Eric Clapton Guitar Techniques

Ex 3 Leslie'd Arpeggios
Clapton explained in the Best Of Guitar Player how the sound of the guitar in the bridge of Badge inspired the part itself: ‘I ran across a man in California who'd developed a pedal which you could play into a Leslie and you'd press a button and your guitar would become an organ. It was the first chorus pedal, really, and the sound of that inspired me to write the bridge.' Notice how arpeggiating the G/C chord in exercise three draws attention to the major second dissonance between C on the fifth string, third fret and the open D string. A Leslie-type effect can be approximated with a chorus pedal.

Ex 4 Inversions
In the intro of Tears in Heaven from the soundtrack to Rush ('92) and Unplugged, Clapton uses inversions alongside standard chord shapes (see exercise five). E/G# is a first inversion E chord with G# at the bottom of the chord; A/E is a second inversion A chord with E at the bottom; D/F# is a first inversion D chord with F# at the bottom. Strictly speaking, the D/E is a slash chord rather than an inversion, indicating a D chord played over an E bass note.