Watch the Gypsy Jam online guitar lesson by James Hogan from Groove Guitar: Lead

Enough can't be said about the brilliance of Jimi Hendrix. No one really sounded like Jimi before he was on the scene, and thousands upon thousands of guitarists have tried to sound like him since! That's the true mark of an icon, and in Jimi's case, a genius.

This example highlights some of Jimi's signature licks over a Band of Gypsys era, riff-based groove. There are some killer E minor pentatonic phrases here and lots of rhythmic variation in this example. It's essential to stay in the pocket and really lock into the syncopation of these phrases! Hendrix was a master of rhythm & groove, so we want to do him some justice by staying in the pocket here.

Also, while you don't have to have a Strat and a "dimed" Marshall Plexi to play this example, it sure does sound great through that gear! If you're using single coil pickups, I recommend using the neck pickup for this one. If you're using a guitar with two humbuckers, you can try using the middle position and balance the volumes to mimic single coils. I used a Fender Strat, an Ibanez TS 808, an RMC 3 wah and a Malekko analog delay through a reissue Princeton Reverb for the course performance.

Remember, if you need to slow the riff down to get the timing on point, you can always slow down and jam along to the Guitar Pro file I've included with the course, in addition to the backing track.

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