The Lightnin' Hopkins Style - Page 4

by Jim Burger Since these are the 5th-8th bars of a 12-bar blues progression, measures 5 and 6 will be played using an A chord fingering. Again, bars 7-8 are mostly the same as bars 3-4 of the progression, so let's focus on bars 5-6.

Bar 5 features another signature Lightnin' move that is pretty easy to master. You simply start with an A7 fingering and pick on the high string, then lift your finger from the 3rd fret of the 1st string and move it down a string and then back again. cho|x|0|2|2|2|3|A7|cho |cr| Bar 6 is simply picking on an A7 chord. Note the little sweep up on the open strings at the end of bar 6 again, the same little Lightnin' move that we used at the end of the intro!

In bar 8, we have one new little touch compared with bar 4. Since bar 9 of our progression will feature a B chord, we lead into it by working our way up the low part of the E blues scale (using some nice hammer-ons) towards a B note in the last 2 beats of the measure: seq|6_0|6_3|5_0|5_1|5_2|Low E blues|seq