Whipping Post Guitar Lesson | Dickey Betts Solo Fillmore 1971 | Gene Petty

Whipping Post Guitar Lesson
Dicky Betts Solo At The Fillmore 1971

The style that Dickey Betts developed is more easily traceable back to Country than that of Duane Allman. The two blended beautifully and the force of this new blend pulled Dickey away from sounding too “country like”. After Duane died, Dickey seemed to take a direction back to his country roots.
At this point in his career he was taking off with Duane into that whole new sound I discussed in the Duane analysis.
Whipping post is evidence that Dickey, although using country elements, is taken into the path of the new sound that the Allman Brothers created. He is using the A Dorian mode in a very scale patterned fashion. It seems when he found out about this scale he went into the practice room and shed until he came out playing it back and forth with ease.

Opening Statement
He starts out his solo in a very subdued sustained note pattern. Short Long, short long, and a bouncy syncopation, sliding up and down on the D string. This is followed by a scale as if you would hear in an exercise. Repeat Repeat Repeat Sustain. But then a pattern interrupt with some rests peppered between the scale notes. Now he’s making an interesting staccato kind of delivery. Another scale with 3 repeats and sustain higher up, sets himself up for a melodic motif.

The new material is based on a two note riff. The form here is a short A B A B1. We see that repetition is important for Dickey to make his musical statements stick. Let it be known that this is not tedious or boring repetition but very cleverly employed digging into the core of the music.
The two note riff call is given a stretch note response.
A third repetition of the stretch riff finishes with a syncopated one note riff.
In the last 20 seconds of the first minute he breaks into a surprising pentatonic puzzle. It sounds like another practiced pattern (and there's nothing wrong with that) made from a clever combination of quarter and sixteenth note repetitions that play slightly contrary to the 6/8 time. He almost sounds like he’s playing 4/4 time against it.
Back to the stretch riff he played earlier….he’s not wasting material, hes recycling it for better use. Repeat again repeat and we hear the trademark sound of Dickey Betts setting its foot print into the history of rock.
But the excitement is building, he starts showing off his practicing skills again by ripping off the Dorian scale back and forth, rapidly with precise eighth notes. The scale climbs in pitch easily and gracefully and we feel the intensity grow stronger. It builds more and more with mixtures of quarter notes and sixteens when finally it peaks with his two note stretch again but higher up in the scale.
Now the riff repeats more, but we want to hear it more. Then a variation on the stretch.
He does a prestretch-drop-stretch 3 times followed by two quarter notes. He does that whole riff 3 times very forcefully and loud. You can hear someone yell “Yeah” the third time.
Some more stretching as if his guitar is screaming, maybe in pain, followed by some relief in a descending scale.
After the quick release of tension, he starts to build it again with a rhythmic pattern of rest-note-rest-note in syncopation.
This is a very clever use of rests that I have rarely heard before or after in the rock genre. It builds again into another climb. A quarter note scale gives way to the familiar stretch riff at what appears to be the climax of the solo. And then it falls into a descending quarter note scale finally to leave us hanging on two suspended notes one after the other followed by a trill which seems to end the solo.
The band now steps out of time. It lingers and floats. It still appears to be Dickeys solo but everything takes on a new character and they go into a stretched out jam which we will have to look at in another video.

How To Read Music For Guitar - Intervals
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DXA65BW

How To Read Music For Guitar – Scales
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DXOT0RY

Guitar Improvisation In 7 Minutes
https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Improvisation-Minutes-Improvise-Sound-ebook/dp/B0075ZWP10

Guitar Chords Methodology (Learn Guitar Chords Through Exercises)
https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Chords-Methodology-Through-Exercises-ebook/dp/B00A86Y6VK

Guitar Instruction For The Not So Serious Guitar Player (Learning Guitar Without Learning To Read Notes Or Formal Tabs)
https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Instruction-Serious-Learning-Without-ebook/dp/B009LVJMU8

Learning Lead Guitar (Getting rid of the rock star and finding the lead guitarist in you.)
https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Guitar-Getting-finding-guitarist-ebook/dp/B00B27XUHA

Guitar Tabs Influx (How to learn to read Guitar Tabs)
https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Tabs-Influx-learn-read-ebook/dp/B00BCR0K0A

One Two Three Jam (The Psychology Of Improvisation)
https://www.amazon.com/One-Two-Three-Psychology-Improvisation-ebook/dp/B00EN4J1RW