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Hey, how’s it going this is Jon McLennan with Guitar Control, I hope you’re doing fantastic and I’m bringing you this video lesson on a song called “Walk this Way” by the Classic band Aerosmith, Joe Perry, and Brad Whitford on guitars. This is just an Epic Rock playing.
Check the image above to follow the chords and tabs.
We’re going to break it all down for you, I will show you that main riff, then we’re going to jump into this funky rhythm kind of blues rhythm part that goes in the verse and how to play the chorus and get into the first solo. Let’s zoom in and break it down, we start with an open a string fifth string, and walk up chromatically meaning half step zero one, two, and I recommend using the first finger to the second finger, and then roll your fingers, see how I popped it down to the next string and play the second fret on the fourth string and then do a rest on the second beat a 16th note rest, and do the same thing again two, and three, it’s one, and two e, then you tag it with the low e string.
What I’m doing with the picking is down, up, down, up, for the first beat and 16th notes. I’m just alternating my picking and then the next beat is a rest, and coming in on the e one e, the second beat, I’m going to up stroke it’s picking in fact it’s down, up, down, up, down, up, down, actually I think on the last one is a two down, so down, down, so d, down up, down up, down up, down up, down up, down up, down, and that picking pattern is related to the time with my foot one e, and the strong beats are always down strokes and the weak beats are up, that’s the first measure then you rest.
Then, the second measure does the same thing until you come up to the third fret on the sixth string, do a little pull off from three, to zero and then play the second fret on the fourth string and that note’s kind of staccato. So here’s the whole riff slowly, and it’s rock and roll. There’s a lot of call clicks which are just muted strings in between, you’ll hear them do that experiment with those rests. You can put a click or a muted coming across the strings going down, and getting a cool kind of percussive sound, how epic is the first rock riff.
Now, let’s jump into the rhythm part of the verse, after we come out of that main riff, you play an a chord and that’s like an a power chord open fifth string and I use my first finger and play two, two, it’s like zero, two, two, and then we go into this rhythm pattern. This part’s a little bit tricky, it sounds like it’s doubled on the recording, one guitar in each speaker left and right.
This is how I play it to the eighth 8th and 10th fret power chord c5, and I’ll break it down beat by beat here, let me play it slow first. The first beat is one e and and I’m going three on the sixth string at the eighth fret and then that last note is at ten on the fifth string tenth fret, and palm muting all of this, my palm is placed right where the string and saddle piece come together, so one e and first beat slow, then that note stays, sustained the 10th fret and the second b goes e and and it’s really kind of based off old rock and roll pattern kind of rhythm pattern.
Third beat goes and what I’m doing is I’m taking my third finger and laying it flat to get an octave, I’m going to play eight and back to the fifth string tenth fret, let me play the first three beats, the last beat would go and reaching my pinky all the way up to 13, 13, 10, 12, and 10. It’s played with so much kind of swag and some of the notes get choked out sometimes and it’s just rock and roll turn up the distortion then you come out of that into an a chord and then you’re back to the main riff.
Out of that verse, we launch the chorus and it’s a similar part but changes up a little bit. Next up, we’ve got the chorus and this again continues that blues sort of rhythm pattern and there’s a few guitars layered, but what I’ve done is try to combine them if I was in the band or whatever, and there was just one guitarist and he had to play both parts. This is what I’d play, that’s the first measure of the chorus and what I’m doing is playing a c5, 8, and 10, and then I’m reaching out my pinky and putting it on 12 and going again to the 13, so it’s one and another overdub guitar so one guy’s probably just going like, and then another guy’s doing these kind of stabs on top.
So, it’s just eight with first finger and ten, eight on the third string, ten on the second string, and the trick is dampening all the other strings, so you can strum it, and not getting all the notes ringing. Open it tight,then you move down one string same thing 8, 10, but I’ve just relocated and this, so if I alternate those chorus it would sound like this, then you’re into that solo.
That should get you through the main parts of the song and then there’s a lot of ad libbing guitar solos on top of those other parts, let me break down the first guitar solo for you and this is out of the chorus. It’s right at that part where he goes, just give me a kiss, so what’s going on there is I’m doing a half step bend on the 11th fret or kind of a blues bend. I’m not really thinking about how far I’m going more or less trying to get a sound. It’s kind of progressively going up, and then chokes it off there’s, a little rest and then you do this trill between 8, and 11, hammer pull 11, 8, back to 11, with a full step in.
Then you’re going to descend down eight, eleven, eight, eleven, ten, eight, ten, ten, ten, and then use my second finger on 10, and grab it with my third finger, 10 on the second string, give a half step bend. So what that is, is after that half step bend ten, then you go eight, ten, eight, eleven, ten, eight, ten, eight, ten, eight, eleven, ten, eight, ten, eight, eleven, bend on the second string.
What’s happening underneath is that that rhythm pattern on c that we talked about earlier, you can see most of that solo is coming out of a blues sort of pentatonic e sound, at the eighth fret. I really hope this lesson helps get you better at guitar and inspires you to keep playing. Make sure to subscribe on our You Tube Channel and we’ll see you in our next videos, thanks for watching.
