Soulshine Guitar Lesson

This Larry McCray song, covered by the legendary Allman Brothers Band, is a must-learn if you’re into laid-back blues licks and straightforward chord progressions.

The Intro

Soulshine is in Bb Major, and to play the chord progression of the intro, we’re going to need Bb, F, G minor and Ab.

We’re going to use barre chords, but we’re only using an E shape barre chord for all four of them.

The chord progression is pretty simple, we play all of these chords for a bar, except G minor and Ab, which we play for just two beats each. Don’t forget to play Bb again at the very end!

For the lead, we’re mostly playing shape 1 of the Bb Major pentatonic scale, with some additional notes. We start with a pickup on beat 4, which means you’ll start playing the lead intro before the chord progression begins.

To do that, count yourself in and start playing the lead on beat 4, even if the chords come in on beat 1 of the next bar!

The second half of the lead is very similar in timing, phrasing, and ideas, but everything is played an octave higher. So, instead of visualising shape 1 of Bb Major starting on fret 3, we’ll now visualise it on fret 15!

Again, the lead itself is very similar, but now played on much smaller frets! The only difference between the two parts is the very last phrase, so listen to Jed carefully and make sure you spot that one!

Just like Jed, feel free to play around with the phrasing. Of course, try your best to match the original recording, but once you’ve got it, experiment with different phrases to make them your own!

The Verse

Let’s move on to the verse. We’re going to need a couple of new chords, F and Eb. We could play F like we did in the intro, but let’s change hand position to introduce more dynamics and learn some different voicings. So, instead of using an E shape for that F, we’ll play it with an A shape barre chord, just like Eb.

The structure is again pretty straightforward, we play each chord for two beats, and repeat the first two bars three times before changing the chord progression. That little change leads us into what we’re all waiting for, the chorus!

The Chorus

The chord progression for the chorus is very similar to the verse, but we stay on each chord for four beats instead of two, except for G minor and Ab. The good news is that you don’t have to learn any new chords, as we’ve played all of them before!

The Bridge

Let’s move on to our last section to learn, the bridge! Again, we’re using similar chords to the earlier sections, but we do need one new chord: D minor 7.

To play D minor 7, we’re going to use an A shape barre chord, just so we don’t move too far away from the hand position we’re on.

Let’s look at the structure of the bridge:

The Solo

The solo is very much a blues solo, and Jed is mainly using the Bb Major pentatonic scale as the core of it. Of course, that’s not all! So let’s look at the “Allman Brothers Band scale” that Jed mentions. Essentially, it’s the Major scale without the Major 7th. You could also think of it as the Major pentatonic scale with an added fourth.

Let’s focus on what shape 1 looks like:

The best thing to do is to play around with that scale. Remember that you can (and should!) borrow some ideas from the intro’s solo. For example, playing a pickup line like we did at the start, or jumping between octaves.

And, as Jed says, try to do as much with as little as possible. Find a lick you like and explore variations of it, see how far you can take that idea!