Guitar Tips By Roy Buchanan
From Guitar Player, October 1976
On the strength of a half dozen solo albums and countless word-of-mouth "testimonials," guitarist Roy Buchanan has built an ever-growing cult following, largely comprised of other guitar players. His distinctive, whining blues licks can jam-pack Carnegie Hall or a West Coast nightclub with what can only be called worshippers. Buchanan's allure has little to do with stage production or cosmetic appeal; he dishes it all out with his fingers and a well-worn Fender Telecaster.
The contemporary rock audience "discovered" Roy in 1970, playing at a suburban Washington, D.C. club called the Crossroads. In 1971, National Educational Television honored him with a 90-minute special entitled "The Best Unknown Guitarist in the World." Buchanan first appeared in the pages of Guitar Player in March 1972 and that year won best new guitarist in the annual readership poll -- before he had even released his debut LP.
As Roy often acknowledges, musicians were the ones who brought his name into the national spotlight. John Lennon, Mick Taylor, Eric Clapton, Ritchie Blackmore, Nils Lofgren, Merle Haggard, Mundell Lowell, and others have been praising his talents for years. Jeff Beck dedicated "Cause We've Ended as Lovers" [Blow by Blow, Epic] to Roy, and the Rolling Stones reportedly offered him their lead guitar seat after the death of Brian Jones.
Roy was born in rural Arkansas in 1941, the son of a Pentecostal preacher. At two, Roy and his family moved to Pixley, California. By his early teens he was on the road, playing in country groups, early rock bands, and jazz and blues ensembles -- mastering a stylistic spectrum that continues to broaden to this day. At seventeen, Roy began playing for Louisiana rocker Dale Hawkins, the stint lasting three years. In his twenties, he went behind the scenes, doing studio dates in the East Coast and in Nashville.
Roy agreed to divulge some of his technical secrets to GP, while probing his own musical roots, popping a few of the myths in his "legend," and sharing the details of his relationship with a 24-year companion -- his guitar.
It's kind of strange, really. I learned how to tune a guitar before I learned how to play one. I remember when I was five, and my older brother J.D. had a bunch of guitar players over. I was running around playing cowboys and Indians, heard them playing, and told them, "You're out of tune." They got real mad and said, "Okay, if you're so smart then, tune it up!" So I did. It was just a natural thing.
I got my first guitar the same year. I don't remember the make. I learned about three chords, then my cousin busted it by accident in about a month. I didn't get my next one until I was nine, a Harmony, one of those old f-hole models. It cost me $14.00. I also started taking lessons on steel guitar and continued for three years. That was before they had foot pedals, and I used to try to copy Jerry Byrd, a really smooth player. On the steel is where I learned to use my fingers, and it's had an influence on my playing ever since.
I wanted to play standard guitar, but my parents wanted me to play steel. There were guitar players all over Pixley, but nobody played steel. Everybody would just play hillbilly music and bang on their guitars. Dad played a little fiddle, but most of the music I heard was church music. There was a church half a block away. Holy rollers. You heard it whether you wanted to or not, it was so loud. When I was nine, I started playing in front of people in my father's church, doing things like "The Old Rugged Cross" and "Amazing Grace."
The churches really influenced me in a couple of ways. Gospel music and blues are closely related, really. The church was the first time I ever heard blues. We used to go to a black church just to listen to it. Blues sort of started in the black churches, and what I ended up doing was mixing the white man's church music with the black man's blues to get that sweet feeling in my playing.
Another thing was the preaching. At a revival, a good preacher would really get the people going with his sermon. Work the crowd. He would start out slow and quiet, and as he went along, he'd build his volume and speed and bring everybody to an emotional climax. It was fiery. I think music works the same way, bringing audiences to high points with your guitar playing, and the preaching probably had an influence on me that way.
I didn't even know what jazz was. First time I even heard the word was in seventh or eighth grade. I didn't know a modern chord until I was 15. The first jazz player I ever heard was Barney Kessel. I got a record called To Swing or Not to Swing [Contemporary], started learning the chords, and found it improved my other playing.
When I was 12 or 13, I got my first electric, a 1953 Telecaster, brand new for $120.00. Later, I traded it in for a Les Paul, then traded that for a Stratocaster. Finally I realized I had the right guitar to begin with. The Telecaster sounded a lot like a steel, and I liked that tone. If it didn't have the sound it did -- if it sounded like a Gibson or a Gretsch -- I'd never play a Telecaster, because the others are easier to play than a Tele, but don't have the sound.
