Trying to unscrew Jimi Hendrix' favorite techniques is as puzzling an undertaking as finding an adequate way to describe with words the difference between red and green. Mathematical equations may do that, but where are the words that encapsulate the perception of two very clearly differing realities? The problem is really even more complex. It's more like trying to verbalize the distinguishing qualities not of two colors but of every hue used in some wildly vibrant canvas.

We know that Jimi must have gone through certain procedures that always resulted in certain sounds. And it follows that since all those weird sounds were repeatable effects (most say he could conjure them at will), then it should be possible to list in tidy order the manipulations that led to each Hendrixian effect. After all, something causes something, and it ought to be easy to itemize what happens. So where are those one-through-ten lists that go with each item? Jimi never thought to write them down. Such an analytical logging was totally antithetical to his musical approach. He was too involved with creating new effects to chronologize the old. Nevertheless, there were a few highly noticeable movements Jimi went through that seemed to have had some bearing on what sounds came out of his amplifiers. A few are sketched below, though they don't even represent the tip of the iceberg - scarcely a trickle down the side.

1. SHOWMANSHIP

Using tricks that go back a half-century or more, Jimi revived and repopularized many of the old bluesmen's favorite high-stepping, upstaging show-stoppers. He played his guitar behind his head or back, shoved the neck of his guitar between his knees. Most memorable of all, he played-actually played music-while holding the guitar to his mouth. It's not entirely a closed matter on how he used his mouth, or for that matter if he really used his teeth. Jess Hansen, a major Hendrix authority, says Jimi pushed forward with his front teeth, moving his chin from his chest outward. While conceding that no one really knows, Eric Barrett, Jimi's equipment manager, thinks Hendrix did just the opposite; i.e., plucked with his teeth, moving his chin in towards his chest. Chuck Rainey, who played with Jimi, believes that Hendrix was not using his teeth at all, but picked with his tongue. Innumerable photographs give credence to all theories, and observers abound who swear by their own pet explanations. Jimi himself said the idea came to him , "in a town in Tennessee. Down there you have to play with your teeth, or else you get shot. There's a trail of broken teeth all over the stage." Did it leave his gums sore? He advised others against trying it, but said he would never do it if it hurt him. Towards the later part of his career, Jimi discarded most of these maneuvers.

The sounds of a neck shredding or an amp flying apart; of a string popping, writhing, and melting away; of a dismembered pickup amplifying its own unravelling through a shattered speaker were sounds that Jimi did not invent but nevertheless used to a particularly musical degree. They fit in well with his more aggressive, raw finales. Pete Townshend of the Who was doing this before Jimi, and he picked it up in art school. "Auto-destruction" was an offshoot of "happenings" staged in the early Sixties. They were created by painters who used the everyday world not for a canvas, but as a canvas when they concocted events such as dropping a piano from a crane, filling the splintered wreck with hay, and then incinerating the whole mess. In the early part of his career, Jimi smashed many guitars, burned a few, and harpooned his speaker cabinets-sometimes for show, sometimes out of frustration, and occasionally to create a raucous acoustical effect. It was all part of trying to get the most from his equipment, and when he could wring no more from it, he'd pound it out.

Jimi used the "wang bar" on his Stratocasters to wrench out numerous effects for which the device had not been originally designed. According to Mike Bloomfield, Jimi altered his tremolo bars to make them capable of changing a string's pitch by three steps. Eric Barrett says Jimi bent these bars by hand so that they would be close enough for him to use to lightly "bop" individual strings with the handle. He manipulated the bar in the usual ways with his picking hand, but also used less orthodox methods vibrating it rapidly with his chording hand while tightening and loosening machine heads, or pounding on the guitar's neck, or playing around with the tone and volume controls.

4.HAVING A FIFTH "FINGER"

Jimi got his wrist vibrato in every way imaginable. He primarily used a push-pull action (moving the string back and forth across the frets) while slightly shaking his wrist. Eric Barrett recalls Jimi's incredible strength - he could bend the first string on a bass all the way to the top. Jimi also used his thumb extensively for chording. It was long enough to extend all the way around the neck and cover from low to high E strings. Jimi used his thumb mainly on the bottom three strings. For example, Mike Bloomfield describes how Hendrix, "Would play an E-minor triad on top, but use his thumb to play in D on the bottom strings." He would use his thumb going along (not always across) so that beginning on the 3rd fret on the bottom three strings, he might play at one time a G, D-b, and another G. He used his little finger for runs and chords, but he would often hook it behind the neck of the guitar when using his thumb.

