Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I want to teach you how to play a lick from The Sultans of Swing. It’s Mark Knopfler lick and a really cool recognizable arpeggio lick. So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this.

Mark Knopfler Lick – Fretting Hand

All right, so to start off, let’s look at the sequence that you’re doing with your left hand. You’re going to take your first finger and you’re just going to barre it at the 10th fret across the B and the high E strings. And then you’re going to take your pinky, and you could use your third finger I guess, but I think it’s easier just use my pinky and I’m going to put it that on the 13th fret. So the sequences is gonna be 13 pull to 10 on the high E string and then it’s going to be the 10 on the B string back to 10 on the high E string…

So it’s a group of four and its 16^th notes; so it’s like one e and uh… So you have a whole measure of that and then what we’re gonna do now is that the note on the B string is going to go up a half step, so just use your second finger. So now you’re going to pick 13 pulled a 10 on the high E to the 11th fret on the B string back to the tenth fret on the high E string… You have a whole measure of that same timing; one e and uh, two e and uh and then you’re going to take that shape and you’re going to move it up. So now its 15 pull to 12 and then your middle finger gonna be here on the 13th fret of the B string… And then the whole thing just repeats as far as what we’re doing with this hand; not too tough, but it’s what he does with the picking hand…

So you could play this with a guitar pick. So you’re going to pick, pull, but it doesn’t quite sound right and I also think it’s like really hard to play it this way; at least is for me. Because if I start with a down stroke, if I go down, pull, up, down, now I’ve got another downstroke if I want to alternate pick it. Or if I want to keep that same sequence if I alternate pick it down, pull, up, down, up, pull, down, up… that’s kind of awkward too.

So I want to show you how to do it like how Mark Knopfler does it. He just plays with his fingers.

Free Killer Practice Routine

So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.

Mark Knopfler Lick – Picking Hand

So how I’m going to do this is I’m going to play the notes on the high E string with my first and my second finger and then the note on the B string I’ll be playing with my thumb. So if I come back up into this first position here I’m going to use my middle finger to pluck the high E on the 13th fret to pull to 10 and then I’m going to use my thumb to play the B string and then my first finger to play 10 on the high E; so it’s second, pull, thumb, first… I think it that sounds a lot better. That’s a pretty tricky technique and I’m not really super great at and I cannot play it up to tempo that way, but I think it’s just a very cool lick and kind of a unique sound. Even if it isn’t a thing that you are going to play with your with your fingers, this is really good for working on your skills of hybrid picking. So playing this particular thing with hybrid picking I believe is for me is really, really hard because now I’m gonna use my middle finger to pluck, pull and then my guitar pick to play the B string and then my middle finger to pluck again… That seems really awkward as well, so I personally believe this is kind of the easiest way to do it.

So to work with this to build up your speed what I’d recommend you do is just work on really breaking it down. You want the notes even so you could count it as just one, two, three, four. Practice it with a metronome until you get smoother at it…

Mark Knopfler Lick

So the whole sequence, starting here in our first position. 10th fret, 13^th, so one e and uh, two e and uh, three e and a, four e and uh. Now we’re gonna move that note up on the B string to the 11^th fret, so I’m gonna use my middle finger… So on that last one there, he does the 13 pull to ten, back up to 10. Now when it goes to 13 this time, the last one 13 to pull… it’s almost like a muted note… so I’m not sure if that was something that he did on purpose, but it really fits good and sounds really good. So that’s our first two measures.

Now we’re going to move up so we’re basically moving that whole shape up a whole step.

So that’s going to put me on the 13^th fret of the B string, 12th fret of the high E and then the 15th fret of the high E string… Now this one has two measures; so one e and uh, two e and a, three e and a, four E and A, one E and A, two e and a, three e

and uh, four e and uh. So at the very last one comes back to the tenth fret; ten on the B string and then ten on the high E string and then the whole thing would just repeat. That last part there is hard. I catch myself like completely skipping out on that part. It’s just kind of a strange transition… So we just practice this separately… pick, pull, scoot down, ten, ten…

Okay, so another thing you want to look out for when you’re playing this is that if you’re playing with a really clean tone it’s not going to be as noticeable and this is played with a clean tone. But just for this type of playing sometimes I’m just working on these strings I don’t want these strings making noise. So I’m actually just resting this part of the palm of my hand here, the ball of my thumb. I just have it resting there in a spot so these strings are muted, but I have access to these higher ones…

Conclusion

All right, so there you have it, little lead guitar lick in the style of Mark Knopfler. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I want to show you how to play Hard Days Night by The Beatles.

So right now Guitar Control is giving away this really cool free chord chart, there’s a link down in the description where you can get yours. It has every chord you could ever need all neatly compiled on one sheet. It’s in PDF format so you can download it, you can print it off, you can put a copy in your gig bag, put a copy where you practice; so just whatever situation you could have any chord you needed to glance and it’s a free download.

So be sure to click on the link in the description to the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this.

Hard Days Night – The Beatles

All right, so first off there’s multiple things that are kind of going on in this song. This starts off we’ve got this first chord here, this is a really interesting sounding chord, it’s a G7 suspended four (Gsus4). So it’s a barre chord unfortunately, so if you’re a beginner this may be the hardest part of the song, but you could really omit this and it isn’t going to make that big of a difference. So I’m going to start off, we’re just going to barre all the way across the third fret across all of the strings. Then we’re going to take our third finger we’re going to put it here on the fifth fret of the A string. So right now it looks like we’re playing a G minor seven, but then we’re going to take our pinky and we’re going to put it down on the fifth fret of the G string. So now it’s three, five, three, five, three, three…

So we hit that one, two, three, and then we rest on four and then it just starts on G. So if you are a beginner and this is really tough to do that and like I said you could totally start off with… you don’t have to do that at the beginning of it. Okay so then from there it’s pretty simple for the most part. The song also has a really easy solo that we’re going to go over as well.

Okay, so for this first part here we’ve got the chords G and then C add nine (Cadd9). So if you just take your regular old G chord here and you move your first and your second finger up a string each so now my first finger is on the second fret of the D string and my second fingers on the third fret of the A string and we don’t play the low E string, that’s Cadd9. And then we’ve got an F over C (F/C) and this is just my kind of a preference. So you could play A full on F barre chord like this if that if that’s comfortable for you, or you can do the really basic F chord shape that you probably already know. How I like to do it is like F/C, so it’s the regular F, but I just have the C in the bass here. So that’s third fret of the A string, third fret of the D string, third finger, fourth finger and then my second finger is on the second fret of the G string and first finger is barring the first and second string…

Then we also have a regular C major chord, a D major chord and that’s all the chords for this first part of the song. All right, so we start off with the G major on here it it’s broke down pretty simple for the most part. It’s quarter notes and eighth notes, so this is like one, two and, and then on the downbeat of three it goes to Cadd9, but you don’t need to really break it up you know… you can kind of just feel it. Once you get to where you can just kind of feel it and wing your own rhythms it’s so much easier to play and sounds lots better too. All right, so that’s on G, down, down, up and we switch to a Cadd9, down, up, down and then to a G down and up. If you wanted to do it that way it’d be like one, two and, three and, four and, so it’s kind of weird that G is coming in on the and of four and then it’s tied to one on the next measure. So you have that eighth note plus a quarter note for beat number one and then two, three, four and… Okay then we switch to the F, whatever version of it you’re gonna do, up… Then to a G and it’s one and, two, three and, four and, and then that also is carries over on to the next measure, one, two and. So it’s a lot easier if you just kind of feel this… now we’re back to Cadd9 again, back to F, G and the next change we go to a C.

