In this bite-sized lesson, Derek Trucks gives you some insights on incorporating natural and artificial harmonics into your slide lines.

When Bob Marley brought the Jamaican sounds of reggae to the U.S. in the early Seventies, he created a musical revolution. His first two Island Records releases, Catch a Fire and Burnin’ (both issued in 1973), included the hits “Stir it Up,” “Get Up, Stand Up” and the mega-smash “I Shot the Sheriff,” which when covered in 1974 by Eric Clapton helped catapult Marley to international acclaim.

Last month we examined the role of the picking hand, particularly the use of bare fingers, in creating dynamics and adding dimension to your phrasing. Early in the electric blues era, this bare-handed approach was especially popular among “down-home” (rural southern) players, who also developed a variation on bare-fingered technique called chicken pickin’. The musical potential of imitating hens clucking in a barnyard may be somewhat limited, but the technique also opens the door to a variety of funky, percussive phrases.

In this edition of In Deep, we’ll examine some of the signature elements of the brilliant blues-rock guitarist Gary Moore’s stunning, immediately identifiable guitar style.