Grateful Dead Guitar Lesson: 7-4-89 Deal Solo - Lesson 1

Part 1 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.

Although I do try my best to emulate his sound and tone for this lesson, I promise you that these licks will sound great regardless of the equipment you are using.

Jerry Garcia's 7-4-89 Deal Solo with the Grateful Dead – Lick 1 of 12

Lick 1

This lick starts with a rake, where Jerry is holding a chord position down, and rakes his pick across the strings. We have a downstroke rake, and then an upstroke on the final A note.

Jerry is raking up the C shape of the A chord.

For the next part of the lick, Jerry is hinting at the F# harmonic minor over the C#7 and F#m chord. This is a classic approach in bebop, which Jerry was a huge fan of.

This sets him up nicely for the next phrase, which is based out of the E shape of the C#7 Chord.

Notice that he connects the 5th of A (9th fret, G string) which is the note E, to the the 3rd of C#7 (10th fret, G string), which is the note E#.

Now you may be thinking, “Did this ignorant son of a bitch just say E#, doesn’t he mean F?”

YES, my friends, the major 3rd of C#7 is, E#. The reason behind this is beyond the scope for this lesson, but if you’d like me to make a video about it, let me know in the comments of the lesson on Youtube. So let’s get back to the magic of Jerry’s playing.

Like I mentioned previously, he he connects the 5th of A to the the 3rd of C#7, and then goes right up the arpeggio shape.

He then hints at a bit of a C# mixolydian sound here, where he glides past the b7th and 13th to the 5th of C#7.

After that, Jerry targets the 3rd of F#m, which is the A note (10 fret B string). We have another little hinting of F# harmonic minor here too.

Over the Next two chords, Jerry switches up his approach. Up until now, he’s really been targeting chord tones. Over the E and D chords, he plays a fragment of the A major pentatonic over both chords. He creates a little motif and repeats it a couple times. Now, this does go by fast, but our ear definitely picks up on this. Also, notice that this lick focuses on the 3rd of the D chord, which is F# (11th fret G string).