So this is where the strumming kind of changes and this is kind of weird to count because it’s quarter note then an eight then a quarter then three eighths; one, two and, three and, four and… So how I think of it is like down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down, up, up, down, up… Then we when we go to this D it’s the same thing, the same strum, and then we go to a G

one, two and, three, to a Cadd9 and four and then on the and of four back to G.

All right, so if you’re looking on your transcription we’re on the first staff of the second page. So if you look back at the very beginning starting on the second measure it has the beginning of the repeat, it’s the double barre with the colon. Now if we look here we’ve got the colon and a double barre so that’s the end of the repeat. So it means we’re going to go back to the second measure and play forward again, but the second time we do it where it has that bracket above that third measure with the number one. That means it’s the first ending. So the second time you play through it you’ll skip that measure and go right on to measure 14 because you can see above it has the bracket with the number two. The basic difference is when we get to this end… it goes right into another verse that second time around… it’s gonna be one and, two, three and, four. And then on the and of four we switch to a B minor (Bm) and this is what I’m going to call the bridge section.

This is the part that Paul McCartney sings and like a lot of Beatles fashion they completely change the feel of the song when he sings it versus when John Lennon sings. They’ll like switch your major chords to minor chords just to have that contrast which I think is really cool. So B minor barre chord unfortunately if you’re a beginner this might be kind of tough, but just do the best you can. So we’re gonna barre our first finger across the first five strings of the second fret and then my second finger is here on the third fret of the B string, my third finger is on the uh excuse me the fourth fret of the D string and my pinkies on the fourth fret of the G string. So we’re hitting that on the and of four and then it’s tied to all of beat one on that next measure; so it’s like and one, two, three and, four, and on the and of four we’re gonna switch to an E minor (Em)… So it goes into back into that same strum that we were doing uh on the C and D on the John Lennon part. So with the Bm to an Em and then on the and of four of that measure back to B minor again and now it’s going to go into that strum that we did on the D and C on the John Lennon part… so same strum still; down, up, up, down, up, to an Em. And then we’re gonna go to a C7; so if you just take your regular C major chord and you take your pinky and you put it down onto so it’s on the third fret of the G string that’s C7. So we got same strum to a D major one, two and, three and, four and, the whole bridge section… Then it just goes back into the same thing, it repeats those parts again.  So it’s easy to put the song together when you have these two sections.

Solo Section

Alright, so now let’s take a look at the guitar solo. So this guitar solo is actually really easy. It’s just one little riff that’s repeated twice. So we’re going to start off here on the third fret of the low E string and you want to use your third finger. So we hit this, it’s a dotted quarter note so it means it’s going to get all of beat one plus the downbeat of two and then we hit it again on the and of two; so one, two and, and then on the downbeat of three we’re going to go to the first fret of the A string, three on the and of three to the third fret, down B to four back to the first fret and then on the four back to three and slide to the fifth fret… All right, so that’s the riff or lick or whatever you want to call it is two measures long and it’s repeated. So once we go through these two measures or excuse me these four measures here you just repeat the whole sequence. Now when we slide up to that five we’re doing it from the and of four and then it is tied to that whole measure. So it’s like one, two and, three and, four and, one, two, three, four… All right, so then the second half of this riff we’re going to keep our third finger here where we’ve got it on the fifth fret of the A string, We’re going to take our first finger we’re going to bring it back here and we’re going to barre so we’re picking up the third fret of the A string and the D string and then we’re going to pick the starting on the A string pick three and hammer to five and then we’re gonna follow that with the third fret on the D string. So how I’m doing this is I pick down pick and hammer and then an upstroke on the D string. So it just repeats you do that one, two, three, four, so you do it four times… Then you’re gonna with your third finger here on the fifth fret you’re gonna pick and slide to the third fret, but you’re going to want to do both of your fingers together. So your first finger is coming down here to the first fret and the reason is because we’re gonna pull that off so we’re gonna pick five, slide to three, pull to one and then end on the third fret of the low E string and that’s measure four and it’s a whole note…

Conclusion

Alright, so there you have it, not too difficult rendition of Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I want to show you a couple of pentatonic interval bending ideas for licks that you can hopefully incorporate into your own playing.

So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.

So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this.

All right, so you can see on the tabs, staff one, which is just a single measure; measure one is one idea and measure two is another idea and they’re not in really any particular order. These are movable since there aren’t any open strings so you can move this around into whatever key you want.

Interval Bending Lick-1

So this very first one here we’re going to look at we’re going to start off with a slide from nowhere to the 13th fret on the G string. So I’m going to use my middle finger to do this and the reason for that is that the following notes after that is 12 on the B string and then 14 on the B string… So what we’re going to do is we’re going to slide from nowhere to 13 and this whole thing’s got like a triplet, one two three, one two three, feel to it. So we’re going to do that slide from nowhere to 13 and then follow that with 12 on the B string and hammer to 14, one two three… Okay so now the next part here starting on the second beat this is where the interval bending comes in. So what I’m saying by interval bending is that I’m going to bend this note up and I’m gonna play it over the top of this note here. So if I bend to where it was pretty hard to bend like a unison bender where you’re bending to the same pitch here we’re bending because we get that cool interval. You can make some really neat sounding stuff that kind of emulates, like in country music, that pedal steel sound. So slide from nowhere to 13 to 12, hammer to 14 and then I’m gonna drop my pinky onto the 14th fret of the high E string; so I’ve still got my third finger on the 14th fret of the B string, but you want to keep your first and second fingers down here too so it’s easier to bend and you get all three fingers to give you the leverage to bend easier. So we’re going to bend this note up the whole step… and what we’re trying to get is that inner third sound there. So how I’ve got it written on here and this is for an idea so it’s like one two three… to the one two one two three and then starting on beat three you’re gonna do the bend again and then you’re gonna do bend and release… Then the 12th fret on the B string your first finger and then just let it roll up to get both the B and high strings together… Now you could change that around, you know speed it up, slow it down or you could increase the length of the bends… whatever you need to do to kind of make it fit whatever you’re playing…

