Gypsy Eyes

"Gypsy Eyes" (spelt as "Gipsy Eyes" on the UK edition) is a song by Jimi Hendrix, performed by The Jimi Hendrix Experience on their 1968 album Electric Ladyland, and based on the field holler.^[1] When released as a double-A-sided single with "Remember", it reached no. 35 in the UK charts.^[2]

Music

The song features guitar themes that float between left and right channels.

Richard Middleton ^[3] notes that licks in rock music are often used through a formula and variations technique and that "Gypsy Eyes" "is put together from variants of five stock ideas...familiar from other recordings in the same style."

1. "Drum lick A"
2. "Drum lick B"
3. "A complex of riffs on guitar and bass guitar"
4. "A basic melodic falling pattern, using the notes of the pentatonic scale"
5. "A characteristic guitar effect, the attacked single note with long decay and glissando fall"

He concludes that "the combination and variations of these formulae are many and highly imaginatve. But the basic formulae are so simple that the recording could well have been worked out 'in performance.'"

References