ROCKABILLY it’s a revolution!
The heady mix of rock and roll, country and jazz created rockabilly and led to one of the most exciting of all guitar styles. Jon Bishop slaps us back to those crazy days with some fab licks and chords.
Jon Bishop looks back at those heady days of rockabilly with some fab licks and chords from some of the genre’s finest players.
the Rockabilly image is a strong part of the genre, and big-bodied guitars have become synonymous with it
Rockabilly is an exciting fusion of several music styles, most notably country, blues and jazz. The goal of this lesson is to equip you with some solid rhythm and lead techniques to help you get an authentic rockabilly sound. There are 10 examples to study, all of which are inspired by rockabilly’s (and rock and roll’s) most famous guitar players. The licks highlight important areas of the rockabilly vocabulary including double-stops, chord tones, chromatic passing notes and endings. Whether you intend on getting deep into the subject or simply learning a lick or two, or a few new chordal ideas, I’m sure you’ll find something new to add to your fretboard arsenal.
in the second part of the lesson there is a full solo to learn and study. and, of course, you can try out all the ideas covered in the article over the backing track provided (many thanks to Graeme Ross for recording the double bass and drum parts on this month’s track).
The canvas i have chosen for the solo and examples is a 12-bar blues progression in E. This, along with the key of a, is probably rock and roll’s most commonly chosen key, since it suits the guitar so well. This progression uses the chords of E7, a7 and b7 and is often referred to a i7, iV7, V7. The 12-bar blues is a very popular song form in rock and roll, and we can spice up this progression with some extra chord changes and it’s often this jazzy element that separates it from rockabilly. We can use the ii7 chord (F#7) to lead into the V chord (b7) and i’ve included this change in chorus 3 of the solo. We can also use the iV7 chord (a7) in bar 2 of the sequence as a ‘quick change’. both of these concepts are designed to give the soloist more options and to increase the harmonic excitement.
The rockabilly image is a strong part of the genre and along with zoot suits and quiffs, big-bodied archtop guitars have become synonymous with the style. in particular, the Gretsch range is a great favourite – indeed an almost mandatory accessory – and the bigsby vibrato bar is also a popular addition to the set-up. amps tend to be Fender – the bassman is a common choice among rockabilly guitarists including the fabulous brian setzer (Gretsch player and endorser). another important part of the sound is the short, single repeat echo originally provided by tape machines in the studio and referred to as ‘slapback’. Tape echo units from the likes of Watkins (Uk), Meazzi (italy) and binson (Usa) gave the live guitarist access to studio style slapback sounds and today we can easily set up a digital delay pedal or virtual effects unit to perform exactly the same function.
Rockabilly is a joyous style, so as well as learning new ideas make sure you have fun!