Eric Clapton Guitar Techniques

Ex 1 Layla and Old Love Motif
A motif is a short theme with distinctive melodic shape and rhythm, often repeated throughout a song. One of Clapton's most famous motifs is the seven-note introduction to Layla (from Derek and the Dominos' Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs, of course) which was reworked for the introduction of the live version of Old Love from Unplugged. The exercise shows this motif in the key of A minor in three different registers. In Layla the motif is played in three different registers, the phrase that follows it being different in each register.

 

 

Ex 2 Slash Chords
The chord G/C, found in the bridge section of Badge at 1:07 from Cream's Goodbye ('69), is a G chord with a C note at the bottom (it could also be thought of as a Cmajor9 chord without a third and with the ninth placed unusually close to the root). Similarly, G/B is a G chord with a B at the bottom, making it a first inversion. The G voicing as used in exercise three requires avoiding striking the fifth and top strings; damped the strings with your fretting hand to make sure they do not sound. The D5 voicing is the standard open D without the top string.