Layla (Part 1) by Derek & The Dominos: How to Play All the Guitar Parts, the Bass and Organ Parts.

This video is about how to play the guitar, bass and organ parts for the first section of Layla by Derek & The Dominos and how to achieve the sounds used on the record.To see a tutorial on Section 2 of the song, the Coda, click here:https://youtu.be/xBjxuqPRfDs

Please click on the links below to go to the sections of the video that you want to see:

Background 0:34
The Band 0:58
The Studios 1:22
Song Structure, Music Theory and Chord Chart 1:42
Chord Chart 2:31
The Gear 3:14
But which type of Champ? 4:25
Playing Each Part 5:16
Eric Clapton's Guitar Parts 5:59
Duane Allman's Guitar Parts 12:37
Carl Radle's Bass Part 19:35
Bobby Whitlock's Hammond B3 Organ Part (Fishman TriplePlay and Native Instruments Vintage Organs) 21:14
The Complete Track 22:35

The Layla and Other Assorted Lovesongs album was recorded between August and October in 1970 at Criteria Studios in Miami. The band was drummer, Jim Gordon, bass player Carl Radle, keyboard player and vocalist Bobby Whitlock and guitarist and vocalist Eric Clapton. Writers’ credits for Layla went to Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon. For the album recording, and a couple of gigs soon after, the band was joined by Duane Allman, of the Allman Brothers Band, as second guitarist.

The first part of Layla uses a straightforward structure with the famous guitar riff used as the introduction, the chorus and the backing for the guitar solo at the end. There are three verses. Layla was originally recorded at a tempo of 111 BPM and speeded up to 115 BPM in post production. If you try and play along to the record you’ll find that it is around a semitone sharp as a result of the tempo increase. The chorus is in D Minor and the verses are a semitone down in C Sharp Minor. There are basic chords shown but Eric used a variety of embellishments that should be able to pick up from the video.

When the album was originally released it included track sheets showing who played what on each track. Here is the track sheet for Layla. Eric Clapton has said that it is a tricky song to play live due to the number of guitar parts and it’s easy to see why. Of the 16 tracks used for the recording, 6 are used for guitars and in some instances there is more than one guitar part on a single track. It isn’t completely straightforward to work out who played what but we can make educated guess by looking at the panning indications shown at the bottom of each box on the track sheet.

For the album Eric Clapton used mainly his 1956 Fender Stratocaster that he called ‘Brownie’. Duane used firstly a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top. Duane owned more than one Gold Top and after the main sessions had finished one of them was swapped for the 1959 Cherry Sunburst Les Paul Duane is seen playing here, The overdubs were either done on the remaining Gold Top or this Cherry Sunburst Les Paul. Carl Radle is usually pictured playing a sunburst Fender Precision Bass with a bound Jazz Bass neck.

There are different recollections of what amps were used by Eric and Duane, sometimes by the same people. The consensus is that they were small amps, probably Fender Champs and that the most likely versions were late 50s Tweed Champs like this one pictured. Tweed Champs can easily get an overdriven tone that can sound massive on record when miked up.

To lay the speculation to rest there is a tone test of a Tweed Champ, a Blackface Champ and a Silverface Champ. The Tweed Champ obviously gives a lot more growl without the need for a distortion pedal and is very much the closest to the original Layla album in terms of tone.

Eric plays the opening riff in both octaves (Tracks 5 – ‘Rhythm’ and 12 ‘Guitar Harmony’)

The guitar parts that drive the track along are on Track 3 and they are Eric and Duane playing in unison. Eric plays the two harmony parts (Tracks 11 and 9 – panned hard left and hard right respectively). Eric plays rhythm guitar in the verses ( on Track 5).

Duane’s guitar parts are a combination of slide guitar and fingering. Duane made quite a name for himself as a slide guitar player. Duane played slide using a variety of chord tunings as well as standard tuning. It's perfectly possible to play Duane's slide parts on Layla in standard tuning and that's what we'll be doing here. As well as playing the main riff in unison with Eric , Duane plays the single line guitar over the verses (Track 4) and the slide solo.

Bobby Whitlock’s Hammond B3 underpins the track all the way through. Here we are using a Fender Strat and a Fishman Triple Play to recreate the B3 Organ sound. The Triple Play translates guitar playing into Midi which is then used to drive Native Instruments’ emulation of a Hammond B3.

The bass line is straightforward which is just as well, given all the interwoven guitar lines. It doesn’t vary significantly from chorus to chorus or verse to verse.

Finally you can hear what our version of the entire track sounds like.

Part 2 of the track is here: https://youtu.be/xBjxuqPRfDs

Видео Layla (Part 1) by Derek & The Dominos: How to Play All the Guitar Parts, the Bass and Organ Parts. канала Cracking the Chord