Hey, how are you doing? Justin here.
In this lesson today,
we are checking out Eric Clapton's first solo,
from his song Crossroads, with the Cream band.
Awesome song all-round
and some great solos later on as well.
For these first two choruses of solo that he plays
we've got some really interesting stuff.
A lot of mixing up between the major and the minor pentatonic scale,
loads and loads of great licks.
So, what we're going to do...
Go to a close-up, I'm going to play it once through,
just kind of at a slow tempo.
So any of you fast learners can just kind of watch
where I'm putting my fingers and off you go.
But then I'm going to try to break it down, lick by lick
and explain kind of a little bit about what he's doing,
where he might have gotten the idea from,
so you can kind of chop it up yourself and steal the
individual licks and improvise with them yourself.
That's the plan.
So, let's get to a close-up.
Lick number one
And lick number two
Now both of these licks are quite similar.
This is an A major pentatonic scale.
Very common to use this second to fourth fret,
second to fourth fret,
on the fourth string and the third string.
So really, the big difference here,
the first time it's a bend
And the second time he slides up from
the fourth fret to the sixth fret.
Lick number three is staying with the
major pentatonic.
So it's really here, five to seven...
We might let those two ring together a bit actually.
Two five's.
Playing both five's and hammering down the
third finger on the seventh fret.
Five, seven.
Now here we've got that little kind of minor to major thing.
Fifth fret to sixth fret.
While holding down the fifth fret on the second string too.
And lick number four...
Straight up the minor pentatonic scale.
So, now we've changed straight away from the
major pentatonic to the minor.
It's an important bit, to get that.
So, these first few licks together.
And all of that is of course played over the A chord.
Now the band's moved to D and he plays this...
Really like that lick, this is a great one. So...
Nice bending, seventh fret.
Up to the root note.
Eighth fret, second string, bend.
And then, leaping off to the fifth fret to seventh fret hammer-on.
Love that lick, great.
This is an interesting one as well, so we've got
this little hammer-on and flick-off.
To the A.
It's a little bit muted on the record, you go...
Now, I always thought it was...
That he's bending and playing the E on the second string.
But when I was doing this transcription, I could
hear that the E note and the G note, which is the
next one are ringing together.
And you can only get that here.
So, I sussed out that it was...
So, it makes it a little trickier, but it's a lot nicer.
And you get that nice kind of...
Where you bend and then slide up to the same note,
so you've got...
That's the whole lick.
Really like that one.
Then we've got...
Now I suspect, to be honest, this was actually just
meant to be...
And a straight jump which is pretty common in a lot
of the guys that influenced Eric Clapton.
But he gets a little...
Where he's gone from the ninth fret to the tenth fret.
I suspect he's just kind of missed it a bit.
There's a little step up there.
Then we've got a little eight, ten.
And that's a ten.
Then we're going to get back down.
We've got here a little eight to ten hammer-on...
With an eighth fret on the thinnest string.
And then a nice little run-down.
Yeah and I always used to play that slightly wrong, but...
A little bit awkward how, 'cause we've got this little
five-six hammer-on. Two notes on the note E, the
fifth fret of the second string...
And we've definitely got a pretty strong curl...
It's not a proper bend, it's just a curl with the first finger.
To the root, and then the same finger has to jump off
the A and slide down to the D, the fifth fret of the fifth string...
And he's playing the root note twice.
And we're finishing that off with a very classic little
Clapton lick...
It's a real, proper Clapton ending.
Mostly minor pentatonic of course, but we're adding
in the little...
bit of major there.
Forming just an A-triad.
Okay, let's have a look at that whole first section,
the whole first twelve bars. Here we go...
Okay and then after that, he kind of jumps up
the neck a little bit.
So, he's got quite a leap on and he's jumping up to
I think it's here, right? So, the thirteenth fret of the second string.
To the fourteenth fret of the third string.
He could be going...
Or...
So, I'm not one hundred percent convinced it's up here.
It's just to me, my gut-instinct, says it's this part of the neck. So...
Thirteenth fret with a curl.
Fourteenth fret, then...
So, thirteenth fret curl.
Fifteen.
Twelve.
Curl.
Fourteenth fret twice.
Then to the thirteenth fret.
So...
Very nice little lick again, nice.
Using the A minor pentatonic scale. That one...
Now he gets into using this, very very, again very Clapton-esque kind of..
Now again, I'm not one hundred percent sure
what fingers he might use for that.
I think he uses his first and second finger quite a lot
for this riff from videos and stuff I've watched.
And then, 'cause he's using first and second finger,
when the third comes down, to get that little slide
back to the fifth fret, it's a real kind of a strong slide...
So...
Sliding up to the ninth fret from the seventh fret.
Eight, nine. Eight, nine. And then third finger
is going to overtake it and slide down to the seventh fret.
