Jeff'sGuitar Tools

Style deep dive 1

Learn Hendrix style: the hands, the shapes, and every side of him

What Jimi Hendrix actually does on the guitar, taken apart the way a course would take it apart — the thumb over the neck and the chord it opens up, the pentatonic box under that chord and the box above it, the Hendrix chord, the minor pentatonic against a major chord, the wah rocking with the pick, the bends that arrive before the vibrato — and put back together as fifteen feels with rhythm, lead and mixed parts in each: the soul ballad and the major one, the fuzz riff and the riff rock at speed, the slow blues and the fast one, the country blues and the one-chord blues, the funk and the one-chord vamp, the cycle, the R&B, the waltz, the minor rock strum and the jazz shuffle with the wah. Every card is playable here and a link away from the Jam and Drills tabs; every scale is followed by a riff made from it; every card carries its fingering and its troubleshooting. The songs are analyzed as reference points and the records are cataloged album by album, with the way of playing each one asks for; the lines are written from the idiom, not copied. Every claim is cited at the foot of the page.

He tuned a half-step down (E♭ standard) on most of the records, so what is fingered as E sounds as E♭; "Voodoo Chile" is a whole tone down, the acoustic "Hear My Train A Comin'" two.[6] [38] [46] [41] Everything on this page is written in the fingered key, which is how players talk about it. The research behind the page is written down in docs/HENDRIX-RESEARCH.md; the method in docs/COURSES.md.

Start here

The thirty lessons are in eight units, in order. Each lesson is a few pieces of this page — a grip, a figure, a scale and the riff made from it, an exercise to take up in tempo, a part to play along with — and ends with something of your own to play.

    1. Where it comes from

    Hendrix learned by ear, from records. He played Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Albert King and Freddie King lines off 45s with friends in Seattle.[25] Then he spent four years as a sideman on the chitlin' circuit: the Isley Brothers (he is the guitar on their 1964 "Testify"), Little Richard, sessions with Don Covay and King Curtis, and dates behind Curtis Mayfield with Billy Cox.[19] [21]

    That apprenticeship is the rhythm style. Mitch Mitchell said Jimi could play all of Curtis Mayfield's rhythm parts off the top of his head, and Cox names "Little Wing", "Castles Made of Sand" and "Drifting" as the Mayfield in him.[21] [7] Satriani names Mayfield, Ike Turner and Steve Cropper as the R&B mentors, the players who filled out arrangements with small chord voicings and voice leading.[36] From Cropper he took 6ths slid on the G and B strings, muted chords on the backbeat, and one-note fills.[29] From the blues players he took the bends and the vibrato: Albert King ("Red House" grew out of King's "Travelin' to California"), B.B. King's wrist vibrato, and Buddy Guy.[6] [10]

    Two academic readings frame the rest. Milton Mermikides (Gresham College, 2025) treats the guitar as a neck with many places for one note, and Hendrix as a player who chose the place for its color. He points to the two- and three-note elaborations that extend and connect chords, the sixteenth-note swing of "Little Wing" that moves between even and heavily swung from phrase to phrase, and the E7♯9 as a tonic that keeps its dissonance instead of resolving it.[1] John Hanford's University of Washington dissertation on Band of Gypsys reads the late music as traditional and progressive at once, with blues, R&B and jazz in the licks, the chords and the pitch organization.[2]

    The blues, the jazz, and Dylan. The blues in him is wider than the slow twelve:

    • "Voodoo Chile" grew out of "Catfish Blues", his Muddy Waters homage. Charles Shaar Murray calls it a guided tour of blues styles from the Delta through Muddy to B.B. King and Coltrane.[46] [46b]
    • He opened Monterey with Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" — Hubert Sumlin's riff played faster, with a different rhythm guitar and bass line — and with B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby", sped up and rearranged.[39] [51]
    • Alone with a twelve-string in London in 1967, he played "Hear My Train A Comin'" as country blues, with Lead Belly's tuning and Robert Johnson and Skip James in it.[41] [41b]

