Part 6 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 6 of 12


Lick 6

  • This lick brings us into the second solo.  Jerry starts us off with a killer lick that is based on the A major blues scale.  This lick sounds very different than any other of the licks we’ve heard so far, and that because Jerry suddenly incorporates chromaticism.

  • Specifically, he uses chromaticism to connect some of the chord tones.
  • Over the C#7, Jerry combines this use of chromaticism with another technique – borrowed chord tones.  We start the second half of this lick on the B note (19th fret, E string).  B is the 9th of the A chord, and B is also the 7th of the C#7 chord.

  • Jerry chromatically connects this note to G# (16th fret of E string), which is the 5th of C#7.
  • That means that jerry connects the 9tth of the A to the 5th of C#7. He then goes back up the chromatic scale from the 5th to the 7th.

PDF Tab for Jerry Garcia's 7-4-89 Deal solo with the Grateful Dead: