Chops: Advanced Beginner
Theory: Beginner
Lesson Overview:
• Understand the basics of Freddie King’s rhythm and lead style.
• Use hybrid picking to play an open-string boogie pattern.
• Target notes of the minor pentatonic scale when soloing over one chord.
Click here to download the sound clips and notation from this lesson.
This month we’re going to take a look at some techniques that are characteristic of the Texas Cannonball, Freddie King. Freddie is one of my all-time favorite guitarists. He was an essential part of my musical development, and I feel you need to spend some time emulating Freddie King if you really want to be an electric blues player. Freddie was the youngest of the three Kings, and he was strongly influenced by both Albert and B.B. However, there was a sense of youthfulness about him. Freddie, like both Albert and B.B., had a way of really getting his money’s worth out of the minor pentatonic scale, but I feel Freddie was a bit more vocal and melodic. In the spirit of Freddie, let’s do some playing.
Fig. 1 is a cool boogie-style rhythm part that is right from Freddie’s bag. He commonly used a thumbpick and a fingerpick on his index finger. Here, I’m using just a regular pick with alternate (down, up, down, up) picking. This is in the style of a song called “Boogie Funk” or “Boogie Man”—the song is essentially the same, but I’ve found it under these two different titles. When you listen closely, you’ll hear that Freddie is also palm muting, and I think that helps with the articulation of this figure.
Fig. 2 is a slight variation on the previous pattern. This has a double-stop that’s just on beat 1. I’m taking the 5 (B) and the b7 (D) and sliding in from a half-step below, and then back to the alternating E octaves.
As shown in Fig. 3, Freddie can get funky when the tune calls for it. He didn’t play a lot of rhythm guitar, but rather these little chord stabs. Another thing I’ve noticed is because he lays out when he sings, he almost never plays the V chord or the IV chord in the fifth measure. He let’s the band take care of it. In measure 6, he hits this cool IV chord lick that’s just the top three notes of the F9 chord. You can also think of it as a Cm triad in second inversion (Eb–G–C). The phrase is repeated in the 10th measure.
We really focus on phrasing in Fig. 4. I played this idea over a D9 chord by using a D minor pentatonic scale (D–F–G–A–C) and targeted only three notes, D, F, and G. We combine those notes with some bends and vibrato to create a phrase very much like how Freddie would start out almost all his solos. I recommend to all my students to take an idea or phrase like this and play it over a 12-bar blues several times for several choruses. This is what will teach good phrasing. I would also recommend singing along with the phrasing to help develop new ideas that will have similarities to our original phrase. This is what builds great blues solos.
I hope you enjoy these Freddie King licks. I hope you find ways to add these new techniques to your playing. Most of all, I hope you take time to listen to some Freddie King and that it inspires you like it always inspires me.
Dennis McCumber has been a guitar instructor and performer
for more than 20 years. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in music
education from The College of Saint Rose.
Dennis performs
regularly in the New York City area with various rock, blues, and funk bands, and occasionally as a classical soloist.
In addition to performing, Dennis has been a middle school
music teacher in the Bronx for the past 12 years. While
teaching in the Bronx, he was given a guitar lab by VH1
Save the Music and a keyboard lab from the radio station
Hot97 Hip Hop Symphony. Dennis has been an instructor at
the National Guitar Workshop since 1996, where he teaches
Blues, Funk, and Rock. Find out more at dennismccumber.com.
This month’s mod Dan’s uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel.
Don’t let the name fool you, this is a purely passive device—nothing is going to be boosted. In general, you can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there. Period. But you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent (so … “boost” in guitar marketing language). Removing highs makes lows more apparent, and vice versa. In addition, the use of inductors (which create the magnetic field in a guitar circuit) and capacitors will create resonant peaks and valleys (bandpasses and notches), further coloring the overall tone. This type of bandpass filter only allows certain frequencies to pass through, while others are blocked, and it all works at unity gain.
“You can’t increase anything with passive electronics that isn’t already there … but you can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies and making others more prominent.”
All the systems I mentioned above are doing more or less the same thing, using different approaches and slightly different component values. They are all meant to be updated tone controls. Our common tone circuit is usually a variable low-pass filter (aka treble-cut filter), which only allows the low frequencies to pass through, while the high frequencies get sent to ground via the tone cap. Most of these systems are LCR networks, which means that there is not only a capacitor (C), like on our standard tone controls, but also an inductor (L) and a resistor (R).
In general, all these systems are meant to control the midrange in order to scoop the mids, creating a mid-cut. This can be a cool sounding option, e.g. on a Strat for that mid-scooped neck and middle tone.
Dan Torres offered his “midrange kit” via an internet shop that is no longer online, same with his business website. The Torres design is a typical LCR network and looks like the illustration at the top of this column.
Dan’s design uses a 500k linear pot, a 1.5H inductor (L) with a 0.039 µF (39nF) cap (C), and a 220k resistor (R) in parallel. Let’s break down the parts piece by piece:
Any 500k linear pot will do the trick, in one of the rare scenarios where a linear pot works better in a passive guitar system than an audio pot.
(C) 0.039µF cap: This is kind of an odd value. Keeping production tolerances of up to 20 percent in mind, any value that is close will do, so you can use any small cap you want for this. I would prefer a small metallized film cap, and any voltage rating will do. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original design, use any 0.039 µF low-tolerance film cap.
(L) 1.5H inductor: The original design uses a Xicon 42TL021 inductor, which is easy to find and fairly priced. This one is also used in the Bill Lawrence Q-Filter design, the Gibson standard Varitone, and many other systems like this. It’s very small, so it will fit in virtually every electronic compartment of a guitar. It has a frequency range of 300 Hz up to 3.4 kHz, with a primary impedance of 4k ohms (that’s the one we want to use) and a secondary impedance of 600 ohms. Snip off the three secondary leads and the center tap of the primary side and use the two remaining outer primary leads; the primary side is marked with a “P.” On the pic, you can see the two leads you need marked in red, all other leads can be snipped off. You can connect the two remaining leads to the pot either way; it doesn’t matter which of them is going to ground when using it this way.
Drawing courtesy of singlecoil.com
(R) 220k: use a small axial metal film resistor (0.25 W), which is easy to find and is the quasi-standard.
Other designs use slightly different part values—the Bill Lawrence Q-filter has a 1.8H L, 0.02 µF C and 8k R, while the old RA Gresco Tone Qube from the ’80s has a 1.5H L, 0.0033 µF C, and a 180k R, so this is a wide field for experimentation to tweak it for your personal tone.
This mid-cut system can be put into any electric guitar not only as a master tone, but also together with a regular tone control or something like the Fender Greasebucket, or it can be assigned only to a certain pickup. It can be a great way to enhance your sonic palette, so give it a try.
That’s it! Next month, we’ll take a deeper look into how to fight feedback on a Telecaster. It’s a common issue, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!