
Johnson has several signature Stratocaster models including this Thinline, which Fender debuted in 2018.
The guitar virtuoso sifted through his vaults for the nuggets that began his two new albums, The Book of Making and Yesterday Meets Today, and then let inspiration take over.
Eric Johnson knows that excessive pride gets in the way of true progress, and that having extraordinary talent doesn’t beget personality or, simply put, make you better than anyone else. “I’ve spent so long being involved in [playing music] that, at one point, you take a break and go, ‘Yeah, but that’s not me—that’s just something I do. Who am I?’” he shares. “Regardless of how well you do it and how appreciated you are, it’s not like a carte blanche calling card that gives you any kind of real entitlement in life. If you think it does, then you don’t know who you are.”
That philosophy, along with his passion for the instrument, has, over time, superseded any ego-inflating diversions that can come from fame. And rather than resting on his legacy, the guitarist is building on it with the release of two albums: The Book of Making and Yesterday Meets Today. The records came together in a process of creative reconnaissance, where Johnson dove into his vault of recordings to find forgotten song ideas that could be polished, fleshed out, and rejuvenated for release.
Eric Johnson - Soundtrack Life (Official Visualizer)
The 18 tracks that collectively make up both albums include those that fit into a classic Johnson style, such as the brightly textured lead single from The Book of Making, “Soundtrack Life,” along with ones that explore other territories, like that album’s gentle, piano-guided “To Be Alive,” co-written with singer/guitarist Arielle, and a cover of the blues classic “Sittin’ on Top of the World” by the Mississippi Sheiks (famously covered by Howlin’ Wolf). These new compositions range from panoramic instrumentals to lilting ballads, embroidered by the guitarist’s fluid, crystalline tone and uplifting vocals. And together, they offer a new look into Johnson’s characteristic finesse.
When the last few weeks of his tour got cancelled in March 2020, Johnson, amidst the societal standstill and isolated from his bandmates, decided that the best use of his time would be to revisit his old demos and musical sketches. As he navigated through the tiny snippets, little chord changes, and other bits and pieces, he discovered that he had far more material available than expected and set to arranging and recording.
“When I take the vantage point of a listener, it’s easier to tell if stuff really has merit.”
I felt, well, if I’m going to be isolated, let me go try to find something to work on,” he says. “There’s a handful of songs that were written from scratch, and towards the end of the period I brought musicians in and we recorded new stuff. Then there’s a couple of tracks that I didn’t do anything to. They were just left over from outtakes from other records. But predominantly it was just stuff that was barely started, and I did a whole lot of work on my own.”
The songs done from scratch include “Floating Through This World” and “To Be Alive” from The Book of Making and “Hold on to Love” and “JVZ” (dedicated to Johnson’s late tour manager and guitar tech, Jeff Van Zandt) from Yesterday Meets Today. The original idea for the former album’s “My Faith in You” dates back 20 years, although its oldest song is “Love Will Never Say Goodbye,” which was built from a rough mix on a 25-year-old cassette. “That’s all I had,” Johnson says. “I couldn’t find the master take. It had synthesizer, bass, drums, and a vocal that was a little too low in level, but I just went with it. Then I added several guitars to it, and background vocals and percussion.”
Johnson’s distinctive hybrid picking technique is partly derived from steel guitar players, leading him to pluck all the strings in a chord at once. He also favors picking near the end of the pickguard, to get a warm, round tone from single notes.
Photo by Ken Settle
Twenty-five years ago, Johnson was having an especially fertile creative period, despite his reputation as a painstaking studio craftsman. His albums Venus Isle and Seven Worlds sprang from that era, and his tenure on tour with fellow maestros Joe Satriani and Steve Vai was preserved on G3: Live in Concert. And while he’s more relaxed about record-making these days, he’s no less creative or prolific. The popular virtuoso says that every time he sets out to make an album, he usually ends up making two—and stashes the excess recordings in his vault. In this case, his efforts at rekindling his past inspirations resulted in 28 tracks that were pared down to the final 18, although he intends to eventually release five or six more of the original set on an upcoming EP.
