Why BARRACUDA is WAY HARDER Than I Thought! (12 Reasons) 

You got me into Heart with all your videos! You're amazing 🤩

Many people, including me, have mentioned about how amazing your playing is, but only just picked up how soothing and easy it is to listen to your voice as well.

hey mike, i just wanna say ive been going through a really difficult time but watching your videos has been helping me through it tremendously. just hearing you play and talk about songs and guitar comforts me a lot for some reason. so grateful i ran into your channel, this is like a comfort place for me. please keep doing what you do. ❤

I really enjoyed that, and appreciate learning the proper way to play Barracuda. One of my all time favorites, and it has to be spot on.😊😊😊

I used to play this song with my old cover band, and I remember that it was trickier than I first thought. I definitely didn't play it 100% correctly. This video was a nice throwback.

I am 50 years old. Metal head since 1986. Unfortunatelly for me I don't play guitar, used to fool around with drums in higg school, but I so like watching your videos!

Love this! Every time I hear this song I think of the video you made with Roger and his advice on how to play it. I'm glad I told you that he was giving online lessons 😊🤘🏻🔥 Congrats on 837k Subscribers!

I love anything Heart .. I love Ann Wilson so much .. she’s one of my favorite Singers of all time .. 1st is Chris Cornell then Layne from Alice In Chains and then it’s Ann Wilson .. seeing old videos of her singing live makes me want to go back in time and ask her to marry me 😂 I’ve never had a crush on anyone more than wit her 😍😂

Excellent job nailing down all of Roger Fisher's wizardry! Barracuda is one of my very favorite pre-Van Halen guitar rockers. The galloping rhythm guitar, drums and cymbal groove help make this a classic. (And the awesome use of a flanger).

Such a great song. Love that you covered it in this detail.

Great viedo! Thank you Mike!

What an awesome video. Really great to hear you break down a good old song like this.

Also some great drumming in that song. I love the fill right before the big instrumental break where he plays the 16th note "e" and "ah" on the kick drum behind the "1 and ah 2 and ah" snare fill

Great lesson and thank you!

Very cool, awesome new techniques still picking up along the way. Keep it up bro!

Love Roger Fisher

those 5 repeats at the end always sounded perfect to me. Just the way they are. Feels right that way.

I decided to listen to the full song for the first time after watching this video and I'm glad I did, Thanks Mike 👍🎸

Just awesome, Mike. Everything you pointed out does sound correct, and even makes me realize how slack I was at really paying attention to the details on this wicked song. Thanks for this, brother !

Great tips on 1 of my favorite all time songs.

This has been my favorite song since it came out and I've played hundreds of times. You guys nailed it last time I saw you of course. I was watching Greg to see how he plays it and I picked up a few little things, but I just found the isolated original bass track and I actually overplay it a bit. I'll be learning it exactly as written for playing it now on. Keep up the good work!

FANTASTIC!!!!! I learned this by ear a few years ago and have an "interpreted" version. Great to see the original techniques! Huge thanks!

Thanks man! One of my favorite songs

First to comment ! Subscribed & turned notifications two yrs ago & you've consistently put out quality content and very helpful tutorials / commentary consistently. Bravo

Nice video, thanks Mike.

I actually had the honor of jamming with Roger Fisher a few times at his home back in the 80s. I met him at Cannon Audio in Seattle, gave him my phone number and he actually called me. I recently posted a photo on Facebook. Super cool guy! 👽✌️

I did a cover of this years ago with my friends, I remember the arrangement having a lot of stuff like "5 times of the riff, but only at the one spot" or "9 times of the riff, but then it's 8 when the vocals come in" etc, it was a fun challenge

One thing that usually gets ignored is that the intro is at a slower tempo (130 bpm) than the rest of the song (137 bpm)