Fifth fret.
Then we've got the same.
But with a hammer-on from eight to ten.
Then eighth fret with a curl.
Then we're right up the dusty end again.
So we're holding the twelfth fret, and bending the fifteenth.
Sometimes I'm convinced that it's just a single bend.
Other times I swear I can hear the two notes together.
So, you have a listen and decide which one.
I think it's the two notes together, I think, on...
More of that minor pentatonic.
Then...
Really nice sort of slow release from the fifteenth fret.
And then we've got, our little Clapton-esque, little run
with the first and second fingers again.
But with a slightly different ending this time...
Also I think this time he goes...
He's kind of separating the notes. So, I think
he's going seven slide nine, eight, nine, eight, eight.
I think.
And here...
A nice little slide up there to follow the chord changes.
Then we've got another nice bit.
A little, short slide up to the eleventh fret.
Ten.
Then eleventh fret again.
This is now, for kind of a D. The chord has moved to D.
So, he's playing off of this D-7.
Arpeggio.
And then we're back to the root.
Now this one, here we're back to A major pentatonic.
This note here is B bending to C sharp.
Which is incidentally the same as that one at the beginning...
Is the B note bending to a C sharp.
C sharp being the major third.
That's of course saying "Hey, we're back on the A."
So just to clarify this a little bit more,
the lick before...
This is a D lick. Right? D-7 arpeggio.
And we're using those notes from the D triad.
Then to say "Hey we're back in A." He's going...
Bending the B to the C sharp. Which is
saying "Hey, we're back on our A chord here at this point."
So, it's important to see that's kind of how those licks
are working. You know? He's following the chord changes.
Now after that, he's got a little run-down there with his finger.
And he finishes with a little...
Starting with the open D.
Hammering second finger on.
Open G.
Hammer-on and flick-off at the second fret.
Second fret, flick off on the D string.
Third finger, third fret.
And we're back into the riff.
Okay that whole second part of the solo...
I really hope you've enjoyed checking out Crossroads.
And I hope I didn't go too fast, I'm a little bit worried that
I kind of skipped over bits too fast. But I think
if I go through every single note and every finger
and every fret that it should be on, it's going to make
it a really long and tedious lesson for both of us.
So, I'm hoping that that was kind of a good tempo
for you. Please let me know in the comments and I'll
try to fix it for future videos. It's a really important
thing to understand what was going on as well, so
if there are bits where I didn't explain whether it was
a major pentatonic or a minor pentatonic, have a
think about it. See if you can look at the notes that
I'm playing and go
"Okay, does that fit with the major pentatonic shape?
Or does that fit with the minor pentatonic shape?
Okay, what chord is that being played over?"
Because I didn't get into doing that too much. I think
that's a really important thing for you to do. It would
be difficult for me to do it as well actually, verbally.
By far the easiest thing is to kind of write it out and
then put your bar lines in.
If you can put rhythms in that's a great, great skill.
Can't emphasise what a useful skill it is, to be able
to read and write rhythms. If you struggle with that
I've got a book on that [wink]. 'Understanding Rhythmic Notation'. Hint, hint.
You can go and buy that from the website.
But, that will definitely help you when you're kind of
writing a transcription of something. You know?
To write down the tab and then to be able to write
the rhythms above it. It will help you sort out where
your bar-lines are, so you know where the
chord changes are. It will help you slow it down as well.
So that's a really good little tip for you. Is making
sure that you write the rhythms down. I do it with all
of my tabs, when I'm tabbing out a tune,
or transcribing it, I write down the tab first. And then
I make sure I write the rhythm as well, because that
means that I can learn a lot quicker, you know?
And I'm sure that'd be helpful for you guys too.
So yeah, do a little bit of your 'harmonic analysis'
and make sure that you know where the notes are
from, where they're major pentatonic or minor pentatonic,
or something completely different. Which they're not
in this tune mostly. And make sure you listen
to it a lot. Make sure you get yourself a half-speed
kind of player. That's a really, really, really important
thing when you're learning lead guitar stuff.
You used to be able to play along with the original
solo at like fifty percent or seventy percent or
whatever you could handle. Because it kind of helps
you get the feel right 'cause you're playing along
with them and you know, I really think that's an
important kind of thing. And lastly the other really
important thing of course, is to make sure you learn
them as licks. So learning the whole solo is great
and a really good thing to do. But probably the most
valuable thing you could do, is break it down into
little licks and then you can actually use them in your
own improvisations. And I think that's kind of the
point of learning other people's solos.
For me at least, you know, I've taken that solo,
learned it, stolen all of the licks that I really, really like
and I try to use them in my own playing and I'd
recommend you do the same thing.
'Cause that's what it's all about!
Have fun with that and I'll see you for another
lick solo song thing lesson stuff, sometime very soon.
Take care of yourselves, bye.