5 Hacks For Playing Jimi Hendrix Style Rhythm Guitar

5 Hacks For Playing Jimi Hendrix Style Rhythm Guitar

Happy New Year everyone!

Today I go into how to play Jimi Hendrix style rhythm guitar, and what I will
be dealing with in particular is Jimi’s clean rhythm guitar style.

Legend has it that Curtis Mayfield was a major influence on Jimi’s playing and
that his clean guitar stylings are built around those employed by
Mayfield as the two were paying their dues on the Chitlin’
circuit in the early 60s.  The use of sliding parallel chords,
grace note chord stabs and intermixing scale melodies with chord
fragments are all hallmarks of this embellishment guitar style.

To get the tone for this style of playing, a clean amp is best, preferably
a Fender, with the bass up around 7, mid at 5, treble at say 6, presence about 5.
Some type of reverb and a touch of delay, say 420ms or so, will go a long way
to sweetening up the tone.  In addition, use the 3rd pickup position away
from the bridge on a strat. style guitar which is the out of phase  position
between the neck and the middle pickup.

As for the theory, I only did the first position of “Hey Joe” in this video
as tacklingall 5 positions for each chord would take a considerable amount of time.
You will need to get all 5 chord shapes for each chord in this song,
along with each shape’s matching pentatonic major scale to master this style.
Also learning as many tunes that use this style would be helpful as well.
Try “May This Be Love,” “Castles Made Of Sand,” and “Wind Cries Mary” to start.

I have provided all the shapes and the major pentatonic scales that go  with them.
When I call something “chord shape 1” or “chord shape 2” in the video, I am not
referring to a specific shape but rather the first shape found in each different
chord in this tune.  Each chord will have 5, you can number them however you want,
I just did it from lowest to highest.

Anyway, below are all the examples.  Happy chord embellishing!