AYNSLEY LISTER Video Masterclass PT2
Aynsley demonstrates his lead style by taking a solo over three contrasting blues style-backing tracks. In part two we switch to A Minor for a cool blues shuffle. Jon Bishop is your guide.
Aynsley Lister is one of the UK’s most highly regarded blues-rock guitarists. Aynsley lends an insight into his soloing thought processes.
This second track from blues ace Aynsley Lister is again centred on the guitarfriendly key of A. This time however we are moving to the Minor tonality, and instead of the classic 12-bar we are using a 32-bar form with an interesting turnaround (Am-C7-B7-Bb7),
which is most effective. We have written out the chord chart for your reference. It’s fairly straightforward to solo over and basically stays on Am most of the time. As Aynsley explains in the video, it works well to stick to your guns and solo
Bb7 straight through the C7, B7, chord section with the same A Minor Blues scale vocabulary.
Check out the three-octave Blues scalefingering pattern that we have notated. This fingering is similar to the one we used last time so this will act as a bit of revision and also (b5). highlight the positions of the ‘blue’ notes This fingering is very effective and was used extensively by players like Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. Aynsley uses it for most of his solo, so this roadmap will be a good starting point when setting sail on your own freeform adventure. The tempo is reasonably fast here at 145 bpm, which means (counter-intuitively, perhaps) you can actually afford to play less and ‘use the space’.
In the lesson section Aynsley shares some valid tips on adding vibrato to both normally fretted and bent notes. He also makes the point that not all the notes need vibrato. In fact, a string bend with no vibrato can add a cool tension to the sound. As ever the notation contains all of the fingerings, articulations and phrasing from the video performance. It’d be well worth taking a close look at the way Aynsley fingers and picks the phrases. The ideas here are all relatively easy to play, especially at a slower tempo, and taking this slowly at first is definitely the way forward.
Hopefully, there will be a new technique, lick or phrase in here for you to perfect. If you find one you like then memorise it and use it in future solos - a prime point to note is how Aynsley ‘shapes’ his guitar solo from start to finish, rather than simply spitting out a slew of licks. Once you have mastered some of these concepts try creating a solo of your own over the same backing track.
note how aynsley shapes his guitar solo from start to finish, rather than spitting out a slew of licks