Interval Bending Lick-2

All right, and then for the second one, it’s more or less the same concept, we’re just going to move it down a set of strings. So now we’re going to do our slide from nowhere to the 13th fret on the D string and now I’m going to use my third finger to do this because the next notes are going to be 11 on the G string hammer to 13… So here we have… and now we’ve got… Now for the bend on this one we’re going to bend that up a whole step on the G string, but then we’re going to be playing it over the 14th fret of the B string with my pinky… same concept of on the other one. The only difference is we’re on different strings and now we have to be up a half step on the note we’re playing over the top of. Now when we end this one… we have this 11th fret here on the G string and instead of going to 11th fret of the B string we’re going to go to the 12. So we’re getting that same fourth interval that we got here, but because the B string is a half step lower than the other string so you always have to compensate for that… So same thing you can elongate it…

Combining The Licks

Now you could try doing stuff where you hook the two things together, and again it kind of depends on what you’re playing over the top of. I would experiment with it so like here when we’re here… it’s like a B major and then we go to like an E… Now when we go to this one we’ve got an F sharp down to a B. And to the other one we had the five, so if you wanted to think of it that way it’s like E and F sharp; so one four five. But anyway you can move this around into different keys… wherever you want to do it… Anyway, this is just one idea of lots of different things you can do. My recommendation for like experimenting and finding these intervals is if you just take the pentatonic scale and you could do the same thing going into the lower strings, it just doesn’t really sound as good in my opinion. Anyway, if you take the pentatonic scale and you’re bending this note we already know we can do that that unison bend there we can do that there we could skip over a string… So in that case you have to hybrid pick, but that could be a subject for a whole other video.

Conclusion

All right, so there you have it, a couple of interval bending ideas for licks that hopefully you can apply it to your own playing. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I want to show you how to play a cool Mark Knopfler riff from Money For Nothing.

So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this.

Mark Knopfler Riff – Money For Nothing

All right, so a big thing that makes it sound the way that it sounds is the way that Knopfler plays with his fingers. You can play this with a pick, but it sounds so much better playing with your fingers and in a lot of ways I believe is easier. So we’re going to start off we’ve just got this D5 power chord so I’m here on the fifth fret of the D string with my first finger and the seventh fret of the G string with my third finger and we’re gonna play that and I’m just using my thumb and my first and second finger. So right now I’m just using my first and second finger to pluck the D and the G string. So we’re going to start this off we play that twice as well we do it three times, we do it as beats one and two, and then the downbeat of three; so like one, two, three. And then on the and of three how I like to do it is I just keep my first finger barred and then I use my third finger to come up here to seven because the next chord is there where you’re just barring the D and the G strings. So then you get one, two, three and four and then on the and of four we’re gonna change… So on the and of four I’m just going to take my middle finger I’m going to bring it up here to the sixth fret of the B string, but since I’ve got my finger of already barring here I get the fifth fret of the G string. And then we hit that on the and of four;

so one, two, three and, four and. So it’s tied to beat one of the second measure so we’re gonna let that keep ringing, but we’re gonna pluck the D string and it’s going to be the fifth fret because again your first finger barre here; one, two, three and, four and, one and then on the downbeat of two we hit that first G5 power chord again… So that’s on the downbeat of two and then on the and of two we barre five and five. So we hit that on the and of two and then the downbeat of three we’re gonna move down to the third fret so we’re barring the D and the G strings and we hit that on the and of three. And then on the downbeat of four we hit the open D string and to four the open D and G strings. So that’s like the first two measures of the riff… Okay then on the next measure we actually we have on the downbeat of one just a little percussive note. So it doesn’t really matter which string you hit, just whatever’s easier for you. It doesn’t have to be just a single string, you just to kind of get that sound in there and then on the downbeat of two we hit the open D and G strings again and that’s tied to the downbeat of three. Then on the and of three we go back to the third fret D and G strings and then two mute strums for four and… Okay then on measure four we’re gonna do a regular B flat power chord. So first finger on the first fret of the A string and then I just use my third finger to pick up the third fret of the D string and my fourth finger pick up the third fret of the G string; we’re going to hit that on one and then we slide up to three. So when we hit that it’s not counted in the timing, it’s that small note. If you look on the note it’s like a smaller size note and the font looks different it has parentheses around it. So it’s like you kind of feel it, but if you think about it like one e and uh, two, three and then we’re gonna slide back down and then we end with the G, D and G strings open. So that’s the first four measures, like half of the entire sequence.

So right now Guitar Control is giving away this really cool free chord chart, there’s a link down in the description where you can get yours. It has every chord you could ever need all neatly compiled on one sheet. It’s in PDF format so you can download it, you can print it off, you can put a copy in your gig bag, put a copy where you practice; so just whatever situation you could have any chord you needed to glance and it’s a free download.

Okay so then starting on the fifth measure we’re back up to where we started here on that G5, and again we’ve got that kind of a mute on the downbeat of one and then we come in on two. Two and then on the downbeat of three we hit just the D and G strings on the and of two, fifth and fifth fret, that’s the C5 over G… and then back to the G5 for four and; so one and, two, three and, four and… Then on measure six we’re going to start off we’re going to hit the D string again, we’re still on the fifth fret and the seventh fret of the G string is still ringing… and now we’re gonna pick up the eighth fret of the B string so I just use my fourth finger here as we’re just going five eight we’re just picking up the octave… All right, and then on the and of two we hit the G5 again on the downbeat of three move down where it’s just the fifth and fifth. So it’s all eighth notes. It’s just kind of strange where it’s coming in because it’s coming in on the and of two and three and down to the third fret and three and four and D and G strings open… Okay now on measure seven is very similar to measure three. We start off with that mute open B and G then to the third fret. On measure three we did the two mutes, but here we’re gonna go open D string on the down beat of four and then on the and of four it’s the D and G string both open and then we kind of do something similar to what we did at a measure four. We’re going to come up here, but now we’re going to do it third fret of the A and D string and again I’m just using my first and second finger, you might want to use your thumb, I’m not 100% sure of how he’s actually doing it. I know he puts his thumb in there, but this is just kind of the way that I’ve adapted to do it to try to emulate that sound. So we hit that on beat four and then we’re gonna slide up to the fifth fret the same way we did before with that last 16th note and then we hit it again and then the whole thing would just repeat…

Conclusion

All right, so there you have it, a really cool riff in the style of Mark Knopfler from Money for Nothing by Dire Straits. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I’ve got two more pentatonic sequence licks like the stuff we’ve been working on in the past. We’ve got one for descending and one for ascending.

So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.

So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at these.

About The Licks

All right, so the first one here we’re going to start with the ascending one and this all right out of the minor pentatonic scale. So this is movable and you can do it in different places to play in different keys. I’m not going through the entire scale; it’s just a small section of it. So you can take the idea of it and you can move it around within the scale.

