PLAY THE REAL AUDIO Back to Directory
 
Sheet Music - Page 1
Sheet Music - Page 2
Performance Notes    
It is very important that you listen to the recording of this piece at least 5-10 times before you start to play it. You need to get the sound of the solo in your head first. This is very important and will make learning the piece far faster. Listen closely to the bends and try to emulate them. It is very important to learn the many different types of bend that exist, especially in blues. Note too the curls (C), that are very small bends, only 1/4 of a tone (maybe a bit more). Listen to it and see, play with your ears and not with your eyes. Listen to the way he uses dynamics, especially on the first 3 bars of the secong chorus (page 2). Dynamics can really make music come alive and T-Bone is a master.

The solo is 24 bars long (plus a few "pick-up" notes that I don't count). Bar 1 is the first bar after the double lines. Nearly all of the solo is all played using one finger in each fret, starting on the eighth fret (1st finger in the 8th fret, 2nd finger in the 9th fret, etc). The obvious exception being if you prefer to use your 3rd finger to play the notes in the 11th fret, but this is only cool on the first and second strings. Technically this is a bad habit but I do it all the time and so do many players. Try not to make fingering decisions because of laziness, but feel free to ignore my suggestions as long as you have thought about it and YOU can see a logic to the fingering that you choose.

The end of the first chorus and the first 3 bars of the second use a small diad (two note chord) that is very popular in the blues. Play it with your 2nd and 3rd fingers and slide up to it from the fret below when the slide is indicated (S and lines leading up to the notes). T-Bone uses a very percusively played C69 chord that moves up a semitone and back to finish the line. Use a first finger bar on the 7th fret and your third (or second) on the 8th fret, slide the same shape up and back.

Cut the solo into small chunks (the licks) and play each one independantly. Then try to use the same licks but in a different order. Try to play like T-Bone. Then start to mix them into your regular improvising. I usually find now that if the sound is in my head then it will come out when I improvise, but it is still very useful to deliberatly start to use a lick so you can get ideas for using it. Always practice getting into and out of repeating licks, it sounds obvious but is pretty important.

Analysis    
This solo is played over two choruses of a 12 Bar Blues in C. You should analize each notes function in relation to both the key centre and most importantly the chord that the note is played over. It mainly uses the classic blues hybrid of the Minor Pentatonic Scale, the Blues Scale and the Mixolydian Mode. Because most of the solo is Box 1 position pentatonic position it should make it easy to work out, and because it is in the key of C you should be able to see a lot in the transcription. T-Bone plays over chords like a jazz musician would, so the licks are often chord specific. You will see this when you check out each notes function.