Wee Wee Hours Guitar Lesson

First up, before you start watching Thomas's video, you will hear him talk about the Chuck Berry course a lot as he works through the lesson. This is, as you may have guessed, because we have an incredible Chuck Berry course, and if you are not working through a pathway, where you will have done the course first before this lesson, be sure to do exactly that! This lesson will be so easy to pick up once you've completed the course, so I strongly advise that order!

Wee Wee Hours Rhythm

This track is a "slow blues in G", which is a familiar way of saying this is a 12/8 song in the key of G blues. 12/8 simply means that you have twelve 8th notes per bar. It's important to note that as we work through this lesson, our focus will be on the ideas Chuck Berry is using, rather than the exact placement of them in the song.

So, just to start with the intro, we have a cool descending line for the turnaround. This is all based around that core G minor pentatonic scale, but with some additional chromatic notes, as outlined here:

Once we've performed the turnaround, we're into the main twelve-bar. We're using an I, IV, V progression as you would expect, and in the key of G blues that gives us the chords G7, C7 and D7. We can also float in some 9th chords here and there, to add a bit of spice. That gives us | G7 | C9 | G7 | G7 | C9 | C9 | G7 | G7 | D9 | D9 | G7 C9 | G7 D9 |. Just in case you need that bigger…

What's really interesting is that Chuck is doing his typical shuffle blues idea over these changes, just played a whole lot slower. We're even counting in 4 over the top of this 12/8 rhythm, which looks like this:

You don't need to get too down and dirty with the complexity of time signatures; it's more about a feel. Depending on the part you are playing it may make more sense to count in 6's, but in this case, counting in 4's is great! So, let's take a look at that classic blues shuffle, and the following is just an example of how that might look over the G7 chord:

The rhythm licks!

Next up, it's time to grab a few cool mini licks that you can put into the track as part of the chord part. Thomas dives into a few options for you, all taken from this song. However, you can use these ideas in any blues or rock and roll context. The important thing is that you assign them to a specific chord shape, so that you know that wherever that chord shape goes, you use these licks alongside it. Here is one example:

The solo

Next up, we can take a look at the solo. Now, once again, there isn't too much point in trying to piece this whole thing together exactly as Chuck plays it. There are multiple reasons for that, with the first being that he's playing alongside a piano, so it's quite hard to hear it properly. The second being that Chuck will play it differently in every show, so being able to improvise with these licks is a better learning curve.

As Thomas walks you through the various licks, I want you to try to remember the following two pentatonic shapes. We are mainly rooted around that box 1 minor pentatonic, but we also use the box 4. On top of that, we regularly use that major 6th interval, pulled straight from the major pentatonic. This is the kind of content we cover more in the full course, as well as our blues courses! Here are the shapes:

There we have it! You now have all the various pieces of a blues puzzle that you can gradually put together. Remember that improvising with these ideas takes time and experience. So be sure to be playing around with the licks, over jam tracks and other Chuck Berry songs as often as you can! See you in the next lesson.