When I got a little older, I started playing around. Went to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and headed east. I used to jump from group to group at the drop of a hat. I just liked to play with different guys, different fields of music. It helped me, because every band I played with was another challenge. I used to play with a lot of horn groups, and there wouldn't be any other chord man but me. I really learned rhythm guitar. I don't think you should sell anything short, even with records. Listen to it all. I was never any knock-out jazz player, for example, but what I did learn about jazz really helped me.
My early influences were just the guys that were around: Barney Kessel, Roy Nichols, Jimmy Nolan, B.B. King, and Wayne Bennett who played with Bobby Blue Band. I dug on all those old blues cats. And Buck Owens, he used to play a Telecaster. He used to play guitar for Tommy Collins, and I used to go watch Owens and never knew he sang. Then there were those you never hear about. There's a lot of great guitar players out there pumping gas. Once I was playing a carnival in Oklahoma City, and this real country-looking guy came up to me and said, "I like the way you play. You feel like jamming a bit?" I don't remember who he was, but he also played piano with Hank Thompson. Well, that son of a gun came in with the oldest damn Gibson I'd ever seen, no cutaway or nothing. I couldn't even play rhythm for him. He was just all over the thing, and he was one of the greatest jazz players I'd ever heard.
I met Dale Hawkins in Oklahoma City on a thing called Oklahoma Bandstand, sort of like the Dick Clark Show. We both liked to drink, so he asked me if I wanted to go to Louisiana with him. I ended up playing on the road with him for three years.
I'm going to spill the beans here. Everybody thinks I did "Susy Q." But I didn't. It was stolen from Howlin' Wolf. I won't mention who stole it, but I didn't play on the record like everybody thinks I did. Howlin' Wolf came to Freeport, Louisiana, playing in a nightclub, and the guys in the Hawkins band recorded the song on a tape recorder, went home and changed the words around a bit, rerecorded it, and it became a hit. I could have recorded it, but I didn't want to steal it.
A lot of the way I play and learned the guitar is unorthodox. I use my thumb to make a barre chord all the time. I never count, except maybe to start off a song. I tried to learn to read once -- had to count -- and it was getting so I couldn't keep time. But I think it's a good idea to learn to read, because you can get a lot more work. I've missed a lot of studio jobs because I couldn't read. These days, you need to read, to keep up, because there's so many good players.
Basically, I learned through dividing the neck into positions, where the chords were in their various forms. It's a good way to practice. Take E, for example, and find the chord in each of its forms all the way up the neck. Then learn the scale in each position to go with it. I see everything in visual patterns in my mind. But it was always the chord that came first. For example, when I practice I'll play major, minor, diminished, and augmented scales. I really don't know the technical names for them, and I don't know what half the chords I use are. But I know for every chord there has to be a scale that fits it. And I find those notes on every position on the neck. You do this enough, you'll get the whole neck programmed into your mind. Playing by ear really is a feeling. But it only comes with the knowledge of the neck. It has to be ingrained in your mind ahead of time.
Like the chords, rhythm also taught me a lot about playing leads. I always felt I was a better rhythm player than a lead player, but was always called upon to play lead. It reminds me of a guy I hired to play guitar one time. A lot of guitar players aren't going to believe this, but this guy could play nothing but lead -- chord none. He could tune it, play as fast as anybody, but no rhythm. Don't ask me how he did it, but how far could he really go with it? I said, "Don't you think you're kind of limiting yourself?" I think there's more to music then just speedy leads -- one straight drone. You have to know rhythm to be able to put together interesting solos.
As far as some of the licks I use, they've come from a lot of different places. Sometimes they're mistakes, and I'll find that I can fit them in and remember them. It's also a good idea to listen to other instruments, like a saxophone, and duplicate the notes. It's a different feel, a different attack and rhythm. Drums, I've gotten a lot of licks off of drummers. And bass players, singers -- especially scatting -- anything that makes you expand.
It's the same with crossing styles in playing. For example, if you take a jazz technique and inject it into blues, it can give it life. The audience will be listening, thinking, "There's nothing more that can be done with that blues lick." But then you slide into a certain jazzy scale, and you really reach them.
I've never really considered myself a fast guitar player. A lot of it comes from hammering-on. I fake a lot. One way, though, to build up speed is get a felt pick and an acoustic with tough action and heavy strings. When you get on an electric then, you'll find your speed has really picked up. And you'll get those light gauge strings in your hand and be able to wrap them right around the neck when you bend them.