Producer Kelly Donnelly, who has worked with Johnson on eight previous albums plus his 2014 collaboration with Mike Stern, Eclectic, helped with some of the engineering, but Johnson did most of it himself. In the process, he learned something interesting about the usefulness of low-fidelity recordings: If you pair them with recordings of a higher quality, the combination can create a compelling depth of field. This meant that he was able to salvage and build upon some of his more compromised cassette recordings. “I found that to be fascinating—it was like, ‘Wow, that kind of works.’ I didn’t know that was going to happen.”
“There has to be an element of the music that has enough power and velocity to reach out to the listener, rather than just be sonically nice to listen to.”
In 2020, Johnson worked with Fender to create a replica of his 1954 “Virginia” Stratocaster, which he played on many of the tracks from The Book of Making and Yesterday Meets Today. The guitar’s body is made with the less commonly seen sassafras wood and set up with a DiMarzio bridge pickup and ’57/’62 single-coil Strat middle and neck pickups. On the albums, he played a handful of other models, including a 1957 Strat with a maple neck, a 1965 Gibson ES-345 semi-hollowbody, and a late-’50s Les Paul. He also plays a National lap steel and Danelectro Vincent Bell Coral sitar on some tracks.
When it comes to songwriting, Johnson comments that his self-proclaimed perfectionist tendency to overthink things can work against him. “The songs where you’re really pushing and striving and stressing end up sounding like that,” he says, while the ones that just flow are the ones that are, for him, most worth working on. His creative process usually begins with making recordings of musical snapshots on his iPhone. He’ll capture a phrase on guitar or piano, or sometimes record himself singing a vocal or instrumental melody to later revisit. “They’re pretty embarrassing, if anybody ever found ’em,” he laughs, referring to the latter.
Eric Johnson’s Gear
Although Johnson records with a variety of guitars, his weapon of choice—even before he immortalized his own version of the model’s sound via 1986’s Tones and 1990’s Ah Via Musicom—has long been the Fender Stratocaster.
Photo by Jim Summaria
Guitars
- Eric Johnson Virginia Fender Stratocaster
- 1957 Fender Stratocaster
- 1965 Gibson ES-345
- 1950s Gibson Les Paul
- National lap steel
- Danelectro Vincent Bell Coral Sitar
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario EPN110 Pure Nickel sets
- Dunlop Jazz IIIs
Effects
- TC Electronic Stereo Chorus
- Electro-Harmonix Memory Man
- Vintage Echoplex (modded for use as preamp)
- ’60s Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face
- Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer
- BK Butler Tube Driver
Amps
- Marshall plexi 50
- Two-Rock Classic Reverb
- Marshall 4x12
- Fender Bandmaster Reverb
- Electro-Voice speakers
Deciding which compositions to keep or toss can be a curious process. To better judge his own writing, Johnson says it’s important for him to detach and act like an audience member or listener—so not to give himself any favoritism. “You have to dispel all that,” he says. “When I take the vantage point of a listener, it’s easier to tell if stuff really has merit.” While that can sound like a purely imaginative exercise, he has a rather practical way of getting to that perspective. Often, he’ll just crank up his studio monitors and walk into another room to listen.
“That helps you tell whether something’s really reaching you or not,” he elaborates, “because you’re not sitting there enveloping yourself and hyping yourself on something. There has to be an element of the music that has enough power and velocity to reach out to the listener, rather than just be sonically nice to listen to.”
“There’s nobody who’s going to be able to do what you do the way you do it.”
Johnson calls the evolution of his sound a “crazy process” that he says could go on forever, but he tries to let the music speak and will work to rise to the occasion to come up with a part that fits. “Sometimes that means I have to study a part that I can’t normally play.” Which means his self-labeled “perennial student” mentality has its benefits.
When asked if he experiences self-doubt, Johnson shares that he believes the habit of comparing yourself to others can be demoralizing, but he looks to practicing gratitude as a solution. “It’s just trying to be thankful for what you have and not compare yourself to other people. The more you’re in yourself and do your best.… There’s nobody who’s going to be able to do what you do the way you do it.”
Some of the 18 songs spread over Johnson’s two new albums trace back 25 years, to the era of his first G3 Tour and his records Venus Isle and Seven Worlds.
Johnson was born into a musical family, with a father who was an enthusiastic music appreciator and three sisters who studied piano. His parents have said that he loved records when he was 3 years old. They listened to a lot of swing and showtunes, he says, which he developed a taste for as a child. He got his own record player when he was 5.
