Jared James Nichols has shot another tabbed video lesson for the Gibson App, this time teaching us how to play the guitar solo to Cream’s Sunshine Of Your Love.
Eric Clapton’s Sunshine Of Your Love solo is an all-time classic, and makes for a valuable case study in phrasing, feel, and ultimately great tone – something that Nichols need not worry about, choosing his 1952 Gibson Les Paul Standard, “Dorothy,” for video that is streaming now on the Gibson App YouTube channel.
Even if you know how to play Sunshine... already, we’d say it’s worth checking out this out if only to hear this miraculously resurrected electric guitar in action.
No guitars have a back story like Dorothy; Nichols’ Les Paul was one of the first Les Pauls ever created, but was destroyed in a tornado, with only its body recovered, before being brought back to life. This remarkable instrument is an able stand-in for Clapton’s 1964 “Fool” Gibson SG for this lesson.
“It’s really awesome because you have to focus on the bending, the vibrato, having the right tone, the right attack – that’s what this solo is all about,” says Nichols. “Really make your guitar sing throughout this solo.”
That’s the idea. That’s what Clapton did back in 1967 with Sunshine Of Your Love officially inaugurating one of the most recognisable guitar tones in rock, the “woman tone”, so called because Slowhand thought it made his guitar sound like a female singer. There have been many attempts over the years to recreate it.
Aclam Guitars even put it into a guitar effects pedal, appropriately named The Woman Tone, with presented a two-stage drive that can add some vintage Plexi flavours to your pedalboard.
It’s pretty neat, with an enclosure design courtesy of Marijke Koger, the leader of the Dutch art collective, The Fool, who give Clapton’s iconic Cream-era SG its psychedelic makeover.
But you don’t really need a pedal. Clapton has hardly kept the secrets to the woman tone under lock and key. Just crank up an old Marshall Plexi until its screaming – most overdriven guitar amps should get you in the ballpark – roll the tone control back to find the sweet spot, where there’s a nasal, vocal quality, and you’ve found it.
Many will say to use the neck pickup for this but if you’ve got a single-pickup guitar – as Nichols often does – you can just roll the tone off that bridge pickup and you’re there.
“The woman tone is produced by using the bass pickup, or the lead pickup with all the bass off,” explained Clapton. “In fact, if you use both pickups [middle position] you should take all the bass off on the tone control. That is to turn it down to 1 or 0 on the tone control, and then turn the volume full up.”
As Nichols says, tone is crucial to recreating this solo. Biting, scratchy treble is not what we’re after. But once you’ve got the tone, there’s a plenty of wiggle room to add your own interpretation to this, and by that we mean not everything has to be exactly like the record to make this sound cool.
“Don’t worry if you’re kind of in between,” says Nichols. “That’s kind of the beauty of the sound. It’s like the notes in between the notes.”
Watching this, and his lesson on Mountain’s Mississippi Queen, it strikes us that Nichols is a pretty good teacher. You can find more of him and more online guitar lessons on the Gibson App, which is available now for Android and iOS.