Pentatonic Lick Ascending

So here we’re doing it in E and we’re going to start here on the on the 14th fret of the D string with my third finger and then my first finger is on the 12th fret because we’re going to pick 14 pull to 12 and then hammer back on to 14… So this is all a triplet feel, so it’s like one-yel-low. And then we’re gonna go on the downbeat of two to the 12th fret on the G string with your first finger back to 14 on the D string and then back to 12 again on the G string… So we’ve already done one that was very similar to this with this same idea; this is just another way of hooking it together. So that’s the first half, the first two beats of the first measure… Now what we’re going to do is starting on beat three we’re going to shift up and we’re going to start on the B string. So now I’m going to pick 15 on the B string and pull to 12, because remember we’re out of the minor pentatonic shape, pattern one. So we’re going to pick 15 pull a 12 to 14 on the G string, so that’ll be beat three, three-yel-low and then on the B string 12 to 14 on the G back to 12, and that’s our first measure… Now starting on the second measure we’re going to start the sequence again, but now we’re moving up a string; so we’re going to start on the G string and I’m going to do 14 pull the 12 back to 14 as a triplet and then to 12 on the B string, back to 14 on the G string and then back to 12 again on the B string and that’s beat two. And then for beat three we’re going to come up to the high E string and we’re going to pick 15 pull to 12 and follow that with 15 on the B string and that’s beat three. And then for beat four we’re going to go back to 12 on the high E string and then back to 15 pull to 12 on the B string and that’s beat four… And then we’re going to end it by barring the 12th fret of the B and the high E string…

Pentatonic Lick Descending

All right, now let’s look at the descending version. So the descending version we’re going to start at the top of the scale and we’re going to pick 15 pull to 12 and then follow that with 15 on the B string; so again this is all triplets one-yel-low. Then we’re going to go back to 12 on the high E and then 15 pull of 12 on the B string and that’s beat two… 

Then we’re going to go to the G string 14 pull to 12, back to 14, back to 12 on the B string to 14 on the G string and back to 12 on the B string… Then on the second measure we’re going to be moving it down. So just like on the first one where we shifted up a string; now we’re going to shift down. So we’re going to start on the B string 15 pull the 12 and then we’re going to go to that 14 on the G string, back to 12 again on the high E string, back to 12, 14 pull to 12 on the G string. So that’s the first two beats of that second measure. Then we’re going to go to the D string 15 or excuse me 14 pull the 12 hammer to 14 and then back to 12 on the G string to 14 on the D string back to 12 and then finally ending on the 14th fret of the D string…

Moving The Licks Around

All right, so I was saying you can move these around. You could take the first one and starting it on the on the D string, the ascending one rather, and you could start it on the low E if you wanted to… however we want to do it just so it follows that same sequence. All of the notes that we’re playing are all in that E minor pentatonic scale. You can also move this around wherever you want since it’s out of that scale anywhere that you can play the scale you can play that same sequence. Now the further you go down the neck this way since the frets are further apart in your arms and more of an awkward position, it’s a lot harder. It’s a lot easier to play these licks at a higher fret. So there those are pretty cool, they’re just some ideas, hopefully this gives you some more ideas of things you can do in your own improvisation, so feel free to take any of this stuff and just dissect it make it your own.

Conclusion

All right, so there you have it, another installment of a little series on pentatonic sequences. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I want to show you how to play This Boy by The Beatles.

So right now Guitar Control is giving away this really cool free chord chart, there’s a link down in the description where you can get yours. It has every chord you could ever need all neatly compiled on one sheet. It’s in PDF format so you can download it, you can print it off, you can put a copy in your gig bag, put a copy where you practice; so just whatever situation you could have any chord you needed to glance and it’s a free download.

So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this.

This Boy – The Beatles

All right, so there’s actually three different ways that we’re going to be looking at this, actually even probably even more than three. This is a fairly easy song and a really timeless Beatles tune. But there are a lot of variations of things you can do with chords on here and ways you can play it versus playing by yourself versus playing with a second guitar. So hopefully this will be kind of a thing that no matter what skill level you’re at there’ll be something that you could hopefully get out of this.

All right, so it’s got this kind of swing kind of feel to it because it’s in a six eight (6/8).

So as we go through this let’s kind of show you the alternative different ways to do it. So we’ve got the intro and we’ve got a D major chord, we’ve got a B minor, we’ve got an E minor seven… Okay so when you when you actually when you listen to the song it’s got the intro it starts off here with these three quarter notes of D and then it goes into the rhythm. Well there’s actually two guitar parts, so one guitar is just playing these chords in the background, so we’ve got one, two and, three, so just two strums, well if you only play that part of it by itself it’s not like super interesting. It would be hard to even tell what song it was unless you were singing it. So you could have B minor, E7 or E minor seven and then A7 and then that other little melody going over the top of it. So you could play it if you were just totally playing this by yourself you could just… or if you have a second guitar player you have somebody that’s playing those chords in the back or even without it, it still sounds pretty good… So we’ve got these that blends really well, this is a lot easier to play too, especially if you’re a beginner. So what I’m doing here is I’m barring at the seventh fret across the D and G strings. Now so for this first chord, the D, this is D if we look at our D major barre chord we’re just playing the top end of it, but you want to use your first finger here because the next chord is B minor. So all we’re going to do is take keep our first finger where it is, but take our third finger and go to the ninth fret on the D string and that’ll give us our B minor; because again if we look at our barre chord we’re just playing the top end of it… so this way you get this…

Okay then the next one we’ve got is our E minor seven (Em7); so if we look at our E minor seven barre chord and we just play the top end of it… we get the notes that are in E minor seven, but we don’t get is the E, so technically those are the same notes that are in a G major chord. So later on we’re going to be playing a G major we’re going to be able to use the same voicing. You might be thinking “how are we going to be able to do that”, but you’ll hear it when you play it even though when we play this is a G it’s going to sound like a G and when we play the B minor seven it sounds like B minor seven. So we’ve got that D, B minor and then the E minor seven and then an A7. So we do our A7 barre chord here, but we just play the top end… But what we can do here is barre across starting on the D string and we can actually play the A string open with it if we want and that’s our A7… Okay, so as far as that rhythm, it’s an eighth note, two sixteenth notes, an eighth note and then three more eighth notes. So it’s like da da da da da da… So what I’m doing to make those last ones really punchy is I’m releasing the pressure. So I’m only really hitting it technically on the downbeat and then the upbeat and it’s not really the downbeat playing them as eighth notes. I’m actually hitting the 16th note and then resting on the next 16th note…  I’m only doing that on the last ones… and then I go to the next chord the B minor and do the same thing… E minor seven… A seven…

Okay so here is where it brings us to the verse. So the verse is like the same kind of thing. So we start off with D again, you can have one guitar doing… behind it if you have two or if you’re playing by yourself you could do these chords doing that same thing to get that little mute in there… I like playing it this way. I just think it’s more fun because it’s a little different and a good opportunity to work on these triad shapes and stuff. I just think it’s kind of more fun to play it this way. So it’s the same idea, we’ve got one measure D and then we’ve got one measure of B minor. Then we’re going to go to that E minor seven and also at the beginning of the verse you know so it’s a repeat. So the first two times… that’s our first and second ending. So the first two measures the D and the B minor and then the E minor seven and the A7 is the first two endings and then on the third time through its those chords, but what’s different is that instead of strumming it we’re just going to let them ring out for three beats each because they’re dotted half notes. So the whole verse with all the repeats… Now I’m on the third time; two, two, three, one, two, three and then it goes right back into… Okay, so now this leads us into the bridge section.

