All Along The Watchtower - Electric Guitar Lessonby Jimi Hendrix

All Along The Watchtower is a great song from Jimi Hendrix's album "Jimi Hendrix Experience" released in 1968. This song used to be my morning wake up jam when I was about 13. I'd wake up every morning and put on the Ultimate Experience album and this was the intro track that I would play along with on the guitar before going to school. It has a great split between chord playing and lead playing so you get to do a bit of everything. There's not a lot of single note riffs or motifs that define the melody of this song like most. Instead, the hook is made up of a chord change that's made up of large six string chords. You have to have a really loose style of playing to mimic Hendrix because he had a knack for keeping his picking hand very loose which gave him his great laid back sound. It's also a great example of musical simplicity in your playing. The notes in the solo are relatively simple choices, but the phrasing used with them is very unique. Hendrix would play similarly to how he sang and would give his solos a vocal and emotive quality that really stood out for how expressive it was. In this solo, you'll use a lot of string bends and fast licks with 16th note runs in the pentatonic position. Hendrix also had a great way of using double stops to create tensions and emphasize certain chords, which I'll cover in this lesson.