Though Jimi did not use a metal cylinder or glass bottleneck for slide, studio veteran Jimmy Stewart remembers seeing him use his ring for slide effects. He would also grab the microphone stand and run it up and down the fret-board for bold, searing slide effects. For more raw, less defined sounds, he used his amp cabinets and his elbow (wiping the strings up and down).

Eric Barrett thinks that Jimi usually held his pick with his thumb and first finger, but Jimi seems to have performed occasional sleight-of-hand. Film footage of him playing clearly shows the pick vanishing as he begins strumming the instrument openhandedly. Many guitarists do this, and like them, Jimi may have palmed his pick either in his hand or grasped it with his fingers or thumb. Conceivably he could have devised some way to hold it secure with the band of his ring or even put tape somewhere to stick it on, though other films don't really substantiate this idea.

Jimi used to frequently change the tuning of his instrument midway through a selection. Aside from his fanatical attention to intonation, he did this intentionally to achieve wobbly on/off-pitch variations. While cranking away at the machine heads, his line to the audience used to be, "Oh well, only cowboys stay in tune, anyway." The only indication available that he may have used open tunings comes from Chuck Rainey, who distinctly recalls that in the King Curtis days Jimi used to tune to an open chord. Beyond this memory, Chuck could not recall the tuning, nor could anyone else, when asked, come up with a specific case indicating that Jimi played open tunings after he became more famous.

8.UTILIZING THE CONTROLS

The combinations are endless, but Jimi controlled his volume and tone almost exclusively from the body of the guitar (all amp controls were full on). This allowed him his usual range of possibilities, but he turned his lefthandedness to advantage. With a right-handed guitar turned upside down, the controls were above the strings. Therefore, he could pick the guitar and at the same time, move the tone and volume controls with the heel of his hand to ooze in and out of a tone, or get smooth, "rock" diminuendo. In conjunction with other instrument parts, he also fooled with his toggle switch to achieve everything from a howling wind effect to machine gun blasts. (Jess Hansen says Jimi would get a harmonic, flip the pickup switch, mess with the amp dial, toggle the standby switch on and off, and come up with the gunfire.) Jimi also used to set his Stratocaster toggle switch in little notch that can be found between the first and second pickups to catch both. This created a twangy sound such as is heard on "Little Wing," "Wait Until Tomorrow," and "House Burning Down." Hendrix also removed the back plate of his Stratocaster so that he could pull the strings and springs in back to get various "sprongy" sounds.

Jimi used the back of his guitar's neck nearly as much as the front. He would tap it lightly with the back of his knuckles up and down to bring out harmonics, or jar the instrument into setting up other vibrations that could be reprocessed and permutated. Tapping or tugging the neck, he could be gentle or merciless. Eric Barrett says Hendrix even used to grasp the neck and shake it back and forth to get a wild vibrato that was not possible either by hand or with the tremolo bar. In fact, Jimi used to wrench the neck back and forth so hard that it would sometimes come completely loose, leaving limp strings (and probably intonation problems that only someone like Jimi could deal with).

IO. APPLYING ELECTRONICS

No one could unravel this with words or charts, probably not even Jimi. Obviously, years of experimentation with body placements, an extraordinary sense of equipment characteristics, a childlike willingness to play with possibilities that sounded "bad," and an extraordinary intuitiveness and capacity to work on his feet with whatever started happening in his equipment combined to help Jimi develop his unparalleled electrical inventiveness. As far as anyone knows, Hendrix did not have a textbook knowledge of equipment, though most who knew him insist he could duplicate any sound he use on record. A few tricks included getting feedback on two strings, then tapping the guitar with his ring, which set off a commotion that sounded like a five-alarm fire. He also often bumped his instrument with his hip to get a booming sound. He had his techniques so refined as to be able to get feedback going on a two- or three-string chord, and coax and develop and alter that, all the while playing lead on the other strings. The facility is what made many musicians listening to his albums wonder where the second or third guitar players with the group were, and why they weren't photographed on the album cover. It was inconceivable, at the time, to arrive at the actual conclusion that there was only one guitar player.

These are only some of the many and varied techniques that helped Jimi achieve the sounds he needed for self-expression. In the hands of lesser musicians, these are mere gimmicks; in the hands of a Jimi Hendrix, however, they are valuable tools of his craft - as necessary to him as properly trimmed nails were to Andres Segovia or the right-hand mute is to Chet Atkins.