    The jazz is there too. "Third Stone from the Sun" opens with a Wes Montgomery-style octave line in E Mixolydian; "Up from the Skies" is a jazz stroll with Mitchell on brushes and a light wah; Miles Davis heard Coltrane's sheets of sound in the way he played.[49] [45] [48] And Dylan: "All Along the Watchtower" was cut with Dave Mason on twelve-string and Hendrix shouting the changes at him. In Albin Zak's reading, Hendrix intensified the gestures, let dissonance in, and built one long melodic line across the whole take.[47]

    Roger Mayer, who built his pedals, gives the setup: mid-sixties Stratocasters flipped and barely modified, stock pickups, strings from .010 to .038 with a .015 G so the guitar is not G-heavy, tuned down a little, and the Octavia on the "Purple Haze" solo.[38]

    Influences

    The table says who taught him what, in the sources' words: the blues players he learned from records, the rhythm and blues players of the circuit, the band, and the readers this page leans on.

    2. The hands: the thumb, the shape, the split chord

    Almost everything in the rhythm style follows from one grip. Instead of a barre, the thumb comes over the top of the neck and frets the root on the low E string, so every other finger is free.[12] [6b] [34]

    With the bass under the thumb, the hand strikes the D, G and B strings alone. That is the major triad inside the E shape, the "split chord", and the spare fingers hammer onto it:[8] [9] [35]

    • The 4th hammers onto the 3rd on the G string, which makes a sus4.
    • The 6th hammers onto the 5th on the B string.
    • The 9th hammers onto the octave on the high E string.

    These three colors add color without a leading-tone pull, so the chord stays where it was. On a minor chord the equivalents are the 7th, 9th and 11th.[1]

    Guitar Player's five rules of the rhythm style are the map of this page: funk figures with the pinky barred; open-string drones with double stops and trills over them; the thumb voicings; pentatonic double stops with the top note ringing and a hammer-on below it; and fills that run along the neck rather than across it.[34]

    The same hand converts every barre shape: the E-shape major and minor, the A- and C-shape majors with the 3rd often in the bass, the minor-7 shapes with the root on the A string, and the add9.[7b] The Pickup Music course pairs each CAGED shape with a record: the E shape and the thumb with "Little Wing" and "Bold as Love", the A shape and its connecting slides with "Wait Until Tomorrow" and "Castles Made of Sand", the G shape's double stops with "The Wind Cries Mary", and the C shape's major-7 colors with "Castles" and "Angel".[11] Satriani puts a major-pentatonic toolbox under each chord — the 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th as two-note harmonies — played with a barred index and a hammer-on above it.[36]

    The grips

    Most of these grips are one hand. The thumb-over E shape is the core. The split chord, the hammered 4th, the 6th and the 9th are that hand with one finger moved, so they sit under it as variations, and the 9th sits under the 7♯9 the same way. The seven feels added in the rebuild brought their own hands: the thumb-over 7th for the shuffle, the maj7 inside the barre for the major ballad, the open E7 that the country blues and the Catfish riff sit on, the E-shape m7 with the pinky free, the 9ths a fret apart and the 13th for the jazz shuffle, and the thumb barre at the 10th fret for the riff rock. T in a diagram is the thumb over the top of the neck.

    The changes, with the grips

    The common changes his songs run on, with the chords alone — no fills or runs — so the hand learns the changes before the lines between them.

    The Hendrix chord. E7♯9 is E, G♯, D and G: a dominant 7th with the ♭3 on top as a ♯9. It has both 3rds at once, a tritone between the 3rd and the 7th, and a semitone clash between G and G♯. The chord was jazz and R&B vocabulary long before 1967 — the Beatles had it on "Taxman", and Hendrix first recorded it on the Isleys' "Testify" — but "Purple Haze" is where it became a rock tonic.[5] [20] On "Foxy Lady" he plays it without the major 3rd, and "Crosstown Traffic" has it too.[16] [10b]