While on the subject of note bending, a lot of the time I'll bend up or drop down to a note rather than fretting it. Then I can get all those little notes in between. You can bend a lot of steps if your left hand [for right-handed players] is correct. It's all a matter of balance. I'm not really a strong person. So if I'm bending with my third finger, I'll place my first and second real tight behind it, so it acts like a clamp. I also use the muscles back in my forearm for the bend, with the wrist acting like a pivot. You get all kinds of leverage that way.
Another way to get speed is with circle picking. Larry Coryell uses it, and so does John McLaughlin. It's an old jazz technique, really. There's a guy in Washington, D.C. named Frank Mullin who teaches it, and he says it takes two or three years to develop.
To circle pick, all you do is start by playing with your pick at an angle. (For example, if the face of your guitar were like a clock with the string connected between the 12 and the six, the plectrum would be angled so as to form a line between the two and the eight.) You hit the string with one edge of the pick, but then you'll find you're in position to come back on the up-stroke with the opposite edge. You alternate the pick, then, with a rotating motion in either a counterclockwise or clockwise circle. The pick, while not changing its angle in relation to the string, is circling that area of the string. It's not done with the wrist, but with the fingers holding the pick. When first learning, you start with a large circle, just to get the feeling. After a while, you'll get so it's not even an obvious circle. It becomes a feeling. You can get two or three notes going so fast it's like a quiver. The reason it's faster is because your picking motion -- as a circle -- is not interrupted for a change in direction. You're not stopping abruptly to change direction as you would in a straight up-and-down motion. The circle also gives the notes a flowing quality.
You can use this style of picking for one or a number of strings for lead. You can also use a large circle on an entire chord to get a flowing background rhythm. [Listen to "Thank You, Lord" on Roy Buchanan, Second Album for an example of circle rhythm.]
One way to build leads this way is to use different chord patterns on different positions up the neck. A three-note chord, for example. With the left hand, you mute all the other strings you're not using to keep them from ringing and work the different chord patterns up the neck while circle picking them.
The same moving chords can be applied to rolling notes. From playing steel, I learned to use a pick while also using my ring and fourth fingers -- pick, 3rd finger, 4th finger. You're cheating yourself, really, if you just flatpick. It takes practice, but after you learn to use those other two fingers, it's hard to just flatpick. You can't keep away from them, and it's a different feel.
By using all the fingers on my right hand, I also can play chords by plucking all the strings at once, which is a much different sound than running a pick across the chord. It's another thing I picked up off the steel guitar.
After I switched from steel to regular, people around town used to say, "Buchanan sounds like he's playing steel." I used to play in a lot of country groups, and they insisted on having a steel guitar unless they could get me. To get that steel sound, you don't use a lot of right hand, hard picking, but instead an easy touch real close to the bridge and the volume way up. And you get a light vibrato going. A lot of it, too, has to do with the tone of the Telecaster.
As far as special effects go, back in the Fifties I used to slice my speakers to get the fuzz sound. Then somebody invented a box to do the same thing. After that, I quit and started playing straight. I sort of had to develop my own style, and things like the wah-wah, I feel, make me sound like somebody else. I found the special sounds I wanted to use I was getting just from the guitar.
Many of the special effects depend on my equipment. I've been playing a '53 Telecaster now for about eight years. The only trouble with Teles is the necks do wear out. I like the maple neck, because I found my fingers were getting stuck on the rosewood kind. I like the old Teles because of the wood, the way the pickups are wound, the capacitors, the whole works. At home I also have two '54s and a '55. They're antiques, really, and putting a humbucking on them to me would be like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. For acoustic work, I've got a Martin D-28 and a Martin D-35. I've also got a guitar made out of rock and shaped like a heart that a guy made for me. He [luthier Joel M. Cawthorn] was experimenting and found granite to be the best conductor of sound. It's a good heavy metal guitar, because it rings for a day and a half. You need a tractor to hold it up; it weighs about 30 pounds. I'm willing to try and hold it up when I have a song for it.
I like to wear my guitar high. Les Paul used to do the same thing, wearing it up like a bib. We used to wonder why he didn't wear it low and look cool like the rest of us. But he was playing a hundred times better guitar than we were. So I started raising mine up, and I understood. Everything's right there. You can get your wrist around, see everything, and it's like having it in your lap.
