"Hey Joe" is a song written by W Roberts, but known through Jimi Hendrix. It is on the Jimi Hendrix Experience Album "Are you experienced". Just as an extra snippet of info, if you are taking your guitar seriously and progress, especially into blues or rock playing, then it is essential that you get a hold of some Jimi Hendrix recordings. His guitar playing is unbelievable and is such a great source of influence that you can’t not listen to it !
Firstly you should not be daunted by the thought of trying to play this song, as we are going to stick to the basic chords which will allow you to play it without all the other Jimi Hendrix stuff. Once you progress, you may wish to add in or learn some of the cool bits which you’ll find on other web sites. This song has a fairly simple layout as it repeats one chord sequence all the way through. The lesson wont be very detailed as we’ll just look at the basics so that you have another song in your armory for practicing and impressing the birds !. We’ll come back to it at a later date so we can add in some fancy stuff, but only after you’ve progressed a bit first.
The song has a few chords which will help to improve your chord changing. It also introduces a few new ones from those learned in Knocking on heavens door.
I’ll not bother to show how the words fit along with the song as I’ll assume you have access to a copy and can figure it out for yourself. Take note that there is a guitar introduction which Jimi plays first, don’t worry about that just now. If your playing along with the record, just start after that bits is finished and then join in. At a later date, as some homework, you can try and figure out how to play the introduction yourself. Try to learn it from listening to the record, only look at the tablature for it, once you’ve tried. Its not too difficult.
Heres the chords you’ll need:
The timing is as follows:
|
C 2 G 4 |
D 2 A 4 |
E 2 3 4 |
5 6 7 8 |
As before, start with downstrums only for each count, starting out slowly at first and then building up the speed as your chord changes get better.
If you have a problem with chord changing, try the chord exercise for a few minutes which will always help.
From here, its quite simple to go straight to a rhythm pattern that fits well with this song, by adding in an up strum between each and every count.
|
C& 2& G& 4& |
D& 2& A& 4& |
E& 2& 3& 4& |
5& 6& 7& 8& |
This song lends itself well to experimentation. You’ll find that there are numerous rhythms and picking patterns you can try, that will allow you to play along with the record.
So as usual, play around with different rhythms and note picking to see what you can come up with.
For reference the song is in the key of G Major.
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