This is the most faithful Jerry-style playing I have heard from anyone and I have been searching for answers high and low. 👏👏👏👏👏

I had a backstage pass one night in Oakland and heard Jerry ripping 8 tone dominant patterns to warm-up

Dude, this is a badass lesson. So generous of you to do these.

This video has been a revelation for me!! I've been having trouble with the mixo mode just like you described it. You can easily get playing mixo all the time without really thinking what chord goes underneath your playing. I really like how you explained it and I see how this aproach makes you play with intention and really think what are you trying to say with each chord. Thanks for the lesson!

I remember when I figured this out, it ruined my guitar playing for about a year because I had to rethink my whole approach. But I sure am glad I did

Great lesson. First time I've heard Garcia's approach explained in this way and it makes perfect sense. 100% bluegrass inspired.

Brother you are such a beast of a player and an absolute gem of a teacher. Thanks so much for these! 🎸🤘✌️

Respect for using the middle pickup position on your Strat. The least talked about position, but frequently the "Goldilocks" position of round and glassy (neck) and bright attack (bridge)!

Hit it out of the park yet again Jack! I remember the rather scant times Garcia was ever covered or "taught" in Guitar Mags throughout the 80s and 90s, this same overly generalized and flat-out lazy miss-the-mark concept of distilling Garcia's style to just play the Mixolydian mode was trotted out over and over. Talk about taking players down a proverbial dark hollow to flailing aimless noodling. The sculptor of sound that was Jerry G, had the flawless ability to thread phrases together by playing the changes, or that is how I see it and that is what I hear here in your fine approach to breaking down his style of soloing. Truthfully, not only here but in pretty well all your Garcia focussed soloing videos and really beyond. The approach is much like the thinking in jazz and bluegrass, both styles of which Garcia was clearly an erudite student. Now perhaps the Dead repertoire did not always plumb the depths of the sophistication of changes like a Lush Life, Giant Steps or All the Things You Are etc. on the bulk of their tunes. Nonetheless, the thinking of how to approach a Bertha or Estimated Prophet jam was fairly similar to how jazzers and obviously bluegrass musicians do the same. Each chord of let's say a longer duration is treated as a change and deserves its own scale/tailored pool of notes. Slap together some chromatic passing tones you are well on your way to threading the needle to what it was Jerry was up to much more than just play the Mixolydian mode. In essence, mi amigo Jack, what you have done again so well in highlighting here and thankfully putting another nail in the Garcia soloing = Myxolidian myth. To your credit, you have successfully done this over and over as demonstrated in a slew of your videos on both the perhaps simpler 2 and 3-chord jams and moreover on the advanced tunes like Crazy Fingers. I mean even looking at the Garcia Chuck Berry interpretations (which I absolutely loved, and I never could really wrap my head around what he was up to until I saw your excellent detailed take on the style despite the CB tunes being just mostly I IV Vs), Advancing on of course and as much of your material highlights time and again each chord major, minor, dominant or diminished is its own universe and the key is to cull your lines from what best fits each chord and threads to the next in the changes of the song. This lesson is superb in providing a simple 2-chord jump-off for the beginner to the intermediate players to wrap their heads around. I have been playing for 30-plus years this music and I also got something out of it and moreover being reminded of how misguided the Garcia = Myxolidian myth used to be and all too frequently lazily brandished about. Again I cannot thank you enough Jack for your superb content. One of these days when I muster up a thought on what it is I want to learn from you beyond your 100s of videos I will ask you for a lesson. In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying Delaware, absolutely love your videos coming from there and overall in general this is my favourite channel to learn this style of music. Keep up the great and very generous work. Many thanks again, from the fires on the mountains of Spain. Paco

Choosing your lessons on here to learn soloing and improvising was one of the best choices I've ever made. It was intimidating at first and i had no idea what you were talking about for a while, but trying to keep up and not taking the easy route has made all the difference in my playing now. And you're so right about tabs being a waste of time, which is something i probably would've used as opposed to figuring things out on my own. Thanks for everything.

Thank you for an excellent lesson - the major pentatonic add b3 is a great color to add one’s pallet ⚡️🎸🎶 super choice of Bertha as an example of its application 💀🌹

Beautifully done! Thank you!

I’m watching all of your lessons, thank you for the free content, seriously 😊

Great way to look at things. First time I've heard it, too. Thanks, man.