    3. The scales: where the notes live, box by box, each with its riff

    The box under the chord. The E-shape barre and the E-shape pentatonic box share their root on the low E string. So with the thumb chord under the hand, the box is under the hand too, and the fills between chords are the pentatonic of the chord you are holding, played off the top three strings of the same position.[9] [8] The Blackstar lesson maps each chord of A–F♯m–D–E to its own major-pentatonic box and connects them by descending lines. Guitar World organizes the neck as five positions of E minor pentatonic with the 2nd, the 6th and the ♭5 added.[37]

    The minor pentatonic over a major chord. The solos on "Purple Haze", "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" and "Hey Joe" use E minor pentatonic — E G A B D — over chords that are major or dominant. That is where the tension comes from.[17b] [17] [15] Adding the ♭5 (B♭ in E) makes it the blues scale, and the major 3rd is let in as a passing color.[15b] On the slow blues he mixes both pentatonics: "Red House" layers the B7 voicing, B minor pentatonic and B major pentatonic.[16b] A part marked blues below plays the minor pentatonic over the major chord.

    The box at the 12th and the box above it. "Hey Joe" is soloed from the E minor blues scale at the 12th fret. "The Wind Cries Mary" uses F major pentatonic at the 12th. "All Along the Watchtower" uses the C♯ minor blues scale at the 9th with Dorian notes.[15] [15c] [15d] Mermikides reads the "Purple Haze" solo as Dorian over E5, F♯5 and D5, and Hooktheory puts the "Crosstown Traffic" verse in C Dorian.[1] [33] The parts write the Dorian 6th and the 9th as free notes.

    Moving between shapes, and the bends. The lead lines connect the boxes rather than staying in one. They slide along a string, go up into the next box for a phrase and drop back, and move the same slur-and-slide shape along the neck.[10] The bends are these:[10] [37]

    • The unison bend: the B string bent a whole tone up to the note held on the high E. This is the sound of "All Along the Watchtower".
    • The catch bend: two strings pushed together and sounded on the way up and down.
    • The staccato bend of "Foxey Lady": muted at its peak, then given a fast B.B. King wrist vibrato.
    • The vibrato elsewhere is wide and slow, from the forearm.
    • The ♭7 bent two whole steps up to the 9th.

    In the parts, a note marked reach may sit up to five frets past the position, and the hand comes back.

    The shapes on the neck, and the drills

    Each figure is drawn in the fingered key of the records it belongs to. The ringed notes are the roots. A hollow note is a color let in beside the box, and a dimmed note is in the scale but not in the chord it is played over. Under each figure the box is played as a drill over its feel's band, then as a riff written from it note by note, so the scale is learned as music. Every note of the riff is the drill's or is marked as the one note outside it, and every riff ends on the root.

    The box at the 12th, and the box under the 7♯9 grip

    The same box at the nut, and the box above it

    The blue note, and minor over major

    The Dorian colors, and the sweet register

    The two pentatonics mixed, at the 7th

    G Mixolydian at the nut

    The box under the thumb-over A7

    The Angel box

    The country blues box

    The Fire box

    The Watchtower box

    The jazz shuffle's box

    The box at the 12th, slow, over one chord

    The hand moving

    4. Exercises

    Each exercise is fixed — the same tab every time — so it can be learned note for note. Clean at the starting tempo first, then turn it up.

    5. The feels: rhythm, lead, and both at once

    Each feel below is a way he played, and its cards sit beside it. The rhythm card is the part the engine plays over the feel's band. The lead card is a line written against the chord it sits on. The mixed card plays the figure in the figure bars and a lead line in about half the fill bars, the way a player who is the only guitarist does both. The blues parts play the minor pentatonic over the major chords; the chord-melody, the ballads and the R&B stay major.

    Soul ballad (the Little Wing way)

    The chord is the melody.[1] [8] [7] [34]

    • Rhythm: The thumb takes the root on the low E and the fingers strike the D–G–B triad on the "and". The hand keeps moving inside the shape: the 3rd hammers to the 4th on the G string, the 5th to the 6th on the B, the octave to the 9th on the top string. Between chords, 6ths and 4ths slide the way Mayfield and Cropper played them.
    • Lead: A double stop out of the pentatonic box answers the chord. The lead is the one the chord already had, through the Leslie.
    • Band: The band plays soft: a rim click on two and four, the bass on roots, the hat with a little bounce, and the sixteenths swing a shade.

