Techniques of the heroes: Stevie Ray Vaughn part 2

Okay, to start things off I will tell you all that I can discern about Stevie Ray Vaughn’s equipment and how he set it up. I am doing this first as most people will not be able to get his sound just by the usual fiddling with the dials, and he actually used an old trick that Hendrix used when it came to the tremolo systems.

You see, on a normal fender Stratocaster, both Jimi and Stevie’s guitar of choice, the tremolo arm is located just underneath the strings if you were looking at the guitar while someone else has it strapped around their neck. If you were to hold the guitar yourself as if you were playing it, you would see the tremolo arm would be on the opposite side of the strings to the side you’re looking from. Hendrix didn’t like this, and although there were a lot less left handed instruments anyway, he would deliberately restring right-handed Stratocasters as the tremolo arm is on the other side when you swap which hand you’re using to play the guitar (for those of you who didn’t know, Jimi was left handed). Stevie Ray Vaughn also preferred the tremolo arm on this side of the body, but because he was endorsed by fender, he was able to get a guitar designed for him with the tremolo arm above the strings instead of below them. This makes it easier to perform tremolo tricks without your hand getting in the way of the strings vibrating.

Another small detail is the back cover on Stevie Ray Vaughn’s guitars. On guitars fitted with tremolo systems there is a plastic panel that encases the springs inside the guitar and protects the user from catching their hands in it, but Stevie Ray Vaughn would actually remove this Panel for live performances, as you will see if you watch his version of “third stone from the sun”.

The next thing to note that Stevie Ray Vaughn also used relatively low gain for his guitar setting, and instead was really using the over drive to add sustain to his sound. In other words, you could still clearly hear the strings in his guitar sound, as the gain didn’t distort his tone to the extent that Jimi Hendrix would distort his sound.

Apart from that, there are really only two tricks that I can teach everyone out there. I know some of you will want to know how to use his trick on “3rd stone from the sun”, however, my guitars have a floating tremolo systems, which are different to the tremolo system on a fender Stratocaster, which is non-floating, so I essentially don’t have a guitar that can perform the tricks that his can yet.

There are really three main tricks under Stevie’s hat that he regularly brought out; microtonal bends, vibrato and percussive strumming. Now I will do my best to take you through all of them.

Right then, microtonal bends are if anything one of the easiest tricks to pick up and one of the most widely used techniques in rock music. A microtonal bend is where you ever so slightly bend a note up to get the effect that the note is about to change. The tricky part with this trick is learning which notes this can be used with, as not every note in every scale can be used for microtonal bends. The best scale to search for microtonal bends in to get a feel for them would be the minor pentatonic blues scale, which I showed you in the previous part of this lesson, and that I’ll show you again now below this text.

E||------------------|------------------||------------------|-----------10---12-|
B||------------------|------------------||--------------10--|-11---12-----------|
G||------------------|----------7----9--||-9--11---12-------|-------------------|
D||---------------7--|-8----9-----------||------------------|-------------------|
A||-7---9----10------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|

Now I have highlighted the notes that I know that microtonal bends will work for, but remember that this is still a mostly trial and error technique, and you’ll have to become really familiar with the scales you’re using in order to use the trick to its best potential. You may have noticed that the third note in the scale has been highlighted, and this is important. More often than not it is a third that will determine the overall nature of a scale that is this short, so play close attention to it. These thirds are also very good territory for microtonal bends no matter what the scale, so keep your eyes and ears peeled.

Try ending phrases with these notes to combine this technique with Stevie’s technique of accidentals that I mentioned in the previous part of this lesson and you’ll really be on the right tracks.

Now onto vibrato. Stevie Ray Vaughn never left a note to simply ring out without at least adding a little bit of a waver to it. If he ended a phrase by letting a note hang, he would use vibrato to keep the note ‘alive’. Now one thing that you should bear in mind is that Stevie didn’t try to overcomplicate things, if anything these vibrato notes helped him to ‘thicken’ his sound without losing his distinctive style; you will find that using vibrato also helps when you are trying to sustain a note as well as it is physically moving the string, thus stopping it from lying still. One thing you will have to bear in mind is that there are two ways of using vibrato in terms of which way you bend your fingers. You can either bend the string by using your fingertip to pull it closer to your hand, or by using your fingertip to push it away from your hand. In the long run there is very little tonal difference between the techniques, but because of there only being so much fret-board on your guitar, there may not be room to pull the string towards you on the highest string, and the same with bending it away from you on the lowest string. Stevie would use a combination of both sometimes a well to really make a note dance.

The final technique I mentioned, percussive strumming, is actually an old funk trick that he adapted for his live performances. What he was doing was essentially muting the strings with the fingers on his fretting hand by laying them gently on the strings, and then strumming to a rhythm he wanted while deliberately not hitting any notes until the next chord or phrase came along. This essentially allowed him to make his guitar a part of the rhythm section while still playing lead guitar parts. The thing to focus on is learning to lay your hands heavily enough on the strings that the open notes are muted and that no harmonics sound, but also lightly enough that you are not fretting any note on the guitar by accident.

Along with this, I will see if I can show you how to play one of his songs as well in the next lesson. More than likely it will be Crossfire, as he did quite a lot of covers in his live shows, so I’ll try to pick one of his own.

That’s pretty much it for this part though; I hope that this has helped some of you out there. Take care and I’ll see you next time.