Mr. Watson … You are a world-class instructor and an outstanding communicator. … I am impressed and have been enriched by this, most excellent content. I am grateful and, now, am an ardent fan and subscriber. ..Thank You for your generosity.
Wow, what a generous comment. Thank you, my friend- I'm glad you got something out of the lesson. There will be a bunch more coming up very soon. Thank you again!
Hi Richard, Sounds really good! Are you using the Suhr 1x12 cab with Vet30 on this video or something else? I got an unloaded Suhr 1x12 cab and thinking I might want to try a greenback type speaker, instead of Vintage 30. Thanks
Hey man, yeah this is the Veteran 30 speaker. It's a little darker sounding than my Divided By 13 cab (Celestion G12H and Blue) but sounds good under the mics.
Thank you Helio, my friend! I love this riff- there is some great stuff on that album. It was fun trying to get close to Steve's sound- the Animal OD is still my absolute go-to for anything Marshall-ish. Thinking of doing a Steve Lukather lesson next but let me know if you have any suggestions!
Rich, you've done greatly once again! Honestly, I didn`t know the Animal pedal has THAT huge Marshall tone. I always thought it was something like an overdrive closely to the Blue Note pedal. I also didn't know this awesome riff, so, when I heard the very first note, I just reminded VH's "Dance the night away", which is a great example of Brown Sound that also inspired Stevens. Incredible how you get so closely these tones with a great clean amp and a great pedal! By the way, I am already anxious to watch you playing and teaching some Steve Lukather, who is one of my greatest heroes ever! Can't imagine me playing guitar without his influence! But it still so hard to suggest anything, he has a huge repertoire of solos and splendid songs! Actually, Lukather has always amazed me with his solos, he has so much personality, attitude, you know? It's really, really hard to pick only one example of his greatness. If I had to choose, it would be "Pamela" or "I`ll be over you". Thanks for the opportunity to suggest! I am sure I'll love the song you choose to play and teach, wherever it is!
Hi Carlos, it's mostly about keeping your right hand and wrist as relaxed as you can. Try to assess how much tension there is in your wrist, how hard you're gripping the pick, etc then make little adjustments. You may be tensing up more than you realise in which case you'll fatigue quicker. If you find the tempo of the original track is too fast, you'll be thinking that it's hard, which makes you tense up and, in turn, slows you down more. Using a metronome- try pulling the tempo back until it feels easy and you can play the riff for a long time without getting tired, then start increasing the tempo 5 BPM at a time and gradually build back up to the original speed. Another exercise you can try is this: set the metronome to a tempo where you can play just a single note (the low E string for example) as semiquavers (four notes per beat) using alternate picking at a moderate speed. Keep this going constantly then (without stopping) switch to just down strokes for 2-4 bars, try and stay in time and keep the dynamics consistent, then switch back to alternate picking without stopping the exercise. Gradually extend the period that you're playing downstrokes to build up stamina. A final point on this is that, if you look at me playing the riff at the start of the video, I'm not using exclusively downstrokes myself- I'll occasionally throw in an upstroke in the "chord" parts of the riff. Hope that helps!
What an amazing player! Great video brother. I’m just sitting here with my acoustic guitar on my lap….. but I will just have to imagine having the right equipment! Cheers.
nnnyeaaaaaa...it's really the noises that make the solo sound great, not the notes or the key its in. kinda wish you had spent some time trying to figure out the solo as he recorded it instead of just running through a scale. i know it's problematic because that first scream is a super high F# harmonic that you have to somehow cheat to get and the end sounds like there is a reverse delay or something on, but it really makes it like any other lame guitar player if you just blow through notes without much care about sound.
Thanks for the feedback, Violet! Really the focus of this lesson was just the main riff, not the solo. Teaching the solo is another lesson in itself. The section about improvising was just about helping people understand what will and won't in this context musically. There's plenty of players who can mimic other player's solos note for note but don't really have a voice of their own. This was more about trying to encourage people to explore the style for themselves and give them something they can transfer into their own playing. This is one of my favourite Steve Stevens solos though so maybe there'll be a lesson in the future!
I agree on the note-for-note thing...not necessary and too many people take it far too seriously. So much so that they forget the parts of guitar playing that cannot be notated. What's strange is that even Steve Stevens goes into some masturbatory fantasy of notes when he plays this song live instead of making the great sounds, so even he kind of sucks in his own Guitar World kind of way. I think perhaps he relies way to much on the studio environment to do his best stuff, and is really quite ordinary elsewhere.
One more suggestion -- I bet you could tag the riff in less than five minutes if you could somehow superimpose tab or chord diagrams instead of explaining "put finger on this fret," etc. And there is a lot more than just the riff in this vid -- you actually do start by talking about the sound and gear. That's fine, but if the focus is the riff, we shouldn't need to talk about all that stuff -- which occupies almost half the vid.
The solo ain't that hard, you need a whammy for the pinch harmonics, there's some weird effect on the high one played at the 24th fret. On the studio recording they flipped the tape and reversed it.