    Fuzz riff (the Purple Haze way)

    The E7♯9 is home. It has the major 3rd and the ♯9 in one grip and a tritone inside it, so it never resolves, and tension is the state of the song.[1] [4b] [15b] [13b] [43]

    • Rhythm: The ♭III and the IV sit around the 7♯9. The riff is E minor pentatonic with the ♭5 let in, doubled with the bass and muted between the notes. The other fuzz rhythm is the power chord with the open strings ringing inside it, as on "Spanish Castle Magic" and "Stone Free".
    • Lead: The lead plays the box under the grip and the box above it, with the unison bend, the trill and the rake.
    • Band: The kick plays one, the "and" of two, and three. The snare is hard. The bass plays eighths on the root.

    Slow blues in 12/8 (the Red House way)

    The twelve-bar in 12/8. He played it in B, a half step down on the record, with the IV as a 9th chord.[6] [16b] [10]

    • Rhythm: The rhythm is the T-Bone and B.B. King grip: the 9th chord with the root on the A string, slid in from a fret below, with the 3rd trilled against the 4th.
    • Lead: The lead sings. Major and minor pentatonic mix over the dominant chords, with bends of a step and a step and a half (Albert King's), the shake, rakes, triplet pull-offs, and silence.
    • Band: The band lays back: the ride plays every triplet and the bass climbs root, 3rd, 5th, 6th.

    Funk rock (the Band of Gypsys way)

    The funk of the last year: "Freedom", "Ezy Ryder", "Power of Soul", "Message to Love", "Little Miss Lover", "Gypsy Eyes".[34] [48] [19] [49]

    • Rhythm: The rhythm is sixteenth-note scratches with the wah rocking under them. The 9th and the 7♯9 punch on the "and" of two. A single-note riff on the low strings has muted ghost notes between the notes and is doubled with the bass — Guitar Player's first rule.
    • Lead: The lead is single-note riffs with mutes, slurs, trills and bends, and the wah of "Who Knows", swept fast and wide against the beat.
    • Band: The band is tight: the kick plays one and the "and" of two, the snare has ghost notes, and the hat plays sixteenths with a bark on the "and" of four.

    Cycle of fourths (the Hey Joe way)

    Five major chords, each a fourth below the last — C, G, D, A, E — and two bars of E to land on.[15] [9c] [10b]

    • Rhythm: Thumb-over chords, with a walk from root to root on the low strings between them: root, 3rd, 4th, 5th. The 5th is the next chord's root, which is only true because the chords move in fourths. Double stops out of the E-shape box answer the vocal.
    • Lead: The lead plays the E minor blues scale at the 12th fret.
    • Band: The band plays a slow backbeat, with the bass walking up into every change.

    One-chord voodoo (the Voodoo Child way)

    One chord, and everything happens on it.[4] [17] [1] [10] [11b]

    • Rhythm: The intro is muted sixteenths with the wah rocking. Then comes the riff in E minor pentatonic: the 4th bent to the 5th and released, the pull-off to the ♭3, the octave, and the 7♯9 stab.
    • Lead: The lead plays the box at the root and the box above it, the machine-gun repeated note, the step-and-a-half bend held with vibrato, feedback-length notes, the pentatonic trill, and the dive with the bar.
    • Band: The band plays straight sixteenths in a heavy pocket.

    Rhythm and blues (the Wait Until Tomorrow way)

    The up-tempo R&B of his sideman years, as he kept playing it.[14] [29] [36] [9b]

    • Rhythm: The chord lands on one, and the licks come between the chords in Steve Cropper's way: double stops hammered in the E shape (the 2nd rolling onto the 3rd, the 4th onto the 5th), 6ths on the backbeat, and a Stax chuck on two and four. The chorus changes E–G–A are the ♭III and the IV again, clean this time. "Bold as Love" is the same hand playing arpeggios and counterpoint.
    • Band: The bass plays the root and octave and the drummer plays the backbeat.

