A Hendrix question to the Forum guitar players

Yeah, must've been due to all that Drifting he did.

Mitch?

 

I'm being absolutely serious, there is no drummer I dislike more than MM. Fortunately Hendrix's albums are so good, I can usually ignore his playing.

 

The messiest drummer, in my opinion -- I've had 15 year long arguments about this topic with two of my very close friends, they HATE my view of MM as much as I dislike MM's playing. But long arguments and disagreements are what keep the dialogue going.

 

I play with my thumb over the top of the fretboard. It doesn't put me in the same league as Hendrix.

Now, if I had his brain...

 

I love Jazz, but it's that exact element in his playing that grates on me so badly.

 

Oh well

 

Mitch Mitchell is getting dissed... really? He's always been up high on the short list of great drummers for me.

 

Keep in mind that songs like Manic Depression would not sound the way they do if not for MM's drumming style. Anything other than a jazz approach would have never worked with the patterns Jimi played on the song.

 

I've found having very small fingers has an advantage when trying to do certain things on the fret board and get them to sound clean, my brother has large, long fingers and there's stuff I can do that he can't pull off cleanly.

Obviously there's limitations with extreme reaches for me but 90% of that can be overcome with alternate positions/voicings.

 

Hello,

No, they weren't "major" contributors to his status as one of the greatest guitarists ever, though he made practical use of them to suit his own needs.

To be honest, I believe what Jimi had was a fertile & developing "imagination", & an ability to express his emotions both through his guitar, body, & voice. The majority of footage I've ever seen of the man sees him very frustrated & irritable at most times, either with himself, his guitar going out-of-tune or his band-mates. And as fine a player as he was, he was also very limited ( as far as his technique goes ) in such that he predominantly used the "Type-4" fingering patterns for solo's etc, & I think that a lot of his shown frustration stems from wanting to get better & better.

As an audience, we'd never seen or heard such a man play like he did, or use his amps & effects in ways not heard before, or sometimes since. We can only speculate on how his career would have progressed, & what he may have composed for us musically to enjoy, but he has without doubt been a MAJOR FORCE as far as displaying what an electric guitar, a creative mind , a tonne of talent & being in the right place at the right time can produce !!!

RIP & thanks Jimi,

Gregster

 

It's not about long fingers but instead about hard work and studying the greats. Hendrix is the most perfect example of someone who spent enormous amount of time listening and trying to copy the great traditional blues music during his formative years which helped him develop the 'ear'. That is the hardest thing to do and what most people who want to play instruments at 'genius' level don't get. After he mastered the traditional blues then given his God given talent he was able to take all that to another level by making it his own.

Buddy Guy was probably the biggest influence on Hendrix and you can hear that clearly when you listen to their music. Hendrix even used to tape Buddy's concerts as discussed here

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Buddy_Guy.aspx

or even better seen directly here

https://www.musiclessons.com/vod/297/?date=07/07/2014


Buddy Guy's wiki page is worth reading as well - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Guy

Here is the paragraph about Jimi at Buddy's page:

In recognition of Guy's influence on Hendrix's career, the Hendrix family invited Buddy Guy to headline all-star casts at several Jimi Hendrix tribute concerts they organized in recent years, "calling on a legend to celebrate a legend." Jimi Hendrix himself once said that "Heaven is lying at Buddy Guy’s feet while listening to him play guitar."[citation needed]

Songs such as "Red House", "Voodoo Chile" and "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" partly came from the sonic world that Buddy Guy helped to create. According to the Fender Players' Club: "Almost ten years before Jimi Hendrix would electrify the rock world with his high-voltage voodoo blues, Buddy Guy was shocking juke joint patrons in Baton Rouge with his own brand of high-octane blues. Ironically, when Buddy’s playing technique and flamboyant showmanship were later revealed to crossover audiences in the late Sixties, it was erroneously assumed that he was imitating Hendrix." (In 1993, Guy covered "Red House" on Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix.)

 

I have super small hands. And I played bass...people would come up after the shows and remark how huge my hands must be because of some of the stretches and reach I had etc
Was funny to me, but happened enough I noticed people would say that.

Never been able to fret with my thumb on guitar well...I've played guitar now waaaaaay longer than bass.

I think Jimi used what he had and just ran with it.
Amazingly!

