Grateful Dead Guitar Lesson: 7-4-89 Deal Solo - Lesson 2

Part 2 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 2 of 12

Lick 2

In the beginning of this lick, jerry completes the D# diminished arpeggio that he plays on the last lick by landing on the root, D# (13th fret, D string). He slides down from that note and then plucks an open B string. I don’t think he did this intentionally, because the rhythms are banjoish and he’s almost going into autopilot.

He then plays the C shape of A. When Jerry inserts an arpeggio, we’ll see that he doesn’t play a full arpeggio but rather plays just a small fragment of it, in a simple but effective rhythm. I talk about this idea at length in one of my videos where I analyze a Jimmy Herring solo from Mississippi Halfstep Uptown Toodeloo from a Jazz is Dead Record called laughing water. If you’re a Dead fan and a guitar player, I really recommend checking out that video.

So back to our solo. After the little arpeggio, we’ve got some key notes of A mixyolidan here. And also, we have one of his classic triplet pull off licks.
In this pull off lick, Jerry also targets the root of our next chord, which is F# (11th fret, G String).

He then plays the similar licks over the B and D chords.
Over the B chord, this lick denotes B mixolydian – four out of five of these notes are in B mixolydian.

Over the D chord, we have a similar lick, and all of these notes are right out of D mixoydian as well.

To lead into the A chord, we’ve got the A major pentatonic. Notice how jerry plays the 14th fret of the E string, and then lands on the 12th fret of the E string on the first downbeat of the A chord.