    Rolling waltz (the Manic Depression way)

    Three to the bar and three to the beat: the churning triplet feel Mitchell took from a jazz waltz.[12b] [22] [18]

    • Rhythm: The guitar and bass play a riff in unison that climbs to each chord's root by step and half step, with a chromatic walk from the IV through the ♯IV to the V.
    • Lead: The lead rolls triplets from the pentatonic, alternate-picked, with ghost notes.
    • Band: The ride plays every triplet, the snare plays two, and the kick plays one and three.

    Fast blues shuffle (the Killing Floor way)

    The blues he opened Monterey with: Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor", played faster with a different rhythm guitar and bass line, and B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby", sped up. Earl King's "Come On" is the same hand in E.[39] [39b] [51] [49]

    • Rhythm: The rhythm is Hubert Sumlin's job, made his own: the shuffle riff runs on the low strings under a thumb-over 7th chord at the 5th fret, with the pinky reaching the 5th, 6th and ♭7. Over the I and the IV he plays 6ths as double stops, and he walks into every change.
    • Lead: The box under the same hand, at a tempo where the bends have to be quick.
    • Band: The band plays a hard shuffle: the kick plays one and three, the snare cracks two and four, the hat swings, and the bass walks root, 3rd, 5th, 6th.

    Major ballad (the Angel way)

    The other ballad, in a major key with the Leslie turning: "Angel", "Drifting", "Have You Ever Been", "May This Be Love", "One Rainy Wish".[40] [40b] [40c] [11] [7] [49]

    • Rhythm: The thumb barre walks up the neck with the changes: F at the 1st fret, C at the 8th, Gm7 at the 3rd, B♭ at the 6th, E♭ at the 11th. It takes the colors a major chord takes: the maj7 inside the E shape on the D string, the 9th hammered on the top string, the 4th onto the 3rd, the 6th onto the 5th, and 4ths slid on the top two strings. "Angel" runs I–V–ii7–IV–♭VII.
    • Band: The band plays soft and straight, with room: a rim click on two and four and the bass on long roots.

    Country blues, acoustic (the Hear My Train way)

    Country blues: one chord with breaks, andante at 65 bpm to 80 bpm. "Belly Button Window" is the other solo blues.[41] [41b] [41c] [34] [49]

    • Rhythm: The thumb plays the low E on every beat, the way Lightnin' Hopkins and Lead Belly did it, and the fingers answer on the top strings between the vocal lines: the ♭3 hammered to the 3rd, the ♭7 on the B string, the open E and its octave, a slide up the G string, a pull-off to the open string. In the breaks, the soloing.
    • Sources: Fairchild hears Tommy Johnson's 1928 "Big Fat Mama". McErlain hears Hopkins in the riff and a bend behind the nut. The film performance is on a twelve-string tuned down to C; the feel here is written in E at the nut for a six-string in standard tuning.
    • Band: The band is a foot: the kick, soft, on one and three.

    Riff rock at speed (the Fire way)

    The fast side of the R&B: "Fire", which is a duet between guitar and drums, "Crosstown Traffic", "Stone Free", "Gypsy Eyes", "Ezy Ryder", "Highway Chile".[42] [42b] [44] [43] [49] [50]

    • Rhythm: The rhythm is a riff on the low strings in the minor pentatonic, doubled at the octave, under thumb-over barre chords whose top two strings the picking hand mutes. The ♭VII sits beside the I, and the 7♯9 is the stab. "Stone Free" opens with plucked harmonics, and its verse is the first eight bars of a twelve-bar blues. The Wes Montgomery octave line of "Third Stone" is the same hand.
    • Band: The band plays straight eighths at 150 bpm, with a busy kick, a hard snare, and ghost notes in the hat.