On the bridge section we’ve got a couple of new chords we have to look at. So we’ve got still our regular D major and then we’ve also got the D7. So for those of you don’t know what that is it’s like you take your regular D major chord and the note here on the B string moving from the third fret to the first fret, but the other two notes stay the same, so you just switch which fingers you’re using… So it’s going to be the one, two and, three, one, two and, three, one, two and three, one, two and three… All we’re going to do is for that D we’re on the seventh fret of the D, G and B string, we’re just gonna have the eighth fret of the high E and now we have our D7 because that note says C, that was a C down there and then to a G. So you could have this regular open G and this is where I was saying earlier that we’re going to be doing G here, this was our E minor seven. If we take the notes that we’ve got here to make up a G major. So the difference between the two is basically if you just take the G major and add an E in it you could look at it as E minor seven or as G6, that’s a whole other subject, but we’re just going to use that shape. So we’re going to be on this bridge we’re gonna have the… now we’re playing the G, but it’s the same that we did for E minor seven earlier… and there’s two measures long. Before everything was one measure. Now we’ve got an F sharp seven; so this F sharp seven you know if you just take your regular seven shape, but you know barring on the second fret. Here we can do it like that; if you’re more of a beginner we could just do it like this. So I’m just doing the top end of it so it’s more or less kind of what we’re doing for the A7, we’re just moving it down, but how we’re going to do it for this higher part here we’ve got the G, we’re just going to move that shape down a half step. Now we want to add in that high E… open high E string. Okay then we’re going to go to a B minor; so we’re just going to scoot back up and do the B minor shape we did before… And then we’ve got a D7; so for that D7 we’re just going to move this shape down a whole step and then drop your pinky onto the seventh fret of the B string so we’re just playing the top end of it. And again this whole part everything’s staying on two measures… F sharp seven, B minor seven. Then after that D7 we’re going to go back to G so we’re going to come back up to that same shape again, two measures of it again. Then we’ve got an E; so if you were playing it you know here it’s got this regular E major chord, but what we’re going to do is we’re coming from here is we’re going to pick up the ninth fret of the D, G and B strings, plus the high E string open. So I’m using my second finger to get the D string, third finger on the G and fourth finger on the B so that way the high E string can be open.

And then to A7 and then it has it rests and then it goes back and you know into another verse… and then it just goes back into another…

So you can see there’s a variety of ways that you can play this. So if you were just playing by yourself you could do this one or you could do the one… If I was playing it on my acoustic guitar I probably wouldn’t do this, not that you that you couldn’t do it, it’s just my acoustic guitar once you get up into that area it’s got some issues that need to be resolved and it just doesn’t sound good, but here it sounds pretty good I think… on the electric guitar and then if I find an acoustic I might play it down here… you can change up that rhythm, there’s really a million ways you could do it, it’s kind of up to you, make it your own.

Conclusion

All right, so there you have it, a slightly variable variation of This Boy by The Beatles. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Introduction

How’s it going everybody this is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I’ve got a kind of a cool pentatonic sequence for you. It’s a kind of a long descending run and we’re not using any open strings in this so it could be transposed into other keys and easily kind of slid around.

So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.

So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this.

Blues Pentatonic Lick In C

All right, so we’re starting up here we’re on the 11^th fret the B string with your first finger and we’re going to pick that and then do a hammer-on to the 13th fret and then pull back off to 11 and then follow that with the 12th fret on the G string. So this is all set up to where it’s in groups of four, sometimes it’s groups of two and sometimes it’s a group of three. So this one is a group of four and we’re gonna go to the 12th fret on the high E string with your third finger. So this is kind of an awkward and then slide up a half step to the 13th fret. So that 12 to 13 is a group of two and this is a group of four and then two… Then starting on the 11th fret or excuse me the 13th fret of the B string and your first fingers here on the 11th we’re gonna pick and pull and then back to 12 here on the G string… And then we do that 12 on the G string we’re going to slide down to 10… So that already by itself is kind of a cool lick and as usual to any of the stuff that’s in here if there’s like a particular part of it that you like or whatever, if it gives you an idea to do something else run with it…

Now we slide down to 10 there on the G string it’s with our middle finger then we’re going to go to the 10th fret on the D string, but we’re going to use our third finger because we’re going to follow that our first finger is going to go to the eighth fret on the G string and then to the ninth fret… We go to that nine and then we’re gonna go to the 10th fret on the D string and we’re going to pick to eight pick and pull to ten on the A string… Okay so we do the 10 pull the eight on the on the D string and then we’re going to go to the 10th fret on the A string and back to the eighth fret on the D string… Then we’re going to go to the 10th fret on the A string then to the ninth fret and then to the eighth fret and slide down to six… So we slide down to eight or excuse me down to six and then we’re gonna go with our third finger reach up and grab the eighth fret on the low E string and then we’re going to go back to the six on the A string and do a hammer-on to seven… So this whole section right here I’ve done a couple other examples that had a very similar idea, it’s like a really kind of a cool bluesy rock lick…

So after we have six back to seven on the A string then you’re gonna pick up the tenth fret of the D string you want to use your pinky and that’s kind of a big stretch… Okay so we get there, that’s like on the very downbeat of the third measure, then we’re gonna go to the eighth fret on the low E string. So how I do it from here because my pinkies playing the tenth fret here on the D string is I’m going to use my middle finger and we’re gonna grab that eight and we’re gonna slide down to six and then to three… Then we’re gonna go to the D string first fret and pick and hammer to the second fret and then the first fret on the B string to the third fret on the A string to make it resolve to C… this particular one is in C. So that last part of it after we do the… then we’re gonna go eight, six, three and then to the first fret of the D string and hammer the second fret and grab the first fret of the B string and then that makes it resolve to this C chord… So like I said you could transpose this into another key. So like if you wanted to do it in D then you just move it up a whole step… the spacing and everything since we’re not using any open strings you can kind of move it around wherever you want.

Conclusion

All right, so there you have it a pretty cool descending pentatonic lick, if I don’t say so myself. If you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I’ve got some more lead guitar stuff for you. Today we’re going to be looking at the harmony outro solo on a Hotel California. So I used to think that this was completely just Don felder’s baby, but then recently I’ve read some things that are kind of conflicting to that. So I’m not really sure of the story. I always thought it was just Felder, but then I read something that gave me the impression that maybe Joe Walsh wrote this part of it, I don’t know. Also it sounds really good and it’s a really good exercise for arpeggios and to see kind of alternative ways that you can use them. And it’s so melodic because it follows the chord progression of the song.

