliberately using a Texas blues style track, which is based more in dominant chords than major chords. It allows us to use both the major and minor pentatonic scales, which are displayed in the fretboard diagram.

The Rhythm Guitar

Finally, let's take a look at the core chord movements for this track. We're using a cool Texas blues-inspired bass line in our rhythm, but that is very much over some relatively simple chords. They look like this:

If you'd like to get more to grips with SRV's style, get started with the SRV Player Study today!