Guitar players like Wilson Pickett, Booker T., Jimi Hendrix and Keith Richards all use a similar 5-note box pattern to create filler lines in and around their riffs. This system is explained in detail here in the, “Secrets of the Magic 5-Note Box,” lesson plan. Learn how these artists created these ideas and how you can use the same method to make your playing sound great too…
Q: I really like those 60’s R&B sounds like Wilson Pickett, Booker T. & the MG’s of course Jimi Hendrix and Keith Richards too. I’ve noticed they all seem to use much of the same scale sounds. I recently saw a local guitarist jamming this music at a club and he only used a small shape around each chord to add fills and to solo. He sounded great, in fact — he sounded quite a lot like Jimi Hendrix. Is there a certain “magic shape” that Hendrix and other guitar players in this style use to play riffs and to solo around a songs chords?
– Brodie, LasVegas Nevada.
A: Classic R&B and Rock N Roll from the 60’s had a unique way of adding in cool filler notes around chord changes. In fact, this sound was integral to that era of guitar music.
A good deal of these notes were from the major and the minor pentatonic scale. But, rather than playing the scale as it would normally be shown in most guitar lesson books, many of these players used a more compact 5-Note shape.
The notes were generally clustered around those standard Major & Dominant chord voicings that can be found off of the 6th and 5th string roots.
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