Trading Solos: Americana

Let's talk about some of the things you'll need to play americana. The effects are pretty simple. You're gonna want some kind of tremelo. Whether or not it comes from the amp or not is up to you. You'll want some kind of overdrive. I would recommend staying away from any kind of heavy gain ODs. You're gonna want to find something that is dynamic and can really respond to your touch like an amp on the edge of breakup. I'm using a boost pedal with a gain knob for this course. An analog delay is a good addition. Nothing complicated. You're not gonna be using dotted eighth note delays or dual delays. A compressor can come in handy for bringing out charteristics in your guitar and for getting sustain when you're playing slide. Reverb is another effect that's useful in americana. Amp or pedal is fine though reverb sounds better when it's in circut. There's nothing complicated here. These are all classic effects that have been around forever. You can see it's more about trying to keep transparency in your sound so your voice comes through. You don't want anything to sound too effected.

This track is based on a gospel feel in A. We're in 6/8 and the progression is I-I-V7-V7-I-I-I-I7-IV-ii-I-V7-IV-I.

Our first approach is to play basic chord shaps using hybrid picking and secondary sub dominant chords or what I often call "IV of" chords. I'm grabbing the chord shapes with my pick, middle and ring fingers to get a more immediate and even attack. The second rhythmic approach is to play on the backbeat. The backbeat in 6/8 is on beat four. I playing a short staccato double stop on the top two strings and using good voice leadling throughout.

The first solo concept is to play b3-2-root. I'm treating the b3rd as a grace note. It's always in motion down to the 2. You can apply any articulation to this. Slides, picked, bend release...they are all going to add nuance. Also feel free to embellish with repetition or other notes from the key. Next concept is to harmonize the pentatonic scale. I'm doing this by choosing the note three steps higher. This will create the harmony of a 4th for note except the root with will be harmonized by a major third. I would reccomend doing this in all five positions and with each corresponding pentatonic scale. This last soloing idea is a compound bend. We can do this in two places within the chord. First we can bend the 2nd a whole step into the 3rd and then bend another half step to the 4th. It's important that we target and land on the 3rd first. Otherwise this will just sound like a bend from the 2nd to the 4th. You can also do this bend from 5th to 6th and then bend the extra half step to the b7th.

In this play along preview notice the amount of space I'm leaving both as a soloist and a rhythm guitarist. My phrases when soloing are brief staements with a destination in mind before I even start playing. Know where you want to land.

Now let''s trade some solos. I'll bring up the track and take the first solo. You'll play rhythm for me and then we'll trade. I'm around the progression once before jumping to rhythm and giving you a chance to dig in.