Jeff Beck is the guitar players' guitar player. He has been a staple in the guitar scene since bursting into the '60s British blues revival scene. He’s known for his huge catalogue of solo work alongside his work with the Yardbirds and Rod Stewart.
Beck is an extremely expressive musician. He digs in and makes his Strat scream and whisper in ways that many other guitar players struggle to imitate.
Underneath the onslaught of aggressive bends, whammy bar movements and trills you’ll also find some killer chords. We’re going to check out four here from some iconic Jeff Beck tracks.
D/F#
This unusually stacked triad is featured in the song People Get Ready. In the song, Jeff also pulls the 3rd fret on the B string off to the 2nd which revoices the chord to an F#m triad.
This is an interesting way to play a triad because you get the root as the highest note and the third as the lowest. You could also transpose this shape up the neck to get other inversions of major triads.
Jeff Beck: classic interview
Daug
Beck’s 2020 collaboration track Isolation with Johnny Depp features a Daug chord in the intro of the song. An Augmented chord is when the 5th of the chord is raised a semi-tone.
Augmented chords are not chords you’d want to use all the time, but they are great for setting a sense of tension in a riff. In this riff, the Daug follows a Dmaj chord.
Use these sparingly, the same way you’d use a diminished chord.
5 songs guitarists need to hear by… Jeff Beck
Gadd9
This Gadd9 chord found in Beck’s version of Greensleeves is a very melodic chord. It’s played across three strings, the Low E, G and high E. The Low E covers the root note, the G covers the major third and the high E the add9 note.
This is a great, and transposable, shape for adding some melodic chord work to your finger picked patterns.
Fm11
The very first chord you hear in the track Led Boots is this Fm11 chord. This is a great, jazzy chord to add to your songs.
The min11 is a complex chord voicing that works great as the 4 or 5 chord in a 12-bar blues progression. It adds a jazzy feel to that progression which is great if you want to experiment with some more harmonically complex chords or note choices over a typical blues progression.
