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Southern Jam
from Jeff Scheetz’ Rock Solid
There is something about southern rock grooves that always seems to make people happy. Often the chord progressions are fairly simple, but a few well-placed slides and twists can keep things interesting. “Southern Jam” uses chord slides to help impart a southern feel to the progression – you can hear this style of chord work in music from bands like Marshall Tucker and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Remember to “play it purty.”
This one is called “Southern Jam” because it has a really nice southern rock feel; it should sound familiar to fans of Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers and even the Doobie Brothers. It’s in D major, but think of it as being in D Mixolydian. Approaching it this way makes things really interesting since the Mixolydian mode is a great scale for jamming. It works not only for southern rock stuff, but for a lot of newer stuff as well – jam bands love soloing with the Mixolydian.
There are plenty of chordal riffs prominent in southern rock and we can look at it in one of two ways – the first is to visualize that you’re using partial chord shapes and the second is to think that you are using notes from a scale to move your riffs along. The following example will show you how to take a simple chord progression and make it sound a bit more “geographical.”
When using slides to embellish chord changes, be sure to focus on the outline of the changes, but don’t be afraid to change things up a bit within the slides to and from the changes to add a different feel.
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