Chops: Beginner
Theory: Beginner
Lesson Overview:
• Learn how the song can
become your greatest
guitar teacher.
• Discover the greatness that
is the balance knob.
• Expose the soft white underbelly
of the jazz drummer with
a heavy metal anthem.
I am writing this month’s column while
riding in a van to the next gig of my
Italian clinic tour. With 20 shows in a row
and no days off, the schedule is rigorous,
to say the least. But I love playing, and
that keeps me happy and healthy. Every
show brings musical adventures to me in
the form of a different bassist and drummer.
These generous musicians have been
kind enough to learn a formidable list of
songs I send out in advance. I truly enjoy
this rebellion against “backing tracks,”
and it toughens me up to adapt to different
musicians’ idiosyncrasies of style and
meter on a daily basis. Mostly, it’s just fun
to jam a bunch of tunes with different
guys every day.
The message that I bring to the audience
is this: The best guitar teacher is
learning songs and playing them with a
band. In my clinic, I show how each song
teaches me something valuable. I think the
students learn some good things, but I’m
the one who benefits the most because I
learned the songs! This month, I want you
to benefit too.
So I’m going to give you a homework
assignment—a very enjoyable one. I want
you to learn the songs I learned for my
Italian clinic tour. I guarantee you will
come out of the other end of this tunnel
with bags of inspiration, ideas, and
improved fingers and ears. Here is my set,
in order, plus some notes on what I found
challenging or interesting.
“The Point of Know Return” by Kansas.
There is a
repeating
arpeggio
melody that
the violin plays
in this song. I
was jealous of
the violin having
all the fun,
so I worked out a way to play it on guitar.
My hint to you: Sweep picking won’t work.
Go for pull-offs, string skipping, and a bit
of left-hand stretching. For bonus points try
the long violin arpeggio in the bridge.
“Waiting for the Bus/Jesus Just Left
Chicago” by ZZ Top.
Does guitar playing
get any more
fun than this?
I’ve jammed
this pair before
in countless
soundchecks,
but I finally
sat down and
learned it properly
to get the details of the riff right. And
the details are worth getting. Vibrato, vibrato,
vibrato! For a good time, call Billy Gibbons.
“Somebody Stole My Thunder” by
Georgie Fame.
I’m guessing that you
haven’t heard
this song yet.
For goodness
sakes,
go pull it up
on iTunes or
YouTube and
get a load of
one of the
swingingest grooves of 1969. I extended
the ending fade out into a guitar-scatting
solo to give the guitar fans some extra
entertainment.
“Riders on the Storm” by The Doors. Yes,
“Riders on
the !#$@ing
Storm.” I’m
pretty sure that
99 percent of
the audience
did not like
this song at
all. Did that
stop me? Nope. I take a perverse pleasure in
giving the shredders what they don’t expect.
It’s all in the name of trying to get guitar
players to rethink their self-imposed stylistic
boundaries. When I was a teenager I never
would have dreamed of playing this song.
But now I love it. The solo sections are
truly challenging for me because it doesn’t
sound right to play loud and fast. I have to
slow down and quiet down and still keep
it interesting with some good notes and
phrasing choices. This can be bitter medicine
for the heavy metal guitar player, but
in the end I feel healthier having taken it.
“Blue Rondo à la Turk” by Dave
Brubeck. I’m fortunate to have a wife who
has spent years
playing piano.
On this tune
she plays the
piano part
and I take the
saxophone
parts. The
main melodies
are fast enough to be interesting, but slow
enough to not cause me to panic. The solo
section is a jazzy F blues and it forced me
to expand from my I–IV–V comfort zone by adding a IIm chord and a VI7 chord into
the progression, as well as some diminished
moments. These sounds are familiar to me,
but my fingers had no idea where to go, so
I had to spend some time cramming new
shapes into my head. This was time well
spent and the result is that the grimacing
specter of jazz gave me one friendly grin
before resuming its fearful face. Overall this
is a fantastic tune and it makes me wonder
if Rush got some of their influence from
the odd time signature.
“The Hellion/Electric Eye” by Judas
Priest. Oh, rapturous metal! This is the
good stuff
and the audience
responds
accordingly.
I learned this
pair of songs
back when I
was 16 and it
was the first
time I had any success with fast alternate
picking. It was fantastic to relive the experience
while singing the line, “I’m made of
metal!” This song also spotlights the soft
white underbelly of jazz drummers. My
open message to jazz drummers around the
world is this: “Yes, you have to learn the
accents. You can’t be swishy and improvise
your way through this. It’s METAL. Get
the accents right!” End of rant.
“Space Truckin’” by Deep Purple. For
those of us
who grew up
in the ’70s,
there is one
thing that
we sorely
miss about
the ensuing
decades:
They don’t put balance knobs on stereos
anymore. I loved my balance knob. Most
of the Beatles’ records, early Van Halen
records, and many other bands would pan
the instruments hard to one speaker or the
other, which made it much easier to sort
out the guitar part. Deep Purple’s Machine
Head album was mixed like this, and
Ritchie Blackmore’s parts are worth looking
at through this sonic microscope. My favorite
part is how the first two verses have one
rhythm pattern, but the third verse opens
up with a totally different chicka-chugga,
chicka-chugga, chicka-chugga, waaa part.
And the guitar solo is easily stretched out
into a long, satisfying jam.
“Boom Boom” by the Animals. I’ve always
been fascinated by the bass part in this version
of the blues classic. I expect it to go up
but it goes down. And somehow, that is so
much cooler. I
love the overall
arrangement
because it has
so many stops
and accents.
And it’s fun
to play a blues
shuffle while
navigating through the daunting territory of
F, which is a key where all the dots (fretboard
markers) seem to be in the wrong place.
“Taking Care of Business” by Bachman-
Turner Overdrive. Whatever the “classic”
in classic rock
means, this
song has heaps
of it. I don’t
think there is a
cowbell in the
original recording,
but somehow
it doesn’t
need one because the whole song is like a
giant cowbell groove. I’m not sure if my
Italian audience could appreciate the philosophy
of the lyrics, but I certainly enjoyed
them. On a more serious guitar note, the
solos continue to give me a great challenge.
The chord changes (C–Bb–F–C) don’t
seem dangerous at first glance. The C blues
scale (C–Eb–F–Gb–G–Bb) is often “good
enough,” but to really navigate through the
changes purposefully is beyond my current
abilities. I still find myself relying on
luck and hope. This progression is a perfect
example of how even a simple song can be
a fantastic guitar teacher. Someday I will
get it right. (This is where you can visualize
me gazing upward and shaking my fist at a
giant, glowing B.T.O. logo.)
And last, but not least …
“Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf.
You can shred
through scales
all day, but
if you want a
real challenge,
try memorizing
these lyrics
and then
singing them
at the same time that you play the alternating
rhythms of the guitar riff. It’s a lot
of rhythms for a single human being to
juggle. But once you get it, man, does it
feel great. The solo at the end is a challenge
for me. The groove is busy with
accents and the tempo is right in between
my usual comfort zones. It must have
been challenging for the original guitarist
as well, because he doesn’t do much other
than a few choice volume swells. I wanted
to give my guitar clinic audience a rousing
finale so I had to find a way to put some
ripping guitar solos in there. And again,
the song is my teacher. A tempo, a key,
and a set of accents give me a whole world
of challenges and possibilities to experiment
with.
So I will end my column the same way
I ended my clinics—by encouraging you
to write down a list of 10 songs and start
learning them now. You can pick mine or
you can pick your own. Learn them all the
way through. If you can’t make it all the
way through, then toss out the tough ones,
save them for later, and replace them with
simpler ones. Scour your town for musicians
and play the songs you learned with
a band. It’s fun and it will improve your
playing more than anything.
Learn songs.
Learn songs.
Learn songs.
Paul Gilbert purposefully began playing guitar
at age 9, formed the guitar-driven bands Racer
X and Mr. Big, and then accidentally had a No.
1 hit with an acoustic song called “To Be with
You.” Paul began teaching at GIT at the age of
18, has released countless albums and guitar
instructional DVDs, and will be remembered as
“the guy who got the drill stuck in his hair.” For
more information, visit
paulgilbert.com.