Great lesson. I've watched it multiple times. True of several of your lessons tbh. This gets at such a crucial aspect of soloing well that I am continuing to work towards. The concepts your teaching are consistent with both bluegrass and country guitar lessons Ive taken. Thanks for all you do!

Very well explained -- awesome stuff. Thank you for sharing.

What a great approach to not getting lost in the sauce and a tether to the chord tones....so you can explore without missing the changes ❤️

This spoke to me and will help me break out of the overlay gravy in my playing. Thank you.

wow - thanks, Jack - pretty simple concept once someone explains it as clearly as you did...super helpful ! I'm just getting "good" enough to start exploring some of these soloing ideas and you described me to a tee - smothering stuff with mixo throughout and it just never really sounding like that sweet spot mix of organized yet improvised... your idea observations of tension / resolution really describes the missing pieces so often for me... So appreciate your awesome Dead lessons !

The pro's always make it understandably simple to understand, then harder to play. I guess that's why man created practice!? Great channel, great teacher!

sounds very happy Piano like...no one plays like this anymore....almost a bygone era......thanks for the video

I was just going to request a lesson of this nature: "playing the changes" in songs less complex than finger-busting jazz standards. Now I don't have to. Fabulous!

Awesome. Thx Very clearly communicated and helpful.

Wow, okay the buck stops right here. This is exactly what I've been looking for after wading through countless videos and opinions which have been so far off it's absurd. Thank you so much for the clarity.

thank you for making this one!

Nice lesson. Jerry's solo for Bertha on Skull and Roses is one of my favorites.

Really great lesson!

I learned how to think/play this way you are describing when I learned to play country lead guitar 25 years ago….alot of country is very very similar in thinking…. COOl!!!!

Or image being wonderfuly wisked away too Deleware ??? , HI I'm in Deleware ..... just kidding I'm super greatful for your tasty Snacks !!! They are absolutely Divine , Jack thanks so much for this and tons of love ❤ from Philadelphia!!!

What a great lesson.

Appreciate your insights my man!

Great lesson thank you sir very nice

Thank you, you are an excellent teacher. I appreciate ya a lot. Garcia followed Clarence White a lot in the early days… he just loved Bluegrass. So it makes perfect sense that he evolved improvisational lines the way you’ve described in this lesson.

you’ve earned my sub! great lesson sir. I was just thinking this week how i have only really ever pour the G Mixo gravy on the whole thing, particularly pentatonic at the 12th. Always comes out sounding lost. Going to shed this one again. This really helped, thanks dude! Love the sweet and salty metaphor too

Hey Jack, great lesson. Certainly applicable to us Allman fanatics too.

Hi Jack. Thanks for your tutorials. I stumbled across your site after watching A Long Strange Trip. I’ve always been confused by a I IV vamp and as to which is the correct key. Mixo in C or G did not produce the sound I wanted to hear. Now, your tonal centres clears that up. I’m using your tutorials to inform my Emando playing (after learning some violin as a kid I couldn’t get a grip on the guitar fret board). I’m grateful that you refer to notes and not only fret positions (which are useless to me)? Garcia’s playing and the major pentatonic including a b3 is very much a part of Niles Hokkanen’s bluegrass teaching which you now affirm and show how Jerry uses it. Thanks again.

Thanks for this! You had me at gravy.....

This was a really cool lesson! I got a total perspective shift. I found myself using the flat 3rd to orient me when going up and down the scale.

The rip at 4:24 was sick

The Dead have a good amount of chord progressions that center around the 5 chord which is why everyone defaults to mixo. Bertha is not a song centered around the 5 chord. Mixo works to solo on some of their songs but it is not a 1 size fits all approach. Focusing on chord tones/intervals is always going to sound better no matter what the chord progression is. I like your approach to add in some tension with the flat third. It sounds good!

This is great. as someone newer to improvisation, painting some song with mixo makes it harder for me to think about the building blocks of being melodic, which is really just using the pentatonic scale. I’m more focused on just playing the “correct” notes in the scale or mode. This is a great way to think about it and as you become an expert in this approach I bet you have a much better understanding of when to add those extensions.

Favorite teacher alert! Love the food/flavor theme.. mixolydian gravy

Bingo! That with a bit of chromatics and that is one sweet sauce.

