Play like Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix blurred rhythm and lead into one voice. Songs like "Little Wing" and "The Wind Cries Mary" show chords that sing, while his solos lean on huge bends, wide vibrato and fluid legato. This chapter teaches you the building blocks of the Hendrix style.

You start with thumb-over chord embellishments: fretting the bass note with your thumb so your other fingers can add hammer-ons and melody notes inside the chord. Then come R&B double-stop fills on the G and B strings, a sound Hendrix picked up on the soul circuit. Wide vibrato bends in E minor pentatonic teach you to bend to pitch and shake the note like a singer. Octave lines show the muted-string trick that makes a melody thick and fat, and trills and pull-off flurries let your fretting hand take over.

Every exercise is a tab that plays in your browser with a click and a tempo ladder, and each lesson ends with a checkpoint. The tone tips stay simple: a Strat-style single coil, a clean or cranked amp, and your volume knob doing the work.