The guitarist walks through the lightshow clouds on the Experience Hendrix tour in 2014, searching for butterflies, moonbeams, and fairy tales within his alluring sound.
Photo by Frank White
When Johnson got into playing music, he began to study piano at age 11, then took some lessons on guitar—though on guitar, he was mainly transposing what he learned on piano. His passion for wood and strings, however, quickly took over. “I loved it so much that I incessantly worked at it to get better, and it’s all I wanted to do,” he says.
“When I was a kid and saw all the cats playin’ guitar—Cream and the Yardbirds and all those people—I was like, ‘This is awesome,’” he shares. “Plus, it was kind of the first generation of overdriven guitar with fuzz tones. It was a sound that you’d just never heard before. That was really exciting.” He played in bands as a teenager, and tried going to college at the University of Texas at Austin but only earned three credits from taking an astronomy course, thinking it might be something he would want to pursue. But becoming a professional musician ended up being his clear choice.
Rig Rundown - Eric Johnson [2018]
Despite his high profile and staggering proficiency, plus eight Grammy nominations and a win for his 1991 tune “Cliffs of Dover,” Johnson says he’s remained conscious of not letting things go to his head, saying, “It’s better to just let it flow, like when you were a kid just loving to play,” he says. “It’s best to let that happen naturally. Once you start becoming too aware of yourself and assimilating your legacy or living in your stature or fame or notoriety, you create a feedback loop where you’ll trip over yourself eventually.”
YouTube It
Take a good look at the fretboard on Eric Johnson’s signature Virginia Stratocaster while he performs “Gem,” from his 2010 album, Up Close, showcasing a brilliantly articulate clean tone and impeccable finger work.
Well-designed pickups. Extremely comfortable contours. Smooth, playable neck.
Middle position could use a bit more mids. Price could scare off some.
$2,999
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II
A surprise 6-string collaboration with Cory Wong moves effortlessly between ’70s George Benson and Blink-182 tones.
Announced at the 2025 NAMM show, Cory Wong’s new collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man scratched an itch—namely, the itch for a humbucker-loaded guitar that could appease Wong’s rock-and-R&B alter ego and serve as complement to his signature Fender Strat. Inspiration came from no further than a bandmate’s namesake instrument. Vulfpeck bassist Joe Dart has a line of signature model EBMM basses, one of which uses the classic StingRay bass body profile. So, when Wong went looking for something distinctive, he wondered if EBMM could create a 6-string guitar using the classic StingRay bass body and headstock profile.
Double the Fun
Wong is, by his own admission, a single-coil devotee. That’s where the core of his sound lives and it feels like home to him. However, Wong is as inspired by classic Earth, Wind & Fire tones and the pop-punk of the early ’90s as he is by Prince and the Minneapolis funk that he grew up with. The StingRay II is a guitar that can cover all those bases.
Ernie Ball has a history of designing fast-feeling, comfortable necks. And I can’t remember ever struggling to move around an EBMM fretboard. The roasted maple C-shaped neck here is slightly thicker in profile than I expected, but still very comfortable. (I must also mention that the back of the neck has a dazzling, almost holographic look to the grain that morphs in the light). By any measure, the StingRay II’s curves seemed designed for comfort and speed. Now, let’s talk about those pickups.Hot or Not?
A few years ago EBMM introduced a line of HT (heat-treated) pickups. The pickups are built with technology the company used to develop their Cobalt and M-Series strings. A fair amount of the process is shrouded in secrecy and must be taken on faith, but EBMM says treating elements of the pickup with heat increases clarity and dynamic response.
To find out for myself, I plugged the StingRay II into a Fender Vibroverb, Mesa/Boogie Mark VII, and a Neural DSP Quad Cortex (Wong’s preferred live rig). Right away, it was easy to hear the tight low end and warm highs. Often, I feel like the low end from neck humbuckers can feel too loose or lack definition. Neither was the case here. The HT pickup is beautifully balanced with a bounce that’s rich with ES-335 vibes. Clean tones are punchy and bright—especially with the Vibroverb—and dirty tones have more room for air. Individual notes were clear and articulate, too.
Any guitar associated with Wong needs a strong middle-position or combined pickup tone, and the StingRay II delivers. I never felt any significant signal loss in the blended signal from the two humbuckers, even if I could use a bit more midrange presence in the voicing. The midrange gap is nothing an EQ or Tube Screamer couldn’t fix, though. And not surprisingly, very Strat-like sounds were easy to achieve for having less midrange bump.