    Minor rock strum (the Watchtower way)

    The cover he made his own: three chords, C♯m–B–A–B, with the C♯m often voiced as C♯m7 to free the pinky.[47] [47b] [15d]

    • Rhythm: Strummed on Dave Mason's twelve-string, down-down-up-up-down-up, with the chords left to ring and the pickup on the "and" of three into the change.
    • Lead: The C♯ minor blues scale at the 9th fret with Dorian notes: a slide up the neck into the box, whole-tone bends with a floating vibrato, unison bends, and the wah for a chorus. Zak names three strategies: the gestures intensified, dissonance let in, and one long melodic line across the take.
    • Band: The band plays a straight backbeat with the bass on roots. The vibraslap's rattle does the hat's job.

    Jazz shuffle with the wah (the Up from the Skies way)

    A jazz stroll with an easy triplet feel: Mitchell on brushes and a light wah on the guitar throughout, which the sources call mid-fifties blues with some contemporary guitar antics. "Rainy Day, Dream Away" and "Still Raining, Still Dreaming" are its cousins.[45] [45b] [45c] [50]

    • Rhythm: The 9th grip with the root on the A string — B9, F♯7, C9, C♯7 — slid in from a fret below and moved by a fret, the way a jazz-blues comp moves. It is light, on the shuffle's upbeats, with the pedal opening on each.
    • Lead: The Mixolydian with the ♭3 and the chromatic step let in, with the wah rocked to the phrase.
    • Band: The bass walks in quarters and the brushes swish.

    One-chord slow blues (the Voodoo Chile way)

    The fifteen-minute blues. "Catfish Blues" grew into a slow, menacing jam on one chord — a guided tour of blues styles from the Delta to Coltrane, in Charles Shaar Murray's words. The guitar is tuned down a whole tone through a Bassman, Winwood's raga-like phrase is answered with a mixed blues and eastern scale, and the whole thing was planned for all its looseness. The electric "Hear My Train" grew into the same thing.[46] [46b] [41] [50]

    • Rhythm: The riff is the form: the open E, the ♭3 hammered to the 3rd, the 4th, the ♭5, the 5th, the ♭7 and the octave on the low strings in 12/8, answered on the top strings. It opens with hammer-ons in Albert Collins's way.
    • Lead: The lead plays the box at the 12th fret over the drone.
    • Band: The band lays back: the ride plays every triplet, the kick plays one and three, and the bass plays the riff.

    6. The songs, as reference points — and the catalog by album

    The table says what happens in each record — its key as fingered, its form and the devices to listen for — and links to a tab of it. The tab is theirs; the analysis is here. The parts on this page draw on the way of playing in each record and copy none of its lines. Chord progressions are common stock (the US Copyright Office and the Second Circuit in the Ed Sheeran case both leave them outside copyright[30] [30b]), so the changes are given as they are, under Hendrix in the Jam tab's presets.

    The catalog by album

    The catalog lists every song of his that a source describes, album by album, with the style the source gives it and the feel of this course that covers that way of playing. A song no source describes is marked so: the tools that made this page cannot listen, so a style is only claimed where it was read. The sources describe fifteen ways of playing on these records: the eight the first version of this course had, and seven added for the sides the catalog turned up. The free-form sound painting ("Third Stone", "1983", "EXP", the anthem at Woodstock) and the studio pieces (backwards guitar, the harpsichord) are named and not covered, because a band cannot hold them and a tab cannot say them.[49] [48]

    7. Studies

    The studies are whole forms to play through: the presets from the Jam tab's Hendrix list, with a part from the library realized over each, its fills and lead lines rolled once and fixed. They are not the songs; they are the app's own writing over the forms the music runs on. The last lesson leaves their fill bars to you.

    8. For teachers

    Every fingering on this page says whether the sources describe it or it is the usual way (the tag under each grip), and every claim about the records is cited. The author never heard the playing itself (see How this was made), so treat the tab as an account of the idiom, not a transcription.

