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Dark End of The Street - Muscle Shoals Guitar Study (Patreon)

Published:
2026-04-18 13:00:18
Imported:
2026-08
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Content

Muscle Shoals Soul Guitar: today we get deep into the Percy Sledge classic “The Dark End of The Street”. First off we’ll learn a chord melody style arrangement where we use chordal fragments, triads and double stops to outline the vocal melody with style, followed by a simple but evocative solo, based heavily on the Major Pentatonic scale and with a big emphasis on lyrical phrasing and good tone.

Fans of my “People Get Ready” lessons should enjoy this one!

As always, stick around til the end for some gear talk!

Files

"Dark End of The Street" - Muscled Shoals Chord Melody & Soloing Lesson!

Access all lesson materials by becoming a Patreon: https://patreon.com/AlexFarranGuitar Or purchase the materials for this lesson alone: https://smogfalls.gumroad.com/l/itobd Book in for a private Zoom lesson to level up your playing, or find new inspiration!.. just choose a slot at the link below; https://tidycal.com/alexfarranguitar/guitarlesson Muscle Shoals Soul Guitar: today we get deep into the Percy Sledge classic “The Dark End of The Street”. First off we’ll learn a chord melody style arrangement where we use chordal fragments, triads and double stops to outline the vocal melody with style, followed by a simple but evocative solo, based heavily on the Major Pentatonic scale and with a big emphasis on lyrical phrasing and good tone. Fans of my “People Get Ready” lessons should enjoy this one! As always, stick around til the end for some gear talk! ⏱️TIMESTAMPS⏱️ 00:00 - Performance 01:32 - Introduction 02:00 - Chord Progression 03:18 - Incorporating the melody 05:06 - To Thumb or Not to Thumb! 05:38 - With variations 06:09 - Blues fill 06:24 - Lesson materials 07:00 - Triads clear as day! 08:33 - Stylistic Ambiguity 09:20 - C6 10:57 - Off-piste ad-libs 11:32 - Sixths 13:11 - Hendrix-isms 14:09 - Sus2 15:06 - Engineer Rosie! 15:29 - Solo Prep: The Changes 17:03 - Lyrical Phrasing & G Major Pentatonic 18:47 - Bending distance 20:17 - Your Voice as a Guitarist starts and ends with good technique and tone 21:15 - Bluesy embellishment 22:03 - Major/Minor pentatonic mix 22:51 - Soul double stops 24:04 - Another blues fill 24:54 - Ending 26:03 - Overview & Summary 26:48 - Tone Talk! Videos referenced in this lesson; Motown & Soul Study.. https://youtu.be/x6PFaGEXhLA?si=WBFQ8t3pbUF-Ur7z Americana Soul lesson.. https://youtu.be/dslvtwpCvk0?si=J3NiAWoHi353begT -------------------- Gear used in this video; Gibson es330 (1964) D'Addario NYXL 11-49 Strings Lazy J20 amp Jam Pedals Harmonious Monk (tremolo pedal) Cali 76 Compact Deluxe (compressor pedal) Universal Audio OX - amp top box Universal Audio Apollo Twin X Logic Pro Universal Audio plugins Sony ZVE-10 camera Neewer Desktop Tripod Final Cut Pro Thanks for watching! Alex :) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexfarranguitar/ Buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/alexfarran #GuitarSolo #GuitarImprovisation #guitarlesson #GuitarPractice #guitarchords #GuitarTips #guitartutorial #GuitarTechnique #GuitarSkills #neosoul #BluesGuitar #RockGuitar #soul #motown #muscleshoals #percysledge #vintageguitar

Comments

Ristobop

It’s always so moving to share a live stream with you! It feels like a truly personal and tailored experience… especially as all your musical worlds, however different they may be, are exactly the sort of thing I love listening to. And playing even more so! So, a big one ;)

Martin Lindsay

Great choice of song Alex! One of my favourites. I confess a love of the Burritos’ version, crossing genres with a nice solo by Sneaky Pete on pedal steel.

Alex Farran Guitar

Ah thank you my friend, I’m so glad you enjoy the lessons! 🙏🏻🧡

Alex Farran Guitar

Haha oh well, you can’t please everybody! I’m just here to teach the guitar, not give history lessons! 🤪

David Lockwood

So so cool! Wow. That is beautiful 😢

Carlos Funk

That's just so great Alex.... A lot more of your wonderful, thoughtful embellishment gold! I just love this stuff. Very much in the same line as People Get Ready and your Triad Magic piece that I play just about everyday, to get this stuff through my head.... so valuable, and melodic....makes the guitar shine the brightest in my mind.

Carlos Funk

playing this stuff with a little vibrato, next best thing to hammond and a leslie....haha

Steve Carr

Beautiful. Thanks, Alex!

MarkF

So subtle and full of groove I love it. Seems approachable, but I know you have a habit of making it look like hey I will be playing this by supper-lol, but so many layers of learning is worth its weight in gold-keep the lessons coming please!

Glenn Morrissey

Hello Alex, greetings from Australia. Is a key change at the end necessary for this song. I watched a version where they changed to Ab - Gm - Fm and was wondering if the whole song should be played in your key, which is fine by me. I am loving your lessons which will take me a long time to get to grips with!! Thanks for your time with these lessons as well, great stuff.

Alex Farran Guitar

Hi Glenn, you have endless options really as far as how you’d like to arrange a song. Key change at the end sounds interesting!.. I’ve not spotted that in any of the earlier versions of the song. With simple progressions such as this, you definitely want to be comfortable with moving it around to any key. I chose G as that is the most common key, and is the key of the most well known version by Percy Sledge.. doesn’t hurt that it’s a very guitar friendly key too of course!

Alex Farran Guitar

Thanks Mark, really glad you liked the sound of it. Did you get on okay with it?

MarkF

Yes, but as I started playing it my wife started singing “Lost Together “ by Blue Rodeo an iconic Canadian band I think off the Five Days in May album so more alt-country and it just stuck and well one thing leads to another right?

David Lockwood

Really like this piece. Fabulous! It just has to be my next project. What a lovely way to spend Saturday morning agsin with my first cup of coffee , immersing myself in this lovely music.

Alex Farran Guitar

Thanks Carlos, I'm really glad you enjoyed it! It makes me very happy that you still play these pieces as part of your routine! 🙏🏻

ChrisH

Wonderful lesson. I am a huge fan of the muscle shoals sound and what a great tune. I also want to say how much I appreciate the tone talk. I have always been a straight into the amp guy, unless I add reverb and trem to a tweed style amp. But I am inspired to get a compressor for exactly what you describe here. If you have any other comments or tips on how to get the best out of a compressor to give a clean tone just that right amount of ...something, I would be all ears as I really admire the tone you get here and elsewhere.

Alex Farran Guitar

Thank you Chris! I'll do a deeper tone video soon for you guys on Patreon. As far as the compressor goes, I use it very lightly indeed, it's just softening the attack of louder notes very slightly.

Rob and Marvy

Great interpretation. I’m new here, so I don’t know if you have anything on wrist vibrato. I'm an old bluegrass, rockabilly, and surf player, so developing a proper wrist vibrato is a whole new challenge for my 69-year-old bones! On the subject of Motown and soul—my secret musical love—when I got married in Las Vegas, one of the main reasons was that I wanted to take my wife to see Gladys Knight. Anyway, here’s a challenge: think about doing something with Try a Little Tenderness. It may not be the right fit for your style, but it's still one of the greatest soul songs ever recorded.