Knowing Wong’s love for ’90s alt-rock, I expected the bridge pickup to have real bite, and it does, demonstrating exceptional dynamic range and exceptional high-end response that never approached shrill. Nearly every type of distortion and overdrive I threw at it sounded great, but especially anything with a scooped-mid flavor and plenty of low end.
The Verdict
By any measure, the StingRay II is a top-notch, professional instrument. The fit and finish are immaculate and the feel of the neck makes me wonder if EBMM stashes some kind of secret sandpaper, because I don’t think I’ve ever felt a smoother, more playable neck. Kudos are also due to EBMM and Wong for finding an instrument that can move between ’70s George Benson tones and the hammering power chords of ’90s Blink-182. Admittedly, the nearly $3K price could give some players pause, but considering the overall quality of the instrument, it’s not out of line. Wong’s involvement and search for distinct sounds makes the StingRay II more than a tired redux of a classic model—an admirable accomplishment considering EBMM’s long and storied history.
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II Cory Wong Signature Electric Guitar - Charcoal Blue with Rosewood Fingerboard
StingRay II Cory Wong - Charcoal BlueThe Melvins' Buzz Osborne joins the party to talk about how he helped Kurt Cobain find the right sounds.
Growing up in the small town of Montesano, Washington, Kurt Cobain turned to his older pal Buzz Osborne for musical direction. So on this episode, we’re talking with the Melvins leader about their friendship, from taking Cobain to see Black Flag in ’84 to their shared guitar journey and how they both thought about gear. And in case you’ve heard otherwise, Kurt was never a Melvins roadie!
Osborne’s latest project is Thunderball from Melvins 1983, something of a side trajectory for the band, which harkens back to this time in Osborne’s life. We dig into that and how it all relates and much more.
In challenging times, sometimes elemental music, like the late Jessie Mae Hemphill’s raucous Mississippi hill country blues, is the best salve. It reminds us of what’s truly essential––musically, culturally, and emotionally. And provides a restorative and safe place, where we can open up, listen, and experience without judgement. And smile.
I’ve been prowling the backroads, juke joints, urban canyons, and VFW halls for more than 40 years, in search of the rawest, most powerful and authentic American music. And among the many things I’ve learned is that what’s more interesting than the music itself is the people who make it.
One of the most interesting people I’ve met is the late Jessie Mae Hemphill. By the time my wife, Laurie Hoffma, and I met Jessie Mae, on a visit to her trailer in Senatobia, Mississippi, she’d had a stroke and retired from performing, but we’d been fortunate to see her years before at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival, where she brought a blues style that was like quiet thunder, rumbling with portent and joy and ache, and all the other stuff that makes us human, sung to her own droning, rocking accompaniment on an old Gibson ES-120T.
To say she was from a musical family is an understatement. Her grandfather, Sid, was twice recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. While Sid played fiddle, banjo, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and more, he was best known as the leader of a fife-and-drum band that made music that spilled directly from Africa’s main artery. Sid was Jessie Mae’s teacher, and she learned well. In fact, you can see her leading her own fife-and-drum group in Robert Mugge’s wonderful documentary Deep Blues(with the late musician and journalist Robert Palmer as on-screen narrator), where she also performs a mournful-but-hypnotic song about betrayal—solo, on guitar—in Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint.
That movie, a 1982 episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (on YouTube) where she appears as part of Othar Turner’s Gravel Springs fife-and-drum band, and worldwide festival appearances are as close as Jessie Mae ever got to fame, although that was enough to make her important and influential to Bonnie Raitt, Cat Power, and others. And she made two exceptional albums during her lifetime: 1981’s She-Wolf and 1990’s Feelin’ Good. If you’re unfamiliar with North Mississippi blues, their sound will be a revelation. The style, as Jessie Mae essayed it, is a droning, hypnotic joy that bumps along like a freight train full of happily rattling box cars populated by carefree hobos. Often the songs ride on one chord, but that chord is the only one that’s needed to put the music’s joy and conviction across. Feelin’ Good, in particular, is essential Jessie Mae. Even the songs about heartbreak, like “Go Back To Your Used To Be” and “Shame on You,” have a propulsion dappled with little bends and other 6-string inflections that wrap the listener in a hypnotic web. Listening to Feelin’ Good, it’s easy to disappear in the music and to have all your troubles vanish as well—for at least as long as its 14 songs last.“She made it clear that she had a gun—a .44 with a pearl handle that took up the entire length of her handbag.”
