Fort Lauderdale Guitar Lesson: Mississippi Queen by Mountain

For our next lesson I decided to cover the epic classic rock song “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain.  For equipemt on this recording, the guitarist Leslie West used a Gibson blues Junior loaded with a P90’s thru a Sun Amp PA head (it wasn’t even a guitar amp!)  He accidently discovered this massive sound when his booking agency sent him the wrong equipment at his gig at the Fillmore West.  For equipment in this video I used a Gibson Les Paul Traditional Pro with an Analogman King of Tone into a Billm modified Blues Junior with a Heritage Greenback speaker.  It sounded get when I shot and I think the video captured the sound well.

This is an intermediate to advanced lesson so I move rather quickly thru the positioning.  Let me apologize if you are a beginner that is trying to use this video blog to learn the song.  I realize that I am moving rather quickly thru the material but I am doing this as to not have the advanced players bored to tears.

Watch this Fort Lauderdale guitar lesson video of “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain from Dyce Kimura 

The opening riff in this song is a powerful statement of what is to come; then comes in the intro solo which is really rhythmic and driving in the E major scale.   At the very end he switches the scale to minor which I think is really cool.

There are a lot of really sassy and nasty licks in the guitar of this song.  You really won’t fully appreciate this song unless you actually PLAY it all the way thru-or even better, learn to play it WITH the Mountain track playing.  Only then will you fully appreciate the driving power of this track.

The timing can be challenging-especially of those guitar students who have not learned how to syncopate or ride the “back beat.”  Therefore let that be a focal point for you if this is an area of weakness.

It is important to work thru this song slowly piece by piece.  Then try to put the pieces together using a drum machine metromone.  I suggest a drum machine because metronomes tend to be rather dry.  If you don’t have a drum machine, you can access one for free online at http://www.onemotion.com/flash/drum-machine/.

I also suggest downloading the guitar pro tabs for this song and slowing down the temp to half speed and slowly work your way up.  The worst thing you can do in my opinion is try to learn the song without learning the rhythm.  How do you know if you got the rhythm?  Simple.  Can you play it WITH the song?  If the answer is no, I would go back and try the suggestions I made for you.

I hope you enjoy learning this song (Mississippi Queen by Mountain)!  It is a lot of fun to play jam to once you get the hang of the rhythm.

Remember you can always catch me on Skype as well as face to face if you live in Fort Lauderdale!

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