I use a Fender Vibrolux amp. The reverb is on 2 which gives it a little more ring and sustain. The volume and tone controls are full out. But the volume is not always wide open on the guitar. It's just there in case I need it. That's why I can't play a Les Paul, because you got to have it full out to get a good sound, where a Telecaster you can keep down and still get that ringing sound.
Having the reserve volume is necessary for some of my effects. I'll simultaneously strike the string, bend it, and roll the volume up with my right index finger to get that crying sound. In my mind I'll think the word "help" and try to duplicate it. I do that with a lot of licks, thinking the word and trying to play it. You can roll the volume up, too, with an entire chord, or use the tone control instead of the volume knob. The technique comes from a steel player, Speedy West. He and Jimmy Bryant, who was a real good guitar player, used to play together. West wasn't great technically, but Bryant was one hell of a player. So when it was Speedy's turn to play, he had to really do something impressive to keep the momentum going. So he would use the volume controls and do all these things.
Another thing I do is hit that high overtone. Some people call it a harmonic, but it's really an overtone. You have to have a lot of treble to do it. As you pick the string, you let a little bit of the skin from the thumb touch the string with the pick. You've got to do it with pressure, attack. You can't do it easy. It works best on the thinner strings, and sometimes I'm able to get in on the low ones. Also, after you get the high tone you can drop down from an overtone to a straight note by just hammering without hitting the string again with the pick.
A lot more people are doing it now, but I'm the first guy that did it -- back in the Fifties. I got it through a mistake. I was working for Bobby Greg, and we put out a record called "Potato Peelings." I did it during the recording, and I thought we were going to have to do another take until I looked up and saw everybody laughing. They thought I did it on purpose. I said, "Hey, I messed up. Let's do another take." They said, "No dice." I was embarrassed. But then when the record came out, all these guitar player were coming around asking me how I got the sound. So I had to go back and listen to the damn thing and relearn it.
There's other things I do for special touches. You can get a vibrato bar sound by pushing down on the string behind the nut. You also can tune down a string and get the pick going real fast, and it will rumble. I try to picture a motorcycle firing up. The Telecaster is a real live guitar, and I get certain sounds by using my fingers on the treble pickup itself. Also, the steel plate, if you snap it with your fingers, gives a nice ping. You can even get wind by blowing on the pickup with the volume way up. I used some of these on "Guitar Cadenza" on a Street Called Straight. But also, for the first time I used an Echoplex, too.
There is a point when sound effects start becoming noise and not music. It's when you stop feeling it. It's not a comfortable feeling for yourself, and it irritates the audience. It gets out of control, so that the effects are controlling you rather then you controlling them. Then it is noise. They're just the icing on the cake, and the cake is still the knowledge of your axe. A good example is Stevie Wonder. Here he is playing a $20,000 synthesizer in a song, and going along real good. Then he takes a solo on an $8.00 Hohner harmonica. And the Hohner sounds as good as the synthesizer.
I think the whole thing comes down to creating tension in your playing, using different volumes, working a scale from top to bottom, or bottom to top, and planning ahead a little. I set the listener up with something simple to get his attention, then proceed to develop it. I have to beat the licks I've done just before in order to reach a musical climax. If I'm getting ready for that third chord in a blues progression, for example, and I've already blown my best note, then I'm not going to be able to climax the progression -- and I go right up a wall. Fizzle out. It's always a matter of topping those few notes before. In blues, too, you can build a series of climaxes with each twelve bars, all ending up in one final climax, then back to the simple lick you began with. You're setting people up, is what you're doing. You work them to that point -- and yourself, too. They know it's coming and you can see it in their faces.
Sometimes it boils down to one note. One note can be as effective as dozens. Somehow -- and this may sound farfetched -- I have the feeling that all notes are contained in one. And if it's played with feeling, the reason it has such and effect on everybody is because it does have the other notes somewhere in it. It's the old "bring-the-house-down-with-one-note" thing. I've seen guitar battles won with one note.
Really, I don't play well. I just play what I feel and play things either other people overlooked or were ashamed to do. There's times when I feel like they should send me to another planet and leave me there.
But Homer [Haynes] of Homer and Jethro told me something one time. We were doing a show in Las Vegas. I talked to them and said, "I don't feel like I can learn anymore. I'm just not capable. I'm as good as I'll ever be." Then Homer said, "You remember one thing. The way you feel now means that you're going to really start to learn." I've never forgotten that. When you feel like you're slipping or can't do anymore, that's the knowledge that it's time to move on, keep learning.