Really great lesson. It's helping me push forward from feeling stuck. I've gotten around to changing over chords and not just playing in a mode, but I was using triads and chord shapes (nothing wrong with that but I was feeling stuck on it). Thinking of the major pentatonic with a flat third just really nailed it for me. I have heard that all over Garcia's playing and just thought of it as chromaticism. That opened things up for me, but it felt kind of wild. Thinking of hunting the flat third has clicked with me. Funny thing is learned to play too many notes by practicing modes. Now I have to undo the muscle memory and try and drop the four and seven more, right? Not sure I got that right. Anyway, when I do, it sounds much more musical. Thanks for the help!

Hey would you do a one-on-one lesson with this material? Would love to see fingerings for the scale in a few different positions to be able to play up and down the neck

great stuff, i was beginning to come to this realization. its really about the notes in the chords themselves, you dont need anything else ahahaha. its so hard to see the notes when jamming, i can see how it takes years to get good at this hahahah.

Great lesson, Jack! It sometimes seems like Garcia rarely played a major third without approaching it from a half step below, though that is probably overstating it a bit. Interesting thought about his tendency originating from the bluegrass G-run. Never quite made that connection, but it totally makes sense.

👉 Jacksnax is the best 👍👍👍

Tremendous video, Jack. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Are you available for remote lessons?

I've been digging your videos. You've given me a bunch of different ideas of how to approach soloing. It never comes off as good as you, but it gives me a strong platform to start from. I'm curious what rig you have that strat plugged into? Sounds really nice! I love your playing man, keep posting videos

Strong opinion is fine, the sounds I'm hearing in this lesson fit a perfect JG GD performance.

So good! And great playing as well! Great discussion. Now how do I learn to play the scales that way?

Let us not overlook the fine Bertha vocals.

That's some spicy honey. Thank you!

Dude thanks for the food analogies....my brain just clicks with your teaching style. How can I get more involved in your lessons? got a patreon with stuff i can download?

Hi Jack, your guitar sounds great, you are a gifted player, but I can't stop staring at the bridge on your guitar Haha!and wondering about the intonation, it sounds spot on, is it? It sounds good to me, you have Garcia down on an exceptional level, very high level, remarkable

Just became the 8k sub

man your rig sounds great. How are you micing your amp for this video?

Great lesson. Jerry does this a lot with the chord changes in Franklin's Tower. Is the b3 from a country blues scale?

"why would I put that in my stew"

Can you link to the other Bertha lesson? I am also interested in Althea (and as I think of it, Cassidy...maybe you could create a GD women playlist haha). Mainly want the prior Bertha lesson to link up the ideas in this lesson. Sorry about the tangent

This is a really great video. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to filter through the modal conversation with this soloing approach. Just to clarify, you are saying you would play the major Pentatonix scale over each cord, with the exception of the third being flattened. Right?

another great lesson. In hindsight you could have started with the lester runs. No doubt getting comfortable with that sound is quite key to the approach you are suggesting.

Great lesson. Am I correct in understanding this to mean playing major blues scale off of each major chords root?

the maj pent plus the minor pent is th mixolidian minus th flat 3rd

Jammie Pants? Aren't those illegal in Delaware? Thanks Jack. Great lesson!!

NICE GUITAR

Question: if the chord is minor, does the same logic apply but using the minor pentatonic instead?

Good stuff cuz “don’t sound like Garcia”

Are you using the flat third as a passing note? Seems like Garcia doesn't dwell on it.

Where is the bertha lesson you mentioned?

How do you get that tone

"third seeking" behavior

I feel like I understand exactly what you're saying but what I think is interesting is I would use every single lick you play for Bertha to show someone how to play like Trey To me the note that you're hammering on and trying to teach here really makes that Vermont jam band sound, and I always felt that Jerry didn't fall into that category of that simple let's add this note lesson Wow I don't think it's as simple as mixolydian either I certainly don't think Jerry was living on this note you keep bringing up Over the years certainly you can hear that that note doesn't matter at all to him I mean the later years he got pretty lazy but you definitely have a certain year down pat but I would not put it on the overall lesson until people realized it was necessary to play like somebody else, Because really that is just a handful of Trey licks over and over

What kind of strat is that?

I think you wouldnt use the G mixolydian any way. Isnt the song in G ?

Dude

Do you ever find it frustrating to teach guitar players who have little knowledge of music theory?

Modes are not the way to play over chords, because following changes means taking away notes from the key that are irrelevant to the shifting tonal centre. Modes contain all the notes of the key and all the ear hears is "key of c" or whatever. It sounds bland and unmusical. Less is more