So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.

So be sure to click the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this.

Iconic Don Felder & Joe Walsh Solo

All right, so this one we’re starting off with this B minor arpeggio. So a lot of these shapes are ones that we’ve done on other lessons in the past. Or maybe you already know or from other songs. So what I’m doing is I’m on the 14th fret of the high E string with my pinky and then I’m on the 10th fret of the high string of my first finger. I’m going to pick 14 and pull to 10 and then follow that with the 12th fret on the B string and it’s a 16th note… So that’s just like a cool lick in itself. There’s so much stuff in here you’ll be able to use in other things. Okay, so we’ve got that and we do that for a whole measure. So we’ve got one, two, three, four and then the last note is an eighth note so it rings out for just a little bit longer because this is where we’re going to transition to the next part.

So for the next part we’re just going to move down so now we’re going to be on the 12th fret of the high E string with your pinky the ninth fret of the high E string with your first finger we’re going to pick and pull 12 to 9. Now we’re going to go to the 11^th fret on the B string… So we went from this shape… so remember that because we’re going to be repeating a pattern of that. So we do this one once and we switch here… and then we slide all the way up to the 18th fret of the high E string… So that’s the basic idea of it and then it’s just somewhat going to be repeating that same concept as we’re working our way down. Okay, then we’re going to come back down to where we was and we’re going to pull 12 to 9, but instead of going to 11 on the B string we’re going to go to 10. So now we’re back to another different shape; as we go along this will make more sense. I’m getting a little ahead of myself. So now we’re gonna do the exact same timing, but now we’re going to shift down into the next pattern. So instead of 12, 9, 10, we’re going to go 7, 10, 9… So we’re back to that other shape, the second shape we did… So do the same idea, but this time we’re going to slide up to the 16th fret. So, so far we’ve got… Okay so now we’re going to come back to here again we’re going to do like what we did before and we’re going to go 10 to 7 and now we’re going to go to eight instead of going to nine, same timing again as what we’ve been doing… So when I’m doing these two by the way I pick the down stroke, whole, up stroke on the B string and then just… that seems to be the easiest way for me to do it. So now we’re gonna stay on ten, but now it’s gonna be awkward as we’re going to go 10 to 5 to seven on the B string… and then slide up to 14.

Then we’re going to move all the way down so we’re seven and three on the high E string and five on the B string. Then we’re gonna move back up to nine six and seven and then that’s like the halfway mark…

So to make that transition we’re going to come up to the 10th fret on the high E string with your middle finger and your first finger on the ninth fret and we’re going to go 10, 9, 10, 12 and then that’s going to put us back to the very first arpeggio again. So like I said that’s the halfway mark and then on the second half of this is just the same thing. There’s just some parts that are changed there’s some like little bluesy kind of licks almost and this whole thing is being harmonized. So this is the part I believe that Felder plays and then the harmony is what Joe Walsh plays, but I could be completely backwards, it doesn’t really matter. I really like this. They’re both great players and it’s just more great examples of how to write a solo like this that is very memorable. I think it’s one of the best ones ever, but that’s just my my humble opinion.

So now for the second half do the same thing. We’re going to 14 pull to 10 on the high E string to 12 on the B string. So we’re going to do a whole measure just like we did before, but now what we do next is the difference. Now we’re going to come up to the 17^th fret on the B string with your pinky and then to the 14th fret on the B string and we’re going to pick and pull and then we’re going to use our middle finger to go to the 15th fret on the G string, third finger to go to the 16th fret and we’re going to bend and hold that and then use our pinky to grab 17 on the B string and then do a slide from nowhere to the 18th fret of the high E string just like what we did before… S      o this second half is harder than the first half in my opinion. I can play the first half of it much better than I can play the second half. So that being said if you’re somewhat of a beginner just play the parts that you can play. Those are pretty big stretches and kind of tough and I’ve got little hands so if I can do it anybody can do it. But they might be really hard at first so just play the parts you can and have some satisfaction with that. Okay, so after we do that slide up to her up here to the 18th fret now we’re going to do the arpeggio a little bit different. We’re going to start on the 17th fret of the B string with your pinky and then you’re going to take your first finger and just barre the 14th fret of the B and G strings… same kind of idea that we’ve been doing. Now we’re going to move that down so we’re 15 pull the 12 and do another little another little lick it’s on the B string. 15 pull to 12 to the 13th fret of the G string with your second finger to the 14th fret and do that same bend and grab the 15th fret of the B string and then do the slide from nowhere again… Okay, so now after you do that slide to the 16th fret on the high E string we’re on to the next position. So now we’re on measure 13 so I’m going to be 15th fret on the B string with my pinky and I’m going to use my first finger barre the 12th fret of the high E and the B string and the G string on the 12th fret; same idea, pick pull, a whole measure of that. Then we’re going to shift clear down to 10 and pick pull and we’re gonna do the same thing that we did before, but this we have to do a little bit different this time. All right so we’re going to do that 15 pull to 10 on the B string to the 11th fret on the G string with my first finger and then I’m going to use my first finger just to move up to the 12 and do the bend, because otherwise it’s really awkward to do, it’s super awkward to do it anyway. You may end up finding an easier way to do it then how I’m doing it. Maybe you know if you have bigger hands it’s obviously going to be an advantage here, but yeah, that’s the most awkward part, and then slide to 14 and we’re just doing like what we did before. Now we’re back down to seven, pull the three to five and then we’re gonna move up to nine to pull the six to seven on the B string… and they slide out of it. Now on the audio on the studio version this just keeps going on and on and they fade it out. So I just ended it kind of like what they do on the live version of it… we come down and just do a regular old B minor chord, but if you barre all the way across then you get this little F sharp and it sounds nice and full…

Conclusion

Alright, so there you have it, the outro, melody, arpeggio lick, whatever you want to call it from Hotel California. So you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I’ve got three more fun licks for you in the style of Mike Campbell.

So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.

So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at these.

