# How to Play Jimi Hendrix Axis:Bold As Love



## CrazyMisfit (Mar 9, 2007)

So I bought this DVD today from Guitar World thinking hey great I can watch and learn the Axis:Bold As Love album. I open the booklet and watch the DVD which is great...but where the heck is the notation for the songs?!  Man, I that kinda bummed me out. It's so hard to learn how to play those songs just from watching a guy play and give some explanation to the parts.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

I bought this too and think it is awesome. For $12.52 it's a no brainer! 

It does take some time to follow him and watch his hands but it can be done. Often he will come back to something if you let the dvd play a little bit. For the money, it cannot be beat.

TG


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

or put that album on your stereo every night when you go to sleep for six months- guaranteed to work


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## CrazyMisfit (Mar 9, 2007)

traynor_garnet said:


> I bought this too and think it is awesome. For $12.52 it's a no brainer!
> 
> It does take some time to follow him and watch his hands but it can be done. Often he will come back to something if you let the dvd play a little bit. For the money, it cannot be beat.
> 
> TG


I do agree with you, its a great DVD! But it would have been nice to have some tabs or notations or something. I guess it forces me to really practice that much harder, which is never a bad thing :wink:


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## Stratin2traynor (Sep 27, 2006)

I bought it too and was a little disappointed that there was no tab but I have some of the songs in tab anyways. My main problem with learning some of Hendrix's stuff is the transitions between shapes and locations. It's helped me a lot. Still trying to master "Bold as Love" and "Wait till Tomorrow". Gotta get back to practicing now....:rockon2:


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## dhutchings (Feb 16, 2007)

I picked it up and I do like the visual instruction...but it would have been nice to include some notation on the DVD, even just as .txt files that you could copy onto your computer. 

Without it, I'll definitely learn it much slower.


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## traynor_garnet (Feb 22, 2006)

I don't really like tab so this is much better. YOU still have to figure stuff out but that's kind of cool because you end up training your ear a bit in the process too.

This dvd wouldn't be very good for a beginning player though: too much taken for granted.

TG


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

For me, reading tab can be like getting my teeth drilled, without anesthetic. I know, I have to get new glasses, but they cost me $750. I'm more of a visual person. And I don't count tab as being visual. Still looks like I'm gonna have to get those glasses though.

Sorry about going off topic here.


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## zinga (Apr 22, 2007)

it is nice to watch dvd or read tabs but you can not beat writing your own songs just make it up :banana: i am a newbie love this site.


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## CrazyMisfit (Mar 9, 2007)

zinga said:


> it is nice to watch dvd or read tabs but you can not beat writing your own songs just make it up :banana: i am a newbie love this site.


Welcome! Yeah this place rocks! :rockon2:


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## violation (Aug 20, 2006)

So let me get this right, you have:

Video with explainations + 2 ears + a PC with Windows?

Solution is simple.

Open notepad, draw out your tab diagrams (just lines, no numbers yet)... open the video in whatever media program of choice (I use MPC, free and works great... VLC is another good option) and skip to the part you want. He shows the first note or chord, pause the video, tab it out, resume video for the next part, pause the video, tab it out and just repeat until it's all done. 

I do this a lot, I usually have a guitar in my hands while I'm doing it so after I pause the video, I play it and make sure it sounds right. If it does, I tab it. If it doesn't, I watch it again and see what I did wrong. 

For example, I'm a huge Zakk Wylde fan and awhile back he did a video for Young Guitar showing the solos / riffs from the Shot to Hell album... no tabs and he's definetly not the best teacher in the world (too much alcohol, haha). So I took a couple hours and tabbed them out. Same goes for some "Lick Library" videos I've downloaded.

Hope that helps.


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## Robboman (Oct 14, 2006)

I wonder if John Mayer bought that DVD.. seems I read somewhere that he did a few shows with his trio that were a live performance of the whole Axis album end to end. 

Related... here's something he posted on his site today.

FRIDAY, MAY 04, 2007

JIMI HENDRIX


I was listening to Jimi Hendrix in the car today - which in Los Angeles means that I spent a lot of time listening to Jimi Hendrix today -when, to paraphrase the movie White Men Can't Jump, I stopped listening and started hearing Jimi.

I was zoning out to one of the many CDs cobbled together from studio outtakes when I began to wonder how Hendrix could play guitar for so long and still manage to keep me interested. His extended jams sometimes stretched out for longer than ten minutes, and still it all seemed necessary. ('Jam' doesn't really describe Hendrix's playing because it suggests something of less worth than he was actually engaged in.)

So the question posed to myself became 'how?' How did Hendrix get away with sticking so many landings in his soloing while the rest of the guitar playing world are left saddled in their own self-doubt? Was it the drugs? Well, maybe, but in my experience drugs never elevated people beyond their inborn capacity. Was it because he was the first to have assembled the perfect amalgam of Elmore James and The Big Bang, therefore relieving him of constant comparison to someone before him? This is harder to discount, but it's better covered in what I believe is the real explanation.

Jimi Hendrix, whether by chemical escapism or by the luxury of singularity that discovery offers, never played guitar sheepishly. He was so rooted in 'now' (which unfortunately at its most immediate sounding is still only best known as 'then') that he never read over his own ticker tape while he played. Maybe after, sure - that's where self-betterment stems from - but in the act, when thinking about yourself does you no good, there was no judgment. By not considering the expression worthless, he made it momentous.

