Grateful Dead Music Forum

I am a mediocre player that wants to add more interesting riffs to my playing. For DMF I can play the simple riff that ends each verse. I've seen D&C play Dear Mr. Fantasy a few times and John always seems to add a few simple licks/solos, and would like to do the same. I assume they play the song in G. Any help tabbing this out is appreciated, or any ideas for short solos (doesn't have to be an exact John version). Thanks!

Hi. Here are a few things to note about this:
1) It's in C
2) Tonal Center is G
3) Supporting riffs and phrases come from:
- C major scale / G mixolydian scale (they are the same notes but modes are relative to the tonal center)
- "Playing the changes" so G major over the G, F major over the F, C major over the C
- combining them

Try doing those 2 things. Buy a looper pedal. Soloing is a language. Learning scales is the alphabet. Start small. Receipt the alphabet. Then think small words. Then grow into sentences. Then into paragraphs. Then into speeches!

This guy has a nice breakdown, albeit a full step up as Traffic played it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnRSMviZ8zs

Jerry and John differ in the weight that their influences bring to the Grateful Dead's songs. In particular how they both filtered the blues differently through their influences. While Jerry was a bluegrass player at heart, John Mayer is a modern blues player at heart so if you like that sound you need to absorb the blues starting from SRV and then sprinkling some BB King and Freddie King flavours. To nail John Mayer's dead-style you really need to stress that minor\major blues sound over the dominant chord. He does this by bending B and high E strings a lot. Jerry, more in bluesgrass style, prefers to play the 3rd minor going into the 3rd major with a passing note.

What makes John Mayer dead-sounding is also the ability to splash this heavy blues influences with some jerry-isms and even more importantly the ability to follow the changes.

to recap, in short:

1: Electric and Modern Blues as primary vocabulary
2: Jerryisms
3: Follow the changes (!)