The challenge I’ve long issued to people unfamiliar with Jessie Mae’s music is: “Listen to Feelin’ Good and then tell me if you’re not feeling happier, more cheerful, and relaxed.” It truly does, as the old cliché would have it, make your backbone slip and your troubles along with it. Especially uptempo songs like the scrappy title track and the charging “Streamline Train.” There’s also an appealing live 1984 performance of the latter on YouTube, with Jessie Mae decked out in leopard-print pants and vest, playing a tambourine wedged onto her left high-heel shoe––one of her stylish signatures.
Jessie Mae was a complex person, caught between the old-school dilemma of playing “the Devil’s music” and yearning for a spiritual life, sweet as pecan pie with extra molasses but quick to turn mean at any perceived slight. She also spent much of her later years in poverty, in a small trailer with a hole in the floor where mice and other critters got in. And she was as mistrustful of strangers as she was warm once she accepted you into her heart. But watch your step before she did. On our first visit to her home, she made it clear that she had a gun—a .44 with a pearl handle that took up the entire length of her handbag and would make Dirty Harry envious.
Happily, she took us into her heart and we took her into ours, helping as much as we could and talking often. She was inspiring, and I wrote a song about her, and even got to perform it for her in her trailer, which was just a little terrifying, since I knew she would not hold back her criticism if she didn't like it. Instead, she giggled like a kid and blushed, and asked if I’d write one more verse about the artifacts she’d gathered while touring around the world.
Jessie Mae died in 2006, at age 82, and, as happens when every great folk artist dies, we lost many songs and stories, and the wisdom of her experience. But you can still get a whiff of all that––if you listen to Feelin’ Good.
Intermediate
Intermediate
How David Gilmour masterully employs target notes to make his solos sing.
When I was an undergraduate jazz performance major struggling to get a handle on bebop improvisation, I remember my professor Dave LaLama admonishing me, “If you think playing over the fast tunes is hard, wait until you try playing over the ballads. What Dr. Lalama was trying to impart was that playing fast scales over fast changes could get you by, but playing melodically over slow tempos, when your note choices are much more exposed, would really test how well you could create meaningful phrases.
Although getting past the “this scale works over these chords” approach to improvisation generally requires hours of shedding, aiming for particular target notes (specific notes over specific chords) is an optimum strategy to maximize your practice time. In the realm of rock guitar, I can think of no greater master of the melodic target note technique while playing ballads than David Gilmour.
For the unfamiliar few, Gilmour was first enlisted by fledgling psychedelic rockers Pink Floyd in 1967, when original guitarist/vocalist Syd Barrett began having drug-induced struggles with mental health. The band experimented with various artistic approaches for several years before refining them into a cohesive “art rock” sound by the early ’70s. The result was an unbroken streak of classic, genre-defining conceptual albums that included Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. Although bassist/vocalist Roger Waters assumed the role of de facto bandleader and primary songwriter, Gilmour was a significant contributor who was praised for his soulful singing and expertly phrased lead playing that seemed to magically rework pedestrian blues phrases into sublimely evocative melodies. His focus on musicality over excessive displays of technique made him a musician’s musician of sorts and earned him a stellar reputation in guitar circles. When Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in the mid ’80s, Gilmour surprised many by calmly assuming the leadership mantle, leading the band through another decade of chart-topping albums and stadium tours. Although Pink Floyd are not officially broken up (keyboardist and founding member Richard Wright died in 2008 while Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason joined forces with Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk on the one-off single “Hey Hey Rise Up” in 2022), Gilmour has mostly spent the last few decades concentrating on his solo career. His latest release, Luck and Strange, features his wife, novelist Polly Sampson, as primary lyricist and daughter Romany Gilmour as vocalist on several tracks. His recent tour filled arenas around the world.
Let’s take a page from Gilmour’s hallowed playbook and see how incorporating a few well-chosen target notes can give our playing more melody and structure.
