Inspired by SRV

Hi guys! My name is Alberto Catasso and I'm 21 years old. I am Italian and this is my first lesson! I've played since I was 9 years old. My project band is called Black Jack (www.blackjackband.it). It's a power trio.

I played as guitarist for Bobby Dixon, Spy Austin and other various blues artist. I played with Black Jack at Mountreux jazz festival, Pistoia blues festival, Magic blues festival, before Joe Bonamassa and we do some Europe tour in Austria, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland…

My favourite guitar players are Jimi Hendrix, Paul Gilbert, Ollie Halsall (from Patto), Warren Haynes, Rory Gallagher, Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Harring, Jimmy Page, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Stef Burns and many others!

I'm so glad to work for guitar master class!

This lesson is inspired by one of the most important blues guitarists: Stevie Ray Vaughan!
My first advice for you is that it isn't important what kind of amp and what kind of guitar you use but your hands and your intention on guitar are fundamental!

Obviously, to play SRV you must have a fender or similar guitar with single coil but you mustn't have a Stratocaster made in 1966!

For this video I use a simple Fender Stratocaster standard (1988) with Texas Special single coil, 0.11 strings and a LAA Custom amp (Dual Mono Head) produced by my Italian friend Carlo Sorasio (www.laa-custom.com).

To find a similar SRV sound you can use the crunch channel of amp (or a overdrive pedal into the clean channel) with middle at 11 o’ clock, the treble at 1 o'clock and bass at 2 o'clock (every amp have its sound but this is a general option to begin).

For solo you can use the Ts-9 of Ibanez or similar to change the volume with a little bit of drive and more middle in your sound like Stevie!

SRV style is based on the shuffle and his right hand is fantastic! More songs like Pride and Joy, Cold Shot, Mary had a little lamb… is difficult to play because you must be very good to play the rhythm line before the solo!

The solo is obviously difficult because the sound of Stevie is fantastic!

Reminder: you aren't Stevie Ray and you can play and study his song because they are fantastic but you must internalized his style and use with your personality! This is very important! The intention of right hand is important! You must imagine a circular movement that you can see or listen good on Pride and Joy. In my exercise you have a riff that you must play with this idea to sound like Stevie.

Look my right hand. You can see the circular intention of rhythm line. It's the shuffle. To play the rhythm lines you must peak heavy on the strings!

The solo is composed by use of E pentatonic scale, the third major and minor, fifth flat… I search to explain that in the single video solo lesson. Obviously the solo must be picked hard with bluesy intention! I think that you can use the string 0.11 to have a big sound like SRV who uses 0.12 or 0.13.

The best Stevie-listening are Texas Flood, Couldn't stand the weather, the video Live at Austin Texas and Live at Mocambo.

Good lesson!