And maybe that's one of the many things I have left to learn. Maybe I need to bend a note without concurrently wondering if it's going to reach the right pitch; maybe I just start closing my eyes and bending away. And with statistics showing that over 90 percent of my readership doesn't know what a minor pentatonic scale is, I bet this is worth transposing into non-musical terms. So here goes: close your eyes, get out of your own way, and JAM.


POSTED BY JOHN MAYER AT 02:51 AM FROM LOS ANGELES, CA


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## dhutchings (Feb 16, 2007)

violation said:


> So let me get this right, you have:
> 
> Video with explainations + 2 ears + a PC with Windows?
> 
> ...


And when I've got 30 extra hours each and every day, I'll be sure to do that. It comes down to available time. I just haven't got it between work, commuting, trying to learn me some music theory, trying to practice to get better at playing, time with my wife, trying to fit in some socializing time, trying to do some outside work on the house and lawn now that the weather's better...

For the hobbyist, it would have been nice to have this done already is all I'm saying.


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## Rumble_b (Feb 14, 2006)

So I guess I'm not the only one that bought the DVD!!! Seems like a lot of you did. I'm not mad that there is no tabs with, I kinda figured that they wouldn't come with it for that price. Plus I had just got the axis music book not to long ago so I have all the tabs!


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## dhutchings (Feb 16, 2007)

Rumble_b said:


> So I guess I'm not the only one that bought the DVD!!! Seems like a lot of you did. I'm not mad that there is no tabs with, I kinda figured that they wouldn't come with it for that price. Plus I had just got the axis music book not to long ago so I have all the tabs!


For what it's worth, I'm not mad, just a little annoyed. It's just going to take longer for me to learn the songs, is all.


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## violation (Aug 20, 2006)

dhutchings said:


> And when I've got 30 extra hours each and every day, I'll be sure to do that. It comes down to available time. I just haven't got it between work, commuting, trying to learn me some music theory, trying to practice to get better at playing, time with my wife, trying to fit in some socializing time, trying to do some outside work on the house and lawn now that the weather's better...
> 
> For the hobbyist, it would have been nice to have this done already is all I'm saying.


You don't need 30 hours a day, learn to prioritize.

No one says you have to tab a whole track out at once. I mean, you wouldn't learn it all and run through the entire song building speed would you? No, you break it down piece by piece riff by riff and slowly work it out then link all them together as you progress. Consider tabbing it out part of your theory for the day. Ear training is one of the most important things anyway. 

Watching John Petrucci play, as well as his instructionals has inspired me to do exactly what he did while learning (and he still does this). Figure out how much time you have to play, figure out what you need or want to work on and turn them into categories. Example:

- 2 hours to play

- need to work on music theory

- build up alternate picking

- work on some riffs

- just jam it up

Just divide how much time you have to play by how much categories you've got... 2 hours, 4 things to work on, 30 minutes each category. 

I'm not saying you have to completely dedicate music theory to working out the tracks, but you could take like 15 minutes of the 30 minutes you'd have to practice to tab some out and use the other 15 for whatever you were previously working on. Think about it... 15 minutes a day for a week will probably get you ATLEAST half a track tabbed out and ready to play.

As you're tabbing it out, open up the text file and for your "work on some riffs" learn what you have tabbed out. Once you've got that part or progression down use the rest of the time to work on tabbing the next part out. That way you'll get even more tabbing time / ear training.

Which song off the album do you want? I'll give it a try, without the video though.


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## dhutchings (Feb 16, 2007)

violation said:


> You don't need 30 hours a day, learn to prioritize.
> 
> Just divide how much time you have to play by how much categories you've got... 2 hours, 4 things to work on, 30 minutes each category.
> 
> ...


Looking at it from that perspective...that's a damned good idea. If I used the process of tabbing out (and playing) the instructional DVD as my practice instead of in addition to my practice...yeah, that could definitely make a world of difference.

Thank you.


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## AJ6stringsting (Mar 12, 2006)

*It's only Rock n Roll*

That's kind of jacked up that they didn't include Tab/Notation. But, look on the bright side bro, you'll work on your visual association !!!!. When you work on your sight of the guys playing on the video slow it down mentally, play it slowly and booyah.........dude you're on your way !!!!. Then when you're in a band you can learn from other musicians teaching you parts, or writting songs with you :rockon2:...........


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## washburned (Oct 13, 2006)

I wore a hole in the Pause button on my CD player trying to learn that one!


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## theunforgettablefire (Nov 7, 2007)

> That's kind of jacked up that they didn't include Tab/Notation.


I think I recall Andy Aledort saying (on some online forum) that they couldn't include the tab because Hal Leonard has the copyrights to it and wouldn't license it without a fee (which would've probably jacked up the cost of the DVD by $20) or something like that...

I ordered the full "Experience Hendrix" notation book, including bass and drums. It has a ton of his best songs, and even though I am a beginner with electric guitar, I have gotten so much from the book.


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## Stratin2traynor (Sep 27, 2006)

I was practicing last night with that DVD and found that I much prefer learning this way. One problem I have with tabs is trying to figure out the "correct" or most appropriate fingerings - watching this video makes it a non-issue.


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## definitelymaybe1991 (Dec 18, 2007)

it takes a while but learning by ear is reallly useful guys lol, don't use your sight as much as your ears, is what my teacher taught me lol

for jimi, i learned a little bit of Little Wing by ear. i learned pretty much all of Can't Stop by RHCP by ear. it's not hard really, just reallllly LISTEN lol. it may sound retarded reading it, but just after yo uread this go sit down and listen to it and you'll be able to imagine it =)


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