What I've Learned from Dereck Trucks

I happened to be introduced to Dereck Trucks by my mentor for this project about a year ago while we were working on building our guitars. Since then he has become maybe my second favourite guitarist and has really inspired me to be able to solo. Few people can express so much emotion through an electric guitar, and that is something I aspire to be able to do even just a little bit. The way I see it, there's not much other reason to even play a guitar, or any instrument period. He has said himself that he cares a lot more about moving people than he does about showing them what he can do with his fingers, and it shows. Although he primarily uses a slide in his soloing, there are definitely a few things I can learn from him even when not using a slide. The biggest thing I take from his solos is difficult to explain but I will try. He has a way of forming a phrase, or a "lick" if you want to call it, and really establishing those few notes as the basis for his solo. He then plays around those notes, and always comes back to some form of them. His little spurts around the base often get longer and longer, and reach higher and higher, but they always come back to the original "lick". This seems to give the solo a theme, and seems to be his way of really saying something through a solo. The other thing I've learned from him is that even though he uses the slide to play a lot of notes that you can barely hear, no note is wasted. He never plays a note for the sake of playing another note, if that makes sense. One thing that bothers me about a lot of guitarists is that they seem to just play as many notes as they possibly can and call that a good solo. Dereck Trucks, however, never does this. Each note adds to the feeling of the solo, and is another carefully chosen word in what he is trying to say. This fascinates me. It's also difficult to practice because it's very unspecific, but what I've tried to do is pick a simple lick from one of his solos, and then play around with it, changing maybe one or two notes each time, but make sure each note added is purposeful. The final thing that I didn't originally learn from Trucks, but that he has probably influenced me to do more is not using a pick. I find that there are so many more dynamic ranges that you can get without a pick, and I generally just hate the tone of picks. You feel a lot more part of the guitar when you use your fingers, and I like that.