ExamplE2 Full Solo 2: Funky 4/4 (Slightly Swinging 16thS)

Cd track 72

We’re back to more conventional blues vocabulary in these bars, but just because the note content is more chord-tone based, don’t underestimate the delivery and articulation of these lines. Henderson plays everything with supreme commitment and with a real sense of intent.

Here we enter more harmonically sophisticated territory, choosing a chromatically decorated G Mixolydian (G-A-B-C-d-e-F) against G7, moving into d Blues scale with the added 6th (d-F-G-A -A-B-C) over d7, and a string skipped fragment from the A blues scale (A-C-d-e -e-G) over A7/, bringing the phrase to a logical conclusion towards the v chord of e7#9 (e-G#-B-d-F#).

We get down and funky in the opening four bars of our second chorus. The muted ghost notes are not intended as a literal representation of exactly what you might play here, so don’t be afraid to loosen up and add any percussive strums in between the notes as you see fit. Your muting, however, needs to be right up to the mark, so ensure that all unwanted strings are taken care of with the unused parts of the fingers of your fretting hand and don’t allow any extraneous open strings to ring out.