“What would Jimi do?" It's a question I've asked myself countless times over the last four decades, particularly when faced with creating groovy rhythm guitar parts from basic chord charts.
“What would Jimi do?" It's a question I've asked myself countless times over the last four decades, particularly when faced with creating groovy rhythm guitar parts from basic chord charts. Hendrix didn’t really use a lot of different types of chords, but the vocabulary he created with the ones he knew was astounding, especially on ballads like “Hey Joe,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Little Wing,” “Castles Made of Sand,” “Axis: Bold As Love,” and “(Have You Ever Been to) Electric Ladyland.” Drawing from the soulful guitar moves of Curtis Mayfield and the country piano style of Floyd Cramer, Hendrix developed a unique collection of embellishments and filigrees that allowed him to improvise using dyads, or two-note chordal fragments, decorated with hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides to play within and around a basic “parental” chord shape. For the next few months, we’ll demystify some of these magical sounds so you can incorporate them into your own musical vocabulary.
Take the humble third-position C barre chord. Some might think of it as a finite entity, but in Hendrix’ hands, it became an entire universe. Fig. A puts this transposed “A”-shaped major triad (root on the fifth and third strings) on the grid and shows how it connects to the next highest “G”-shaped C chord (root on the sixth and third strings). Fig. B adds parenthetical diatonic passing tones—the 2, the 4, and the 6—to the same grid. These are the notes Hendrix used to pair with and weave in and out of the chord tones, and this is your world for the next month.
We begin at the upper end of the chord, with the 5 (G) voiced on top of each dyad. Ex. 1