Song of the week · October 5, 2026

Little Wing

Jimi Hendrix

After spending last week on the shuffle groove of Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Pride and Joy," it felt only right to go back to one of Stevie's biggest heroes, Jimi Hendrix. Stevie even cut his own instrumental take on "Little Wing," and once you dig into Jimi's original you can hear why. Instead of driving a rhythm, this one is all about dressing up each chord with little fills, double stops and triad fragments, that R&B and soul approach Jimi picked up from players like Curtis Mayfield.

You'll build real fretting-hand control by working hammer-ons, pull-offs and pinkie fills right into your chord shapes, and you'll start seeing double stops and triad fragments all over the neck. The solo is a great lesson in following the changes with the minor pentatonic as the chords move, not just looping a 12-bar box, and that skill carries over to almost any style you play.

Chords

Rhythm

No fixed pattern: about one beat of strummed chord, then a melodic fill (slow, 60 BPM, swing 16ths feel)

Works on

Hammer-on, pull-off and pinkie fills on chord shapes · Double stops and triad fragments · Minor pentatonic soloing that follows each chord

Warm up with

Triad visualizer — Map the Em, G, Am, Bm, C and D triads on the top three strings between the 5th and 9th frets, then improvise fills moving between those shapes, keeping a metronome at 60 BPM.

A week with this song

1. Days 1–2: Tune down a half step and learn the plain progression with the chart voicings at about 50 BPM, cleaning up the Bm–Bb–Am and G–Fadd9 moves.
2. Days 3–4: Work through JustinGuitar Part 1 and learn the intro embellishments one chord at a time with the record, finding the triad on top of each shape that the fills come from.
3. Day 5: Work through Parts 2 and 3 and learn the solo note-for-note in short phrases, noting which chord each phrase is over and which chord tones it lands on.
4. Days 6–7: Play along with the record, slowed down if needed, then improvise your own fills and solo targeting each chord's tones.