Jessica by the Allman Brothers Band Guitar Lesson

In this lesson Jed takes you through how to play the Allman Brothers Band classic, Jessica, written by Dickey Betts and named after his daughter! Also known as the 'Top Gear theme', this is a great melodic instrumental that really shows off the CAGED system. Let's start by checking out the video:

Setting up

We're in the key of A major for this song, and covering the main melody part, originally played by Dickey Betts. The underlying chords are A and D and the melody flows beautifully over the top.

Main theme phrase 1

We're starting with an A major arpeggio, using the D CAGED shape, then go into box 3 of the full scale. This makes for a really nice run up that you can play with just 2 fingers, à la Django Reinhardt! We then drop down to box 2 for the second part of this melody. You could certainly think of this as a response to the call of the first part! Here are the shapes we're covering for this first phrase:

There is a tone bend in this phrase. It's really important to get the pitch of this just right otherwise the whole thing will sound off! Take some time to practice this bend in isolation if you need to.

Main theme phrase 2

This second phrase is very similar to the first phrase, staying in the same shapes, there's just a slight variation in the melody, in particular we don't do the bend in phrase 2. The second time around there is a slight change in the rhythm of the climb up that D major shape - Jed explains it perfectly in the video so watch out for that!

This is a great song for have fun with some embellishments too. Jed shows a few examples in the video, but as long as you're using notes from the scale they'll probably sound good! Try to experiment with them once you're comfortable with the main parts.

Interlude

The net section is a really nice melody that climbs up the A major scale, starting on the major 3rd, in box 2. Once we reach the high E string we shift up into box 3 to finish the melody. Jed takes this opportunity to mention the idea of 'active listening' to really get a feel for the phrasing of the track. This means listening carefully and thinking about how each note is being played - is it picked, legato, a bend, slide in etc etc. There are so many ways to play a single note and they can all have a different effect on the way the notes will come across, so spend some time on it!

Theme 2

After we've been around the main theme twice (with the interlude in between) we switch to the second theme of the song. This is accompanied by a change in the underlying chord progression too. Instead of switching between A and D as we do in the main theme, we're now playing over a G to A progression, which just alternates between those chords until the transition back to the main theme where the underlying chord is an E. This change in chord progression also creates a change in tonality. For the lead guitar part follow this by first shifting into A dorian. Jed takes you through all the notes, but try to bear in mind the various scales we use for this section. It's worth the extra effort as it will really help to give you a grounding in where the melody notes are coming from, and might even help you memorise the part! Finally there's a long climb up A mixolydian to take us back into the main theme. Here are the scales we're using in this section:

Back to the main theme

That mixolydian run up takes us perfectly back into the main theme, which is a repeat of what we covered at the beginning of the lesson, however we end the phrase with a triplet feel instead of the straight feel from the first time round. If triplets are new to you we highly recommend listening to them played over a metronome or drum beat so you can get a real feel for how they sound, if you can't feel a triplet pulse then it will be very hard to play it! In the simplest theory terms, a triplet is where we fit three of a note in where usually you could only fit two. So for example, you can fit two 8th notes into a beat, but you can fit three triplet 8th notes into the same space. It gives us a '1 + a, 2 + a…' feel, compared to the usual '1 + 2 +…' feel.

Final ascent

For the bit run up at the end we are running up the A dorian scale. This is a really long run up so make sure you know every where each note is!

Thank you so much to Jed for breaking this all down for us. It's a big song with a lot to remember so take your time and have fun with it!