Mike Campbell Lick-1 – It’s Good To Be King

All right, so all of these examples we’re using are from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers songs. So this first one here to look at is a lick from It’s Good To Be King. So the whole thing about this is it’s just another pentatonic sequence idea. There’s one part in here that I mess up on a lot because he does it exactly opposite of how my hands naturally want to do it. So with this we are in E minor pentatonic, so we’re just using this first pattern here, pattern number one. So I’m on the 15^th fret of the B string and I’m hitting this on the and of four; so it’s like one, two, three, four and… So we’re gonna hit this and bend it and it’s tied to the downbeat of one of the second measure and we do a full step bend and throw some vibrato on there. Now we’re gonna pick 15 and pull to 12, still on the B string, and we’re gonna pick 15 and 12 again, but this time we’re going to pick both of them; so we’ve got pick, pull, pick. Then we’re gonna go to the 14th fret on the G string and we’re going to do a bend and release to 12 and then to the 14th fret of the D string. So that’s like a Mike Campbellism right there, he does that kind of thing a lot. Then we’re gonna go back to the 12^th fret on the G string and then to the 14th fret and then we’re gonna pick and again and bend and release… Then we’re going to go to the 12th fret on the B string to the 15th fret and then back to 12. So a lot of these sections in there where he’s picking everything and a way that you can kind of make it your own and take stuff from this is and change some of the stuff where maybe he’s picking everything to do hammer-ons or pull-offs or maybe there’s places where he does a hammer-on and you can change that to a pick or a slide. This is all just really kind of basic stuff out of the pentatonic and he is the absolute master of taking something that’s really simple and just making it sound awesome and it really serves the song… Okay so now we go to the 12^th fret on the B string to the 15 back to 12 and then back to the G string and we’re going to pick 14 pull to 12 hammer to 14; that part right there I want to start on 12 and go 12 to 14 back to 12 and he does it the opposite. So then back to 12, 14 on the D string and then 14 on the G string and that’s another one of those cool rolling finger ideas. And then back to 12 and we’re going to do a quarter step bend so you want to pull this just a little to put a little stank on that note and then back to 14 on the D string with some vibrato… So if you really slow it down like that it just sounds like a really neat blues lick, but he does play that quite a bit quicker. On a lot of the older material from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers he did a lot of things that were faster than what he did later on.

Mike Campbell Lick-2 – Breakdown

All right, so the next one to look at is from Breakdown and this is one of my absolute favorites of his. I think this is just really awesome the way this is laid out and it’s really simple, but it’s so melodic and sounds so good; it’s just like a really kind of cool unique way to use the pentatonic scale. All right, so I’m going to start here on the 10th fret of the B string and I’m using my second finger. So I’m going to pick that and slide to eight and then back to ten. And then I’m going to follow that with the ninth fret on the G string with my first finger, and this is like one and, two and, three, and then on the downbeat of four we’re gonna do the same thing, but now it’s going to be on the G string. So I’m going to pick this nine, slide to seven, back to nine and then to seven on the D string… Okay, then we hit that seven there on the on the D string with some vibrato and that is coming in on the and of one and it’s a dotted quarter note so it’s the and of one plus all of beat two. And then starting on the downbeat of three, we ended here on the seventh fret on the D string, so we’re gonna pick that slide to five and back to seven… and then on the and of four to the seventh fret of the A string. So you can see we’ve got like a pattern here… Okay, so we hit that seven here, we’re hitting that on the and of four and then on the downbeat of one, well actually I’ll be one of the third measure it’s a rest and that’s going to give you just a second to come up to this next part. So we’re gonna do this kind of a rake thing on the downbeat of two. I’m just barring the fifth fret of the G, B and high E strings, but you don’t want like that… you want… I just kind of palm mute a little bit as I ascend it to make those notes softer. We’re going to hit that and then we’re going to go to the eighth fret on the B string and that’ll be on the and of two and it’s tied to a dotted quarter note so it’ll ring out through the downbeat of four and then on the and of four we come back to the fifth fret of the B string… Then we’re going to play the fifth fret of the B string again to the seventh fret of the G string… and then the sequence kind of starts over and has just a little bit of a different ending…

Mike Campbell Lick-3 – American Girl

All right, so the last one we are gonna look at, it’s on the very outro of American Girl and again you know it’s another way, in this case he’s playing something that’s a lot faster, but this is like actually not too hard to play quickly. So we’re gonna start here with your pinky on the 10th fret of the B string and then I just take my first finger and I just barre it across the seventh fret of the first three strings. You know we’re not playing the high E string, but just put it like that, and then we’re gonna pick ten pull to seven… and then follow that with the seventh fret of the G string. So we’ve got ten pull to seven, and then we’re going to take our middle finger and put it on the eighth fret and I do it as a down stroke; down, pull, up, down, pull, up… So that’s basically the sequence as far as the timing and the technique and then we’re just going to move it up a whole step. So now we’re picking 12 pulling to 9 and then 10 and each one of these sequences you repeat four times… Okay, so for the next one we’re going to move it up a step and a half so now first fingers can be barre 12 and pinky is going to be on 15, but we do have one slight difference here. So we’re gonna do the 15 pull to 12 and now instead of going 13 we’re going to go 14, so it’s going to be your third finger, so same technique. Then we’re going to move it up again a whole step from there so now we’re barring at 14, picking 17 and pulling to 14. And now we’re back to the original shape so it’s going to be a half step up on 15 with your middle finger and then the whole thing would just repeat…

Conclusion

All right, so there you have it, three more fun, not too terribly difficult licks to play in the style of Mike Campbell from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.

Introduction

How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I want to show you how to play Tesla’s rendition of Signs by Five Man Electric Band.

So right now Guitar Control is giving away this really cool free chord chart, there’s a link down in the description where you can get yours. It has every chord you could ever need all neatly compiled on one sheet. It’s in PDF format so you can download it, you can print it off, you can put a copy in your gig bag, put a copy where you practice; so just whatever situation you could have any chord you needed to glance and it’s a free download.

So be sure to click the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this.

Signs – Tesla

All right, so we’re going to be for the most part just playing a bunch of just basic chords that you probably already know; hopefully you already know. All right, so we start with this D right on the downbeat of one and it’s a quarter note and then on the downbeat of two we strum it again. It’s an eighth note and then on the and of two it’s two sixteenth notes. So we’ve got a total of four strums; long, short, shorter. And then we’re gonna go to the D suspended four (Dsus4) and we hit that right on the downbeat of three, but then we immediately switch back to regular D for the remainder of the measure… right on the downbeat of one of the second measure we go back to the Dsus4, back to the D, so it’s kind of a pattern that just repeats… the very last one there right at the end of the second measure we’ve got just the A and the D string open and then to the second fret of the A string, but the D string is still open and these are like kind of pickup notes into the into the beginning of the verse and then we just drop into a regular C major chord…

All right, so now we’re on the verse… so the vocal start right there and we start with C and it’s just a regular regular open position C major chord; so I’m on the third fret of the A string, second fret of the D string, G string is open, first fret of the B string, high E string and we’re gonna play this starting on the downbeat of one with C. So how I’m doing is I’m just hitting the E, the A, the D and then the G and the B together; one and, two. Then we’re gonna go to a G over B (G/B) and this is really simple. All you have to do is take your middle finger and move it from the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the A string and take your other two fingers off so now you’re going to be playing the same thing, three and four… Then we’ve got a D over A (D/A). So if you just go back to the original D major chord, but now you’re just going to start off by hitting the open A and then the open D, one and two, and then to a G major chord, three and four…

So with that part it shows on the on the transcription you hit the E string and then the A, D and G strings and then the G, B and high E. So when you’re when you’re practicing that don’t put too much stress into like making sure that when you get to this top part that you don’t hit the D string. You know it it’s just not a big deal. All the notes are in the key they’re part of the chord. So over time you’ll refine it, but at first don’t put too much worry on that. All right, so far on the verse we’ve got… Now we’re going to switch to a D again, so this is like one, two… same thing like we did on the intro, it’s a quarter note, then an eighth note, then two 16th notes; so one, two e and, and then to an A major.

So when I do this I’m just using my first finger to barre because you don’t need to worry about hitting the high E string. So I’ve got the A string open and then I’m just barring the second fret of the D, G and B strings… and we hit that and then to a G, same thing… and

then two back to an A major and it’s the same as the timing at the second half of that previous measure with the A; so it’s two sixteenth notes, then an eighth, then four sixteenth notes…

Now as far as that strum and rhythm in there you can really kind of make it your own.

You just kind of want to feel it. I probably don’t play it consistently exactly the same way every time, there’s probably been slight variances. You just kind of want to feel it and you will always get a better performance if you kind of feel it then if you’re really trying to count it unless it’s some kind of a really syncopated rhythm that you need to be doing, especially on an acoustic song it just isn’t necessary to put that much stress. It will make this easy especially if you’re a beginner. Okay then we go to a B minor… so just barring the second fret my first finger the through the A string we don’t use the low E and then I’m on the second or excuse me the third fret of the B string on my second finger, fourth fret of the D string with my third finger, fourth fret of the G string with my fourth finger. Now when you play this you can get all of it or you could omit the high E string. So if you’re having problems with doing barre chords you can just get this shape here and then all you have to do is pick up the note on the A string and it’ll probably already be muting the high E string anyway just simply because of your finger laying down… So here we’re starting with B minor and we’ve got that similar kind of a rhythm thing going here. We’ve got one and, two… so we’ve got on beat number two the last 16th note is tied to the first 16th note of beat three, so it’s like treated like an eighth note. So if you thought of this as like three long, one short, one long, one short, one long, four short, as far as how they ring out, but again if you know the melody of the song like that we’ve talked about in lots of other videos about countertop drumming to get that for this B minor… Okay then we go to a G, so just regular old G major and whether you play it with the D note here on the third fret of the B string or you play it with the B string open. I personally like the way it sounds more with this D in there and I think that’s the way they’re playing it and Tesla’s playing in their version. So that’s the way I’ve got it in here, but if you don’t play G that way, it’s just not that big of a deal. For this with G here we got the same timing that we just had on the B minor then we’re gonna go back to a D and it’s back to this similar timing that we had earlier in the verse. So this is actually exactly the same as a measure five, so it’s back to the D, so long, one, two… and then to an A and on here it’s just… But again you don’t feel free to kind of like spice up that rhythm, especially if you’re playing this completely by yourself. They’re playing it as a whole group, but if you’re playing it by yourself you have a lot of freedom and you can really change up that rhythm and make it to sound more interesting and more fun for you to play as well.

All right, now that brings us to the chorus and for the chorus it’s going to be using the same G, D, A and C that we’ve been using except we have one more chord; we have a C add nine (Cadd9). So Cadd9 has a couple of different ways that you could play it. I’ll show you the way that I like to do it for this particular thing. I just think personally I think it makes it easier. So we’re gonna go from a D to the Cadd9; so if you just take your first finger and you move it down a string so it goes from the second fret of the G string the second fret of the D string and then your middle finger moves down so it’s on the third fret of the A string your ring finger stays where it is. So there’s a couple different ways you can play it, this is just the way they’re doing it. So you could also do it just by taking the regular C shape and putting your pinky down like this. The reason I do it the way that I do it is because after the Cadd9 we’re going to go to a G, so it just makes the transition really simple. So we’re going to go from this D to Cadd9 to G… So that’s the chorus and it starts off with the D; so we’re hitting this as a quarter note and then an eighth note to 16th to note. So the thing that’s different between this and what we’ve been doing is we’ve got the one, two e and, so that second sixteenth note of beat two is actually going to make the change to Cadd9. So it’s coming in kind of on in a weird place, especially if you’re doing it from trying to count it, but it just makes it a lot easier. So when we hit that it is on the last 16th note of beat two, but it’s tied to the first 16th note of beat three… So we hit that and then we hit it three more sixteenth notes and then we’re going to go to a G and that’s on the downbeat of four… Okay, then starting on the second measure we’re back to D. So we start with two 16th notes and then an eighth note… and then on the last 16th note of beat two we switched to a G… So we hitched that to G on the last 16^th note of beat two and then we’ve just got four eighth notes; so three  and four and… then we’re gonna go back to a D… then A same a we did earlier and now to our regular C chord. So the Cadd9 is basically the difference between those two chords is here we’re getting this C here we’re getting a D. So with all of these chord changes sometimes these different voicing’s are just so it carries a chordal melody, like a high melody within the chord or a low melody just depending upon what it is. So when we get to that C we have a whole measure of this; it’s one and, two e and, three e and a, four and. So again much easier if you just kind of feel it out and then it’s the end of a repeat so you play the intro, the verse, the chorus and then you go back and play the intro again, the second verse, the second chorus and then the end of the second chorus it has this little transition here that leads us into the bridge. So we’re at the end and this is kind of like the intro… Now we’ve got this little build up thing that is kind of weird, especially when you’re just playing this by yourself. It really makes it sound cool, at least for me. I find it maybe have of the time I do it sounds cool. So we’ve got the eighth notes, beat number one and beat two are eighth note, two sixteenth note, so one and, two e and, and then on the downbeat of three the first sixteenth note is the strum of that. And then we have an eighth note just a single G third fret of the low E string and we’re gonna hit that twice as eighth note and then a sixteenth note and then we have a sixteenth note rest. And then the next sixteenth note is the fourth fret, so we rest a sixteenth note and go to an A because that’s like… that was okay, it sounds really cool when they do it, but just by yourself it’s not a full sounding in my opinion.

Okay, so the very last thing we’re hitting is that that strumming in A and it’s the last 16th note of beat four and then that brings us into the bridge, which starts on A. So we’re already there. We’ve got one e and, so like an eighth and two sixteenth notes and then an eighth, two sixteenth and the very last 16th note of beat two is tied to the downbeat of beat three so it’s an eighth note. Again, don’t put too much thought into that. Just kind of feel it… We’re going to do this through the whole measure and then the last 16th note we switch to a G… starting on the downbeat of two it’s a G and it’s the same timing again. We’ve got one and, two and, and we go to a D major… The third measure starts off with 16th notes and the last 16th note of beat we switched to an A and then we have two beats, eight sixteenth notes for beats three and four… then back to a G, this is a two four barre so it’s just two beats; one, two, three, four, five… that’s one way you can simplify it, and now to a D… so it’s just like the intro. Okay so then you have the verse, “the sign says come in kneel down and pray”, the church one and it’s a lot softer and the acapella parts, but it’s all just more or less these same parts that we’ve gone over.

Conclusion

All right, there you have it, all the parts to be able to play Signs, Tesla’s version of Signs by Five Man Electric Band, I think it was called originally. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.