 

It really does help to put your thumb over and play like that. I do that on the acoustic guitar, as well. I can play with nine fingers because of it.

 

Jimi's technique & therefore style/sound -whatever you want to call it - mainly come from being self-taught. He doesn't play a lot of chord shapes at all, just this barre chord with the thumb which moves to the 3rd, 5th and 7th fret and then he plays lead runs and fills with the other three fingers in between strumming the rhythm (as per "Killing a Floor") Sometimes he plays a little fill with a similar shape further up the neck on the lower strings then goes back to the same technique of a barre chord rhythm and fill. "Message To Love" is a good example of this.
Even on straighter Blues like "Hear My Train..." he still uses the barre chord with the thumb to hit the bass strings here and there to kind of 'fatten out' the sound.
Compare that with Clapton for example - you see a bit of similar playing in Cream on songs like 'Crossroads' but generally Clapton will solo completely independent of the rhythm playing. Hendrix did both at the same time. To me this is similar to how Robert Johnson and other blues players played a 4/4 rhythm on the bass strings as a constant beat while playing the melody at the same time on the other strings. This is probably what Hendrix tried to imitate, but developed his own style out of it - I suspect because he probably couldn't do it in exactly the same way - if you look at the acoustic 'Hear My Train' video, he does a mute a couple of times where his right hand deadens the strings - this reminds me of how Blues players play the bass line slightly dead to give it a steady beat. This was kind of Jimi's approximation of that through being self taught and there not being stuff like YouTube or videos you could watch of other players to work out how they did it.

In all honesty, the guitar being upside down wouldn't really make that much of a difference.

Source: I'm a left handed guitar player who has never had a lesson.

 

small, large, medium hands...it's the talent behind those hands that makes the separation of good to great....

 

Of course they were, but as much say as his brain/creativity, heart/dedication, and the ears? probably not.
But Billy Gibbons, who Jimi was a fan of, says hands are key, and to him its touch and feel that produces the sound.
Nobody is right and nobody is wrong here.

 

We are basically talking about a heaping helping of delta blues influence tossed in, a solo player accompanying himself with bass, rhythm and solo at times all occurring simultaneously, and many times playing the note being sung.

 

Wow- sign me up for more sea sick please

 

That thumb-over technique - that's what all the British players did, as far as I can tell. There seem to be two schools in that regard: Those that play the barre with the forefinger and those that lay the thumb over. Jimi was not unique in using the latter technique. I find it very difficult, personally, but I've seen teachers demonstrate it and say it's just a matter of practice.

 

He sounded great on some tracks, like Manic Depression, and on other songs, his playing, IMO, is too busy and lacking in the drive that certain songs required.

 

That's the way I play, not because I'm copying him but because I didn't learn the right way. I don't think it's any particular advantage.

 

On the subject of playing lead and rhythm at the same time - nobody can *really* do that. It's impossible. What Jimi and other guitarists do to create this effect is move their fingers while keeping their index finger (and thumb) in the same barre position. In Jimi's case, a lot of fast fingers on the right hand and broad (somewhat 'sloppy') strumming with his left hand meant he could play a lot of hammer-on notes and little fills around a basic chord shape giving the impression of lead guitar and rhythm guitar happening at the same time.

 

You basically sum up my view of his playing perfectly. Often Hendix's songs feel like they are dragging him along where some less busy, more powerful playing were needed. There are a handful of tracks wherein his playing works well, but nevertheless I hear the same drumming over and over and over. To be fair, a lot of this is simply taste, and I realize that I do overstate how bad his drumming is. But for the most part, if I pay attention to his playing, my head starts to cave in.

 

Quite a lot of 'great' rock guitarists have that large hands/long, slender fingers thing going on: Jimmy Page is another good case in point.

It's definitely a huge asset to have long digits BUT what really counts is imagination. Django Reinhardt must have been mentioned on this thread already - he had a crippled left (fretting) hand but that didn't stop him becoming arguably the most influential guitarist (on both the jazz and rock genres) who ever lived.

My own hands are small and my fingers are stubby, and I find I have to 'cheat' barre chords. I would be very happy to have been born with 'Hendrix hands'.

 

Yes, you are definitely right about that. I think some of my argument about his playing is dead-on, but I also realize my taste has a lot to do with it, so the sweeping comments I make are unfair. Nevertheless he plays in a way that feels like insects are devouring my skin.