It’s fair to say that among fusion aficionados, John McLaughlin is the father of jazz-rock guitar.
His experiments with complex harmony, Eastern scales, and chromaticism in conjunction with the rigs associated with the rock and proto-metal players of the late 1960s and early 70s, such as a Les Paul and Marshall stack, cemented his position as the well-spring of fusion guitar at a crucial moment in 20th-century music’s evolution.
In some ways, the guitar had always lagged behind other instruments, both conceptually and harmonically, as a cutting-edge voice in jazz. Despite the harmonic sophistication of leading players like Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall, George Benson, and Pat Martino, a gap had grown between post-bop saxophone players such as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman and their counterparts in the guitar world. Somehow, jazz guitar had fallen behind in the post-modal environment of jazz at that time.
Enter John McLaughlin, whose early experiments on Extrapolation came to the attention of Tony Williams and then, in turn, Miles Davis. Miles recruited McLaughlin as his foil for the groundbreaking albums In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew in 1969 and 1970 respectively.
McLaughlin presented the guitar as a textural instrument on the former record, avoiding bebop clichés and standard jazz guitar chord voicings.
McLaughlin’s reputation was cemented in his band The Mahavishnu Orchestra, where his musical vision was able to take flight abetted by Billy Cobham and Jan Hammer. The albums Inner Mounting Flame (1971) and Birds Of Fire (1972) announced that fusion, and fusion guitar itself, had arrived. Its complex time signatures, mixed modality, and Eastern sounding riffs pointed the way for progressive rock and metal.
McLaughlin’s ferocious picking and mastery of the fretboard raised the bar for what could be achieved on the guitar, putting it back at the forefront of jazz, where fusion was the default style for evolving new bands.
McLaughlin continued to grow and evolve his style, with Shakti exploring his Eastern leanings, and with The Guitar Trio, alongside Al Di Meola and Paco de Lucia, expanding the possibilities of the European guitar traditions of flamenco, gypsy jazz, and folk into something which, up to that point, had never been heard in music.
McLaughlin largely focused on the acoustic guitar during the 1980s but returned to the electric a decade later. He has consistently toured and recorded over the last three decades, still producing fusion at the highest level.
Now 80 years old, he shows no signs of slowing down as his searching, complex approach to the instrument continues to develop in interesting directions.
Get the tone
Amp Settings: Gain 6, Bass 6, Middle 7, Treble 8, Reverb 4
Throughout his time at the forefront of fusion, McLaughlin generally favored Gibson guitars with humbucking pickups for their power and clarity. Today he’s a PRS user. Select your bridge pickup and go for a classic British rock sound with plenty of power amp drive but no front-end fizz. Add reverb and delay to taste, and even a little chorus pedal for added flavor.
Example 1
Crucial to McLaughlin’s playing is the execution of certain sequences where both hands are synchronised very precisely to facilitate fast and accurate execution of extended scale-based lines.
Example 1 breaks the Diminished scale into a series of four-note ‘cells’ called ‘tetrachords,’ an idea that McLaughlin, more likely than not, took from studying John Coltrane.
These cells consist of the formula Root-2nd-3rd-5th. Notice how the sequence essentially amounts to these four-note cells daisy-chained together. These should be applied to other scale types if you are looking for some of the McLaughlin sound in your playing.
Example 2
This idea demonstrates the kind of run that McLaughlin might play horizontally across the fretboard, using the Diminished scale again.
Here, the focus is on developing strong alternate picking: these virtuosic extended lines to some extent gave birth to ‘shred’ guitar and are now a common fixture in rock and metal.
The example only goes as far as the third string but the line can be continued by jumping each time to the next string using a flat 5 interval.
Example 3
Here we see a mixture of rhythmic groupings creating an exotic ‘swirling’ or vortex-like effect when playing a descending sequence. We have a mixture of four and five-note groupings in an idea that is not as difficult as it might first appear, and should soon be flowing smoothly after some practice and application.
Example 4
This G Half-Whole Diminished lick features Major triads with a #9 in the first bar before moving to an A7 based arpeggio. This is superimposed over a G Minor tonality for its ‘outside’ quality. The line returns to G Diminished (Half-Whole) and concludes with what could be seen as implied fragments of C and Eb Melodic Minor.
Example 5
This line is loosely based around Whole-Tone and Augmented motifs and fragments but attempts to capture McLaughlin’s ever-shifting harmonic and melodic sense with an audacious use of chromaticism which really defies a traditional harmonic explanation.
There are suggestions of D Melodic Minor in the first bar and then A Melodic Minor in the second, suggesting G7 and D7 over the underlying G Minor tonality here.
Example 6
This idea is relatively straightforward harmonically, sticking largely to notes from the G Melodic Minor scale. The wide octave leaps in the second bar suggest Fmaj7 and Bbmaj7 arpeggios while the end of the second bar contains the Major 3rd (B), which implies a G7 sound in keeping with the Diminished (Half-Whole) scale.
Example 7
This pattern is similar to that in Example 1, which crops up frequently in McLaughlin’s playing. Here, G Locrian is used to imply more of a Gm7b5 tonality over the basic G Minor harmony. The final descending run has a Pentatonic quality but introduces an E and F# not found in the standard G Minor Pentatonic scale.
Example 8
This largely sticks to notes from the G Dorian scale, although the presence of a C# suggests G Melodic Minor #4 (the fourth mode of D Harmonic Major). The second part of the lick uses G# Melodic Minor, outlining Dominant chords found within that scale (C#7 and D#7).
The presence of B Natural also creates tonal ambiguity and tension more akin to the Diminished scale (Half-Whole) again. Make sure your alternate picking is up to scratch for these examples.
Example 9
The next line superimposes a C7 Pentatonic over the underlying G Minor ‘home’ key. McLaughlin used this scale frequently with Mahavishnu Orchestra and it’s sometimes known as the ‘Jan Hammer Scale.’
This sound also became a recognizable part of Jeff Beck’s sound in the mid-1970s as he, too, moved to playing more fusion orientated music.
The formula for the scale in relation to a Dominant chord is R-3-4-5-b7. Here, however, the scale is superimposed over G Minor 11. This gives a Dorian sound while still retaining the C Dominant or Mixolydian flavor.
