Grateful Dead Guitar Lesson: 7-4-89 Deal Solo - Lesson 5

Part 5 of a 12 part course on how to play Jerry Garcia's awesome solo from the 7-4-89 Deal with the Grateful Dead. For the free & printable tab of this whole solo, keep scrolling down.

In this lesson, you will learn the guitar techniques that Jerry Garcia uses when improvising. You'll also learn the music theory behind why his licks sound so good.

Jerry Garcia's 7-4-89 Deal Solo with the Grateful Dead – Lick 5 of 12

Lick 5

In lick 5, Jerry uses 6ths to provide a bit of contrast and give our ears something a bit new. Up until now, he’s been focusing on smaller intervals, like 3rds and 5ths.

We’ve got 6ths in the A shape of the A chord. He connects that to the A shape of G.

Then we have a little bit of slight of hand when Jerry gets to the D Chord. He does a classic lick, and then leads our ear to the 5th of the A chord (E, 9th fret G string). The way Jerry sets this up, it almost sounds like he’ll land on the D, but he lands on the 5th of A, giving a great sense of resolution.

Towards the end of the lick, Jerry ends on an A note. Of course, landing on the root will give stability, but notice how even the rhythms are at the end of this. Until this point, we’ve had a lot of cool syncopated rhythms.

But the end of this lick, we have nice quarter notes on beat 1 and 3. This sets us up beautifully for our next phrase, which is a seriously bad ass lick.