THE CROSSROADS Stevie Ray Vaughan
In this month’s Crossroads, John Wheatcroft shows how adding slurs can help you achieve the expressive articulation of players ranging from blues icon Stevie Ray Vaughan, to jazz genius George Benson.
John Wheatcroft shows how players like the late Stevie Ray Vaughan use jazz-style slurs to make their playing sound more sophisticated.
“If I wanted to learn somebody’s stuff, like with Clapton, I’d get it to where I could sing it and then do it on the guitar at the same time.” STEV IE RAY VAUGHAN
Stevie Ray Vaughan personified the energetic, raw and electrified modern Texas sound. He succeeded in conveying a modern blues message to the masses and almost single-handedly invigorated the entire blues genre in the process. Along with his rhythm section, Double Trouble, he went on to produce a string of successful albums, toured the world and back and picked up more awards than you could shake a stick at.
While Stevie’s authentic blues roots formed the central core of his playing style, there were frequent moments where he touched upon his jazzier influences. Brushed octaves like Wes, fluent and extended connected blues lines like Kenny Burrell, extended and altered chords that wouldn’t sound out of place coming from Joe Pass. It’s all in there. Stevie’s playing at times perfectly illustrates the design and intent of this series, to explore the points when blues and jazz collide at the Crossroads.
Every album had at least one track devoted to the more delicate side of Steve’s playing. Check out Lenny (Texas Flood), Stang’s Swang (Couldn’t Stand The Weather) or Riviera Paradise (In Step). Stevie’s playing was at all times expressive, articulate, dynamic, fluid and controlled. One technique that he clearly assimilated into his style was the balance between picked notes and slurs, mixing accented picked notes with smoother, often lightening fast hammer-ons and pull-offs.
To examine the integration of the two potentially conflicting technical approaches that we’re exploring here, we’ll start with a classic Stevie phrase and see how similar ideas can be found in the styles of several classic blues players, including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Gary Moore. We’ll then take a look at how a selection of notable jazz players incorporate slurs in their single-note improvisational vocabulary, including Grant Green, Jimmy Raney, Django Reinhardt and George Benson. We’ll round things off with a cohesive solo based around two choruses of an up-tempo swinging blues in C Minor, the first more Blues oriented, moving towards jazzier ideas in the second.
From a technical perspective, the two areas that you need to be mindful of when combining picked ideas with hammer-ons and pull-offs, are; evenness in terms of volume and the avoidance of rushing. While one of the main objectives in mixing these technical approaches is to provide a variety of different tones, we don’t necessarily want the picked notes to be louder and excessively pronounced in relation to those that are not picked. Make sure that the hammering and pulling motion is rapid and bold, but not so heavy-handed that you cause the strings to bend sharp. Avoid that at all costs.
As slurs are often easier to execute at higher tempos, with more than one note for each picking motion, it’s easy to fall into the trap of speeding up slightly. It’s a great idea to get into the frequent habit of recording your playing, listening back critically, but kindly, and allowing what you hear to inform your next practice sessions. You could use these examples and the accompanying backing tracks to test your accuracy, paying close attention to your note accuracy, your timing and your use of dynamics and tone.
As always, enjoy.