LESSON: How to sound like Jeff Beck

November 3rd, 2009 | Author: Peter Hodgson

Jeff Beck is heading back to Australia to play the Byron Bay Bluesfest (along with Al Di Meola, Joe Bonamassa and Buddy Guy), making up for lost time after not visiting Australia for over 20 years until his tour here in January this year (my review here). His style has evolved and mutated rapidly over the years making it hard to pin down a general Jeff Beck sound, so let’s check it out as it stands today.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the old ‘tone is in the hands’ argument. There are some who might reply, “Yeah, the hands that sign for the credit card to pay for expensive gear,” but in Beck’s case it’s quite literally true. He jettisoned his pick years ago and is pretty much exclusively a fingers-against-steel man today. The tone that results from this is quite unique and very much unattainable if you use a pick. The attack is softer and the note seems to swell up then mellow out over its duration, instead of beginning with a percussive kerthunk then fading out.

Beck can play pretty freaking fast when he wants to, which is no easy task without a pick. The secret is to pick with your thumb for downstrokes and your index finger for upstrokes. An added benefit of this is that the hand angle required to pull it off cleanly is ideal for manipulating the guitar’s volume control with the pinkie finger as you play, allowing an even greater range of dynamic movement. Unlike picking from the wrist or elbow with a plectrum, picking with the fingers requires almost no hand movement, so it’s easier to make control adjustments far more detailed than otherwise possible.

Another clever benefit of picking this way is that the hand is ideally placed to achieve vibrato or even pitch bending by pushing the bridge of the guitar. Beck has his Stratocaster bridges set to float, so he can raise the pitch a few semitones as well as lower it. This is hard to achieve with a vintage-style 6-screw trem, but much easier with a more modern two-point fulcrum system as found on his signature model and any number of Strats since the 80s. Either way, you’ll want to reduce the spring tension enough to have the bridge sit forward a bit. When done right you’ll get better tuning stability, although as with any floating system the trade-off is a little sustain …although Beck deals with it and EVH seems to do okay…

Alright, so once you’ve set up the guitar’s bridge to float, you can achieve vibrato by pressing and releasing the bridge with the edge of your hand. Beck often does this quite quickly for a wide, vocal-like vibrato, or sometimes he’ll just lean on the bridge at the start of a note or even midway through to bend the pitch. It gives a slightly different colour to a fretted bend.

The last trick we’re going to look at also involves a floating bridge; playing melodies with the whammy bar. Steve Vai really seems to have taken this technique and run with it, but Beck was the pioneer. Try this: hit a harmonic at the 12th fret of the G string then use the bar to raise it the equivalent of two frets. Then without stopping the note, bring it back down to the original pitch, then dump it down a half step. After a little practice your ears will catch up to your hands and you’ll be able to zero in accurately on pitches. Soon you’ll be able to play expressive melodies that almost sound like a slide guitar, but using harmonics as you please.

This article can also be found in the November 2009 issue of Mixdown Magazine.

CLICK HERE to buy Jeff Beck’s ‘Performing This Week…Live At Ronnie Scotts’ from Amazon.com

CLICK HERE to buy the Fender Jeff Beck signature Stratocaster from Music123.