For the sake of simplicity, all the examples use the Gm/Bb major pentatonic scale forms. In my experience as a teacher, I find that most students can get a pretty solid handle on the root-position, Form-I minor pentatonic scale but struggle to incorporate the other four shapes while playing lead. One suggestion I give them is to work on playing the scales from the top notes down and focus on the four highest strings only. I believe this is a more logical and useful approach to incorporating these forms into your vocabulary. Try playing through Ex. 1, Ex. 2, Ex. 3, and Ex. 4, which are based on the top-down approach of the Form I, Form II, Form IV, and Form I (up an octave) shapes respectively.
Ex. 1
Ex. 2
Ex. 3
Ex. 4
Once you’ve gotten a handle on the scales, try playing Ex. 5, which is loosely based on the extended introduction to Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” We begin by soloing over a static Gm chord for four measures. As target notes, I’ve chosen the root and 5th of the G minor chord ( the notes G and D, respectively). In the first measure, we’re starting in a minor pentatonic Form I with a bend up to the root of the Gm chord. A flurry of notes on beat 4 sets us up for the bend to the D in the second measure. The D note is again targeted in measure three—this time up an octave via a shift into the minor pentatonic Form II shape. Measure four aims for the G tonic up an octave, but ends with a bend that targets a C—the root of the IVm (Cm) chord in the final measure. By focusing on target notes and connecting them with embellishing licks, your lead lines will have a much better sense of direction and melodic narrative. Also, by only targeting the root and 5th of the chord, the target note approach will be easily transferrable to songs in a G blues context (G pentatonic minor over a G major or G dominant tonality).
Ex. 5
A further exploration of this approach, Ex. 6 begins with a two-beat pickup that resolves to the scale tonic G. This time however, the G isn’t serving as the root of the Im chord. Instead, it’s the 5th of Cm—the IVm chord. Employing the root of the pentatonic scale as the fifth of the IVm chord is a textbook Gilmour-ism and you can hear him use it to good effect on the extended intro to “Echoes” from Live in Gdansk. When approaching the C on beat 2 of the second full measure, bend up from the Bb on the 6th fret of the 1st string then slide up to the C on the 8th fret without releasing the bend or picking again. In the final measure, I’ve introduced two Db notes, which serve as the b5 “blue note” of the scale and provide melodically compelling passing tones on the way to the G target note on beat 4.
Ex. 6
Exclusively positioned in the Form-IV G minor pentatonic shape, Ex. 7 is based on a bluesy lick over the I chord in the first and third measures that alternately targets a resolution to the root of the IV chord (C ) and the root of the V chord (D7#9) in the second and fourth measures. Being able to resolve your lead phrases to the roots of the I, IV, and V chords on the fly is an essential skill ace improvisers like Gilmour have mastered.
Ex. 7
Now let’s turn our attention to the Bb major pentatonic scale, which is the relative major of G minor. Play through the Form I and Form II shapes detailed in Ex. 8 and Ex. 9 below. You’ll see I’ve added an Eb to the scale (technically making them hexatonic scales). This allows us a bit more melodic freedom and—most importantly—gives us the root note of the IV chord.
Ex. 8
Ex. 9
Channeling the melodic mojo of Gilmour’s lead jaunts on Pink Floyd’s “Mother” and “Comfortably Numb,” Ex. 10 targets chord tones from the I, IV, and V (Bb, Eb, and F) chords.
The muted-string rake in first measure helps “sting” the F note, which is the 5th of the Bb. Measure two targets a G note which is the 3rd of the Eb. This same chord/target note pairing is repeated in the third and fourth measures, although the G is now down an octave. For the F and Eb chords of measures five and six, I’ve mirrored a favorite Gilmour go-to: bending up to the 3rd of a chord then releasing and resolving to the root (an A resolving to an F for the F chord and a G resolving to an Eb for the Eb chord.) The final measure follows a melodic run down the Bb scale that ultimately resolves on the tonic. Be sure to pay attention to the intonation of all your bends, especially the half-step bend on the first beat of measure seven.
As a takeaway from this lesson, let’s strive to “Be Like Dave” and pay closer attention to target notes when soloing. Identify the roots of all the chords you’re playing over in your scales and aim for them as the beginning and/or ending notes of your phrases. Think of these target notes as support beams that will provide structure to your lead lines and ultimately make them more melodically compelling.