Stevie Ray Vaughan Style Raking
The icon of Texas Blues, Stevie Ray Vaughan was not only a ferocious lead guitar player, but he also had a very unique approach to rhythm guitar. In this lesson we’re going to break down his iconic Texas Blues shuffle style.
This involves using the fretting hand to play a series of ascending and descending notes combined with a muted strike in a triplet shuffle feel.
Although on paper this looks like eighth notes, it needs to be thought of as an 8th note triplet feel. Imagine you’re playing three notes on each beat of the bar. This is a triplet. You’d count this as “1 & a 2 & a etc…”.
For this riff, you’ll be playing the fretted notes on the beat and the muted upstrokes on the “a”.
The fretted notes come from the E Dorian scale, which is a minor leaning scale with a natural 6 instead of the usual b6 you’d find in a minor scale.
Get used to playing the ascending and descending run on the beat before adding the muted notes in.
The mutes are played on the “a” before the next beat, but if you play it in a straight triplet style, it feels too clinical and dry. Stevie would often hang back on this note and play it slightly late to give the push into the next fretted note a little more urgency. Check out the linked video for a full description of this technique.
When practising this, start off slow and then gradually increase the speed as you lock in the feel. You can also apply this technique to your own Texas blues style riffs. Just replace the E Dorian notes of this riff with a series of notes from the scale/key of your choosing and get that instant SRV feel to anything.
If you enjoyed this riff, check out the other Classic Riff lessons on the Blackstar Youtube channel.