Learning the solos of your favourite players is one of the best ways of developing your musical repertoire.
It will help you to build a vocabulary of ‘go-to’ licks that you can use in your solos and improvisations, and develop your lead guitar technique.
When you study the solos of iconic blues guitarists, you can see how they craft individual ideas and connect them together over the course of a solo.
Over time, you can then adapt and develop these ideas and make them your own. In this way, you can learn from your favourite blues guitarists, whilst retaining your own musical voice.
There are an almost unlimited number of blues songs out there that you could learn to develop your musical vocabulary. However one of my favourite choices is Strange Brew by Cream.
Originally released as a single in 1967, it was later added to Cream’s second studio album Disraeli Gears, appearing as the opening track on the record.
I recommend that guitarists learn this song for a variety of reasons, the key ones of which are as follows:
The song is in the key of A and almost all of Eric Clapton’s lead guitar playing is based around the A minor pentatonic scale.
Not only this, but throughout his lead playing, Eric Clapton navigates across a variety of the pentatonic scale shapes. He also connects these shapes in a variety of interesting and different ways.
So if you feel comfortable with the shapes of the A minor pentatonic scale, but you have trouble creating licks, connecting scale shapes or playing beyond the more familiar shapes 1 and 2 of the scale – this is the course for you. 😁
Additionally, you will learn how to use repetition effectively and how small adjustments to the same phrase can help you to get much more mileage from your musical ideas.
In this course you will learn:
- How to play both the intro and main solos in Strange Brew
- The musical context over which Eric Clapton is playing, and how this impacts the scales and ideas he uses in his playing
- How to recreate Clapton’s famous ‘Woman Tone’
- How you can improvise and create musical ideas in the same style
This will help you to solo confidently using the A minor pentatonic scale.
It will also develop the skills you need to create varied and interesting ideas in different keys and musical contexts.
So with that in mind, let’s get into it!
When you are ready to do so, head over to the first lesson of the course. There we will be looking at the musical context of the song and the chords over which Eric Clapton is soloing.
This will help you to understand how the song is constructed and how it connects with the ideas that Clapton uses in his lead guitar playing.
You will also learn how to play the specific rhythm part in this song and how Clapton breathes life into a simple 12 bar blues progression.
See you over there! 😁
