How to Southern-Fry Your Rock Music and Guitar Playing in 4 Steps.
by Andrew Reilly
February 18, 2009 - 7:20am
Superficially speaking, there may be no more debatable a genre than "Southern rock." Mention those two words to any music aficionado and you'll quickly find yourself hearing how either "Southern" should be construed as a derogatory prefix or how the guy from .38 Special is actually a genius who was too far ahead of his (and our) time to truly be appreciated in the proper context.
Obviously these assertions are both totally incorrect, but in the pantheon of rock guitar, Southern rock may be the one school least commonly associated with either innovation or originality. In truth, some of those good ol' boys were advancing the cause of rock guitar in directions light-years beyond what even some of the more hallowed figures were up to during the same time frame; Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi may have perfected the art of the caveman riff, but Duane Allman and Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ed King easily crushed both when it came time to apply that bare-bones mentality to soloing. Indeed, while Led Zeppelin's stock in trade was blatantly stealing blues songs, their Deep South contemporaries were busy writing their own, throwing in gospel and jazz elements of which heavy metal and prog bands of the day only scratched the surface.
Admittedly, the form hasn't evolved too much since: thirty years on, Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band are still playing "Free Bird" and "Whipping Post" nightly. The case could even be made that any remotely Southern-sounding band to come along since the early 1980s didn't get big because they sounded the way a southern rock band should, but sounded exactly the way other southern rock bands already sounded.
But how did they do it? What made these guys so good at being so Southern? And how can anyone put all that down-home sensibility to good use anymore?
Learn Your Blues Scales, Then Forget Them.
At the core of nearly every blues song, blues jam, blues record and blues solo in existence is the pentatonic scale, built by moving from the root in intervals of a whole note, whole note, whole plus half note, whole note, and completed with a whole note. For example, the G major pentatonic scale would consist of the G, A, B, D and E notes.
However, a key element of distinguishing Southern rock from Southern blues is in the very top of that scale. Conventional blues (and blues-based rock) doesn't extend the scale beyond that fifth note; Southern rock songwriters and players, on the other hand, tend to employ a sixth note to the pentatonic scale borrowed from the seventh step of the corresponding major scale. In simpler terms, the Southern-fried version of the G major pentatonic scale would consist of the G, A, B, D and E notes, as well as F# at the top end.
This semi-sextonic scale is structurally closer to many types of Eastern music than regular blues music, but creates the subtle difference in tonality needed to be Southern rock and not just in a rock band from the South. This becomes especially pronounced and magnified in soloing, as many Southern rock jams draw from the repetition of a four note pattern at insanely high speeds (see the non-melodic parts of Dickey Betts' work on the classic Allmans instrumental "Jessica" or the outro solo of .38 Special's "Hold on Loosely"); the extra note creates an oh-so-subtle differentiation from standard blues jams while staying firmly planted in the genre's blues roots.
Play in Harmony.
The other half of the equation lies in personnel, and a key feature of any great Southern outfit is a preponderance of guitarists. Fills and solos played in perfect unison define much of the Southern rock guitar catalog, and the markedly contrasting tone gives another unique dimension to the style. Given the difficulty in finding a good match in feel and phrasing, it might seem impossible to develop a counterpart for expanded-scale explorations. Luckily, a few simple tweaks and gear acquisitions can create the perfect partner in crime: yourself.
If your amplifier is a true stereo amp with left and right channels, you're already way ahead. By simply tweaking the sound between each channel, you can create the illusion of two guitars even though only one is in use. For example, without muddying up the sound too much, you could lower the treble and boost the mids on one channel while keeping the normal settings intact on the other. Even without the joys of stereo amplification, certain effects can widen your guitar sound enough to at least create the illusion of a multi-guitar attack: harmonizing and pitch shifting pedals can add a layer of guitar tracks on top of yours as you play, and can even be adjusted to repeat notes at a certain interval higher or lower instead of at the same pitch. As with any piece of outboard equipment, these can run from the laughably cheap ($79 for a trusty Boss Harmonizer) to the woefully expensive ($500 for a Dirty Boy Octo '59 octave pedal).
Buy American.
The Gibson-versus-Fender, Les Paul-versus-Stratocaster debate is played out to death in most guitar-driven schools of music, but most also allow room for other guitar makers to shine. Classic rock, metal, blues, hard rock, are just as littered with Telecasters and Rickenbackers as they are with the two heavyweights of six-stringdom. Not so when it comes to the rock of the South.
The cynical, stereotype-embracing assertion would be that this is an extension of much of the South's other divisions of loyalty (Chevy/Ford, Hatfield/McCoy, Louisiana/Tabasco, etc.), but in truth the Strat and the Paul both have important sonic qualities that lend themselves greatly to Southern-style boogie.
The Strat's noted cutting tone, for starters, stands out against the busy arrangements of many of the five-, six-, and seven-piece lineups populating the Southern rock universe, allowing a band to embrace a huge and diverse sound while remaining guitar-based. Conversely, the Les Paul's fatter and more sustain-heavy tone works better against the slower, bluesier jams, and its built-in separate pickup controls allow for more experimentation with volume swells and texture shifts than the Strat's standard either-or-both pickup selector. Other guitar makers have of course implemented elements of both of these instruments, but the truest way to sound like a Strat or a Paul, sadly, remains to actually play a Strat or a Paul.
Don't Worry About Actually Being From the South.
This is probably the most crucial piece of the puzzle. It's true most of the greats and forefathers came from the American south: the Charlie Daniels Band, Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet and the Dixie Dregs, to name a few. But with time, "Southern rock" has come to refer less to geography and more to a feel and a musical sensibility. And although most modern Southern-influenced artists are from a wealth of locales (Robert Randolph is from New Jersey, Kid Rock is from Detroit, and the Steepwater Band is from Chicago), those mighty Allman Brothers first came to prominence playing around San Francisco and recording their most famous album live in New York City. The song claims "the South's gonna do it again," but what old Charlie forgot to mention was that everyone else was gonna do it again as well, and that they're still carrying on those Southern godfathers' work.
That's not to say the originators aren't still hard at work – witness Molly Hatchet, for example, currently forging ahead with none of the original members on board – but the sound has continued on most modernly through Tennessee's Kings of Leon, Seattle-based Band of Horses, and the Georgia-by-way-of-Alabama Drive-By Truckers.
As with most roots genres, a lot of the excitement is still bubbling just beneath the surface. Austin, TX-based Nick Kraus and His Austin Torpedoes recently released The Tragic Tale of Kim and Polly Jean, a remarkably strong batch of songs merging the best elements of Southern boogie with chorus-soaked roadhouse blues. Another Austin rocker, Rick Blincoe, put time-honored tales of bad guys and evil women into the self-produced Don't Bet the Farm, adding some outlaw country flavor to the Southern recipe.
But as perhaps the greatest testament to the genre's reach and the less-than-strict geographic definition of Southern rock, Natchez released the fairly highly-acclaimed Catch the Spirit, the group's tenth independent album in their twenty year career. More than their longevity, the group has attracted notice for their lyrics – songs about booze and ladies, to be sure, but all in the group's native language as learned in their hometown of Champagne-Ardenne, France. The South may indeed do it again, but they're certainly not going to do it alone.
http://www.madeloud.com/article/718