‘Soul Man’, ‘In The Midnight Hour’, ‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay’, ‘Knock On Wood’, ‘Green Onions’… What have all these timeless classics got in common? Mr Steve Cropper! We continue to investigate soul guitar, it’s the second part, the 1st part is here. There’s not really too much here to catch you out, although the double-stop hammer-ons near the end can be a little tricky. Steve Cropper’s guitar parts are pretty easy, proving that you don’t need that degree in astrophysics to come up with a classic song.

Most of Steve’s hom-like stabs and double-stop fills use either thirds or sixths. I guess the main difference between usages in Country and soul is that soul tunes tend to use a lot of non-diatonic chord progressions (this, of course, is a gross generalisation, since there are a lot of exceptions). Now that I’ve mentioned non-diatonic harmony, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is going to get complicated, but essentially this different harmony is caused by the artist’s ‘limitations’. For example, Otis Redding could play only with one finger on a guitar tuned to an open E chord, so by moving his finger around the neck he just looked for things that sounded good. And (for example, starling with an open E chord) if he moved his linger to any fret other than the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th, or 10th frets he would end up with a non-diatonic progression. This is because there are three major chords contained within any one major scale. These are always found on the first, fourth and fifth degrees of the major scale. For example, in the A major scale (A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G#, A) we have an A major chord (A, C#, E), a D major chord (D, F#, A) and an E major chord (E, G#, B). So, our original open E chord could be the ‘one’ chord from the E major scale, (E major, A major and B major), the ‘four’ chord from the B major scale (B major, E major and F# major) or the ‘five’ chord from the A major scale (A major, D major and E major). Hey, I never said this stuff was interesting, did I?

So, if you have a chord change that goes back and forth between, for example, E major and G

major (as in (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay) this is a non-diatonic chord progression because there isn’t a major scale that contains both E major and G major. Did Otis or Steve think about this when they wrote their stuff? Highly unlikely – it just sounded good. But do you need to know this? Well, that’s a tricky one. There are plenty of people out there who ‘just play man’, which is fine, but if you use the analogy of driving a car it doesn’t hurt to know a bit about how the engine works. It doesn’t spoil your enjoyment of driving but it means that you might just be able to fix it if you get stuck.

Anyway, let’s get to work. Start with the lingering shown in Photo 1 for the first bar, going to that shown in Photo 2 for bar 2. Then, for bar 3, use the fingering shown in Photo 3. Then simply move this final shape up two frets for the 4th bar.

Using this fingering means that all the notes on the G string are fretted with the second finger while on the top E string you use the first or third fingers to obtain either a minor or major sixth

respectively. Be sure to add a bit of vibrato to the end of each phrase, you’ll be surprised at what a difference it makes.

For the second half of the tune I switched from sixths to thirds. Again,I kept one finger on the G string, this time it was the third finger. Start with the fingering shown in Photo 4, going to that shown in Photo 5. Then move down a tone as in Photo 6 and finish up with a slide from the 8th to the 9th fret as shown in Photo 7.

The notes on the 8th fret are known as grace notes, which are used for embellishment and therefore aren’t essential to the general harmony. As they’re grace notes it means that you shouldn’t stay on them for too long, so slide up as soon as you’ve struck the strings.

I’ve included some Hendrix-style double-stop hammer-ons at the end of these phrases (bars 10, 12 and 14) which we’ve covered fairly recently, so hopefully you won’t have any problems executing these. Take care, practise hard.

Photo 1. On your marks – Start with the fingering shown here

Photo 2. Moving On Up – Fingering for bar 2

Photo 3. Slide Up – Fingering for bar 3

Photo 4. Second half – Keep the third finger on the G string

Photo 5. Next Move – fret as shown

Photo 6. Back Down – Move down a tone

Photo 7. Finishing Up – Slide from 8th to the 9th fret

Sound Advice

Further listening

Booker T and the MGs, Sam and Dave. Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd and of course, Otis Reading.

It’s a full lesson of Soul Guitar. Come a Cropper Part 2.

Below you can download a full transcription with tabs of

Soul Guitar lesson. Come a Cropper with backing track

DOWNLOAD HERE