    Common faults, and how to hear them

    DeviceWhat goes wrongWhat to listen for
    The thumb overThe thumb presses so hard the wrist locks, or so lightly the low E buzzes; the A string is muted by the thumb's pad.Play the bass note alone: a clean low E, and the A string still rings when struck.
    The split chordThe bass note and the triad land together instead of one, "and"; the high e rings when it should be left.Two distinct strokes a beat apart; only D, G and B in the second.
    The hammered colorsThe hammered note is weak because the finger comes down late or from too low; the chord dies under it.The 4th, 6th or 9th as loud as the note it lands on, the other strings still ringing.
    The 7♯9The low E and the top e sound, because nothing mutes them; the G and G♯ blur into one.Four notes only — mute the low E with the thumb, the top e with the flesh of the ring finger. The clash should be audible, not muddy.
    The 9th grip and the trillThe ring-finger bar leaves the top e dead; the trill is even rather than lazy and swallows the beat.Keep three strings under the bar, all sounding; put the trill inside the triplet with the beat still felt.
    BendsUnder pitch by a quarter tone, or the vibrato starts before the bend arrives.Play the target note fretted, then bend to it; the pitch matches before the wrist moves.
    The unison bendThe two strings don't meet; the top note is fretted too lightly and dies.The beat frequency slows to nothing as the bend arrives; both notes ring after.
    The wah scratchThe foot moves against the pick, or the strings ring instead of scratching.Put the toe down on the downstrokes and the heel on the up; the sound is dead and percussive, with the chord's pitch only where the pattern says.
    The walk-upThe line arrives late on the new chord's root, or the chord comes early.The 5th of one chord lands exactly on the beat as the root of the next.
    The waltz riffThe triplet feel flattens to straight eighths; the middle of the beat gets filled.Three to the beat felt, the middle empty where the part leaves it.
    The shuffle riff's stretchThe pinky won't reach the ♭7 five frets above the thumb, so the riff stops at the 6th; the riff rings instead of thudding.Keep root, 5th, 6th and ♭7 under one hand with the thumb still on the root, and every riff note short under the heel.
    The maj7 and the 9thThe maj7 is a fingering, not a sound — the pull-off doesn't speak; the 9th on the top string dies under the pinky.The maj7 audible as the octave lets go to it; the 9th ringing as loud as the octave it landed on.
    The thumb bass of the country bluesThe thumb stops whenever a finger moves; the thumb's note rings instead of thumping.The low E on every beat through everything the fingers do, a thud with pitch under the heel.
    The octave riffThree notes sound — the A string rings inside the octave; the riff is late after the chord.Sound two notes in every octave with the A string dead under the index; the chord lands on the beat with the kick and the riff on the "and".
    The strum that breathesEvery stroke restrikes the chord, so nothing rings; the pattern speeds up; the pickup lands on the beat instead of before it.Let the "and of 3" ring into four, keep the ups lighter than the downs, and bring the next chord in early on the "and of 4" and confirm it on one.
    The 9th slid in with the wahThe slide smears — the fingers arrive one at a time; the pedal sweeps on its own instead of with the strike; the comp is loud.The whole grip landing on one from a fret below; the pedal opening as it lands; the chord under the bass.
    The Catfish riffThe riff rushes out of the triplet; the hammered 3rd is weak; the ♭5 is landed on.Put the riff's notes on the first and third of each triplet, make the hammer-on as loud as the note before, and pass the ♭5 through to the 5th.

    When it is learned

    • The thumb bass and the split chord hold steady at the practice tempo for eight bars, then at the record's tempo, on Em, G, Am and Bm without looking.
    • The hammered 4th, 6th and 9th are clean on any thumb-over chord, and the 4th is clean on the A shape.
    • Sliding 6ths go through a I–IV–V in two keys, and the slide lands on the beat.
    • The 7♯9 is struck with only its four notes sounding, and the riff under it is in time with a bass line.
    • The E minor pentatonic box at the 12th fret goes up and down at four notes a beat, then the same box at the nut connects to the box above it.
    • The 4th bent to the 5th arrives in pitch, and so does the step-and-a-half bend from the 4th to the 6th, each with vibrato only after arrival.
    • The 9th grip slides in on beat three of a 12/8 bar, with the trill inside the triplet.
    • The wah scratch runs four bars without the strings ringing, and the chord lands on the "and of 2".
    • The walk-up goes round the cycle of fourths at 82 bpm, each 5th becoming the next root.
    • The shuffle riff runs under the thumb-over A7 at 150 bpm, muted, with the pinky on the ♭7 and the walk into every change.
    • The thumb barre walks F, C, Gm7, B♭, E♭ at 64 bpm without a late chord, with the maj7 said and let go and the 9th hammered on top.
    • The thumb on the low E holds through eight bars of the country blues with two answers a bar from the fingers, alone with the foot.
    • The octave riff runs under the thumb chord at 150 bpm, two notes in every octave, muted between.
    • The strum that breathes goes through C♯m7, B, A, B at 112 bpm, with the "and of 3" ringing and the pickup early into every change.
    • The wah comp slides B9, C9, C♯9 and F♯13 in on one with the pedal, under the bass, at 126 bpm.
    • The Catfish riff sits in the triplet at 56 bpm with the hammered 3rd and the ♭5 passed through, and an answer of your own follows on the top strings.
    • Any study on this page plays through twice at its tempo with the band.

    9. How this was made

    What was done, and what was not. Claude (an AI model, in Claude Code) wrote this page and the Hendrix genre in the app at the owner's request in September 2026 — first as eight feels and eight lessons, then rebuilt on 13 September 2026 to the method of docs/COURSES.md and widened to every side of him the records show (docs/HENDRIX-RESEARCH.md).

    The research was reading. The sources below were fetched and read as text: a Gresham College lecture, the abstract of a University of Washington dissertation, a London College of Music analysis, university and magazine lessons (Guitar Player, Guitar World, Premier Guitar, MusicRadar and the web lesson sites), the Wikipedia articles on the songs, the albums and the 7♯9 chord, interviews with Billy Cox, Mitch Mitchell, Eddie Kramer and Roger Mayer, a 1967 interview with Hendrix, the tempo and chord sites, and the legal sources on chord progressions. Several magazine pages refused the tools and were read through a text-extraction proxy.

    No recordings were listened to and no videos were watched. The video lessons the course links are named by their titles and not relied on. Where a page could not be read — Hooktheory's analyses, some tab pages, the dissertation's full text — and a fact came only from a search engine's summary, the source list says so. The rest is the model's own knowledge of the music, checked against the sources where they overlap.

    The parts were written the way every part in this app is written (docs/STYLES.md): from the idiom — where the weight falls, which strings, which notes, how a phrase ends — never from a transcription, and with no signature riff of his reproduced. The split chord, the walk-up, the shuffle riff, the octave riff, the strum pattern, the Catfish form and the 9th comp are the common property of the music.

    • Each part is a figure with variants, fills that know whether the next bar changes, lead lines, and a beginner's version, written in the interval notation the engine realizes onto the neck. The engine gained what the first version needed — free (chromatic) notes, a reach past the position, the blues palette over major chords, the 7♯9 and 9th grips, the split chord, unison bends, trills, the wah — and a test holds each.
    • The data has no DOM in it (js/hendrix-guide-data.js), so node tools/dive-check.js hendrix --print realizes every card as the page does. The rebuild read every card that way against the research and found six faults: the major ballad's maj7 was written free and sounded a major 7th over the m7 chord; the jazz shuffle's lead lost its ♭7 to the pentatonic reading; the blues boxes were drawn from a seven-note pattern; a scale box was a fret wider than its window; the fast shuffle's changes card was empty where its part played the riff alone; and the old ballad study's window did not walk with the chords. All were fixed before the page was drawn.
    • The tabs are realizations rolled from a fixed seed, so the page reads the same each time. The changes, the exercises and the studies are fixed outright. The sound is the app's own recorded guitar and synthesized band. Tempos are approximate and keys are the fingered keys.

    "The Angel way" or "the Fire way" means the way of playing on that record, not its notes. The prose is written to docs/WRITING.md.

    10. Sources

    Numbered as cited above; the first thirty-three are the first version's, 34 on were read for the rebuild. "Read" means the page was fetched and read as text; "summary" means only a search engine's summary could be read; "through a reader proxy" means the page was read through a text-extraction service; "linked" means the page was not readable by the tools.