Anyone Can Play Guitar

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Single Note Riffs

Venus by Television

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The original recording:

Here’s a more recent live video. Good view of Lloyd if you want to see just how he fingers certain licks. These days they play tuned down a semi-tone.

And here’s my transcription. Lloyd is the upper part, Verlaine below. I’ve made a tiny fingering adjustment to how I do it in the video on one of the chorus licks, just to bring it in line with Lloyd’s fingering in the above video. Such is the level of nerdy commitment I bring to these lessons for you! If you want a high-quality PDF of the tab/music, click here.

I Walk The Line by Johnny Cash

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by Johnny Cash

In this lesson I show you how to play the Johnny Cash classic, mainly from the perspective of Luther Perkins great electric guitar part. There’s so much you can learn from this song: how to play rhythm guitar in the classic bass note/strum country style; how to connect chords with walk-ups and downs; the names of the I IV and V chords in 3 of the most common keys; how key changes work.

The lesson is based on the original and probably best-known 1956 recording of the song. Cash went on to re-record the song on a number of occasions and it’s interesting to check-out the differences between the various versions. The 1964 version is faster and there are some definite changes to the guitar part, particularly in the way Perkins walks up and down between chords. Also great is the live at San Quentin recording, but guitar on this is played by Carl Perkins (no relation) in a quite different more twangy style.

I’ve written out the intro below. I think it’s worth learning this intro note-for-note as Perkins plays it, since it’s such an iconic part. If you’d like a PDF of the entire song you can download it here. I suggest that for the verses you use the written part as a guide, and make it your own by varying the movement of the bass line and the right-hand strumming. As I explain in the video, it’s actually quite easy to make sense of the key changes if you think in terms of the movement of the I IV and V chords. Each verse has the same progression: V, I, V, I, IV, I, V, I. We start in E, walk up to A, walk up again to D, then walk back down to A, and finally back home to E again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rumble by Link Wray

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The original recording sounds like this:

This is great too, Jimmy Page playing air guitar!:

A rock ‘n’ roll classic. And a great one to try if you’re a beginner, though I can’t imagine any player who wouldn’t have fun playing this. Mostly it’s quite straightforward, just take care with the timing, which is a bit quirky in places. Listen closely to the original to get a feel for what’s going on. I’ve written it out below. Download a high-quality PDF here. (Theory nerds, I’ve chosen to write it out in 4/4, though there’s an argument for notating it in 12/8. 4/4 just makes a bit more sense to me and is less cluttered and easier to read.)

Backing track

I put together this quick backing track which I play over at the start of the video. Have a go playing along. It’s a really good test of how well you know the piece, and will really help you to nail the timing. The count at the start is 1 2 3 4 1 2 (then play the opening Dsus2 chord on beats 3 and 4 before the band kicks in.

Gear

For the video I used my Jazzmaster (an American Vintage 65) through an 80s Fender Super Champ. The amp was set fairly quiet and clean; overdrive was from a J Rockett Archer pedal. The tremolo effect is a Fulltone Supa-Trem.

I couldn’t find much definite info on exactly what Link used for the original recording. Some suggest he used a Les Paul (which in 1958 would have had P90s) into a Multivox Premier amp. Overdrive was apparently a result of his slashing the speakers in the amp!

Shot by Both Sides by Magazine

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This is what the album recording sounds like:

And this is the original single version:

It’s interesting to compare the two recordings. I think both of them are great in different ways, so it’s hard to say which I prefer. The single feels like more of a traditional punk recording: raw and to the point, power chords, no keyboards. The version on Real Life is more produced (with John Leckie twiddling the knobs, as he did years later for Magazine-lovers Radiohead on their album The Bends), the guitars are a bit more layered and jangly, and there are interesting keyboard textures from Dave Formula, who I don’t think was a member of the band at the time of the single recording.

I’ve written all the music out below. I’ve just given you the various parts for the different sections – listen to the recording and it should be easy enough to put everything together in the right structure. As I talk about in the video, there are some – mostly minor differences between the guitar parts on the two different recordings. The rhythm guitars on the single are all power chords – so just leave out the top 2 or 3 notes in the barre chords if you want to take this approach. The main riff is played exactly the same on each recording. The solo I’ve written out is the album version though the single version is very similar.

 

 

 

On a side note, I’ve become increasingly irritated with Sibelius, the software that I use to notate all my music. Maybe it’s great if you’re composing a symphony or scoring multiple parts for some complex ensemble but for anything beyond the most basic guitar-based notation it’s a right pain in the arse. Things which should be simple like unison bends or slides into or off of notes require much time-consuming faffing. The key signature is ignored when you’re pasting notes from the tab and you have to go in and manually fix all the notes. And you may as well forget about complex bending stuff like you find in country guitar solos. I’ve only stuck with it as it’s supposedly the most ‘pro’ and sophisticated notation software available. Think I’ll give Guitar Pro another try. [End of rant.]

Shakin’ All Over by Johnny Kidd & The Pirates

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The original recording:

This song is a true rock n roll classic which I really enjoyed figuring out and learning to play for this lesson. Guitars on the original recording were played by the Pirates guitarist Alan Caddy (who plays the high muted riff in the verses), and guest session player Joe Moretti (who plays the main riff, the solo and, I’m guessing, the main chorus part). For more background on the recording check out this fantastic interview with Brian Gregg, the Pirates bass player. (Thanks to Tim, friend of this site, for sending me a link to this.) Gregg says that the whole track was recorded live in one take, with the exception of a guitar “shimmer” part overdubbed using a cigarette lighter on the strings at the 12th fret. I’m guessing this occurs on the E minor chord in the stop just before the chorus. Sadly, I read this interview after I’d filmed the lesson, otherwise I’d have had to give that a try.

Here’s the music for the intro, verse and chorus. I’ve arranged the verse for one guitar alternating between the riff and the high muted part. I’ve just written out the lead guitar part for the chorus; the rhythm guitar simply doubles the baseline playing the low riff. I’d probably play something like what’s written here if I were the only guitarist in the band. If you play the song with someone else you could have a try splitting the song up into different lead and rhythm parts.

Here’s the solo – I’ve tried to transcribe it as accurately as I can (my first real attempt using Guitar Pro which I’m still not totally comfortable or happy with. Better than Sibelius in some ways, worse in others…) There are some interesting nuances which I didn’t really go into in the video, such as the way the slides in the first and last sections of the solo alternate between upward and downward slides into and out of the E note. Sounds great, but quite hard to replicate. In the video I put in an extra slide on the first beat of bar 8, it should actually just be an open high E as shown below.

And if you want all of that in a nice high-quality PDF format, then click here.

 

 

The Theme from Joe 90

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How To Play The Theme From Joe 90

Here’s my take on the great Joe 90 theme written by Barry Gray for the 60s TV series. (Hope all this isn’t too baffling for non-Brits: look here for more info on Joe 90, or check out a few episodes on YouTube.) Irrespective of whether you’re familiar with the TV show, this is simply a great piece of twangy, psychedelic 60s music, and lots of fun to play. I’ve written the music out below. The first guitar part is as close as I can get to what’s happening on the original recording, and the second part is made up of single note basslines along with some barre chord rhythm guitar. PDF files: Guitar 1 and Guitar 2