Eric Clapton Guitar Techniques

Ex 5 Fingerpicked Inversions
The use of the inversions from exercise four in the intro of Tears In Heaven enables a more interesting bass line to be played, rather than just using standard chord voicings. The F#m chord in bar two and the A chord in bar four must be fingered with barrés in order to execute the hammer-ons and pull-offs.

    


Ex 6 Big Bill Broonzy-Style Fingerpicking
For his cover of William ‘Big Bill' Broonzy's Hey, Hey from Unplugged, Clapton adopts Broonzy's fingerpicking technique of playing a steady bass note on the beat whilst a simple melody is played above it. The bass part is played in quavers: each bass note can be stopped by sticking the thumb back onto the bottom or fifth string. For tonal variety the bass part can be damped with the palm of the right hand.



Ex 7 Robert Johnson-Style Turnarounds
In another display of his blues roots on Unplugged, Clapton begins his version of Robert Johnson's Malted Milk with a standard Johnson introduction and turnaround, similar to that shown in the exercise. A chromatically descending line on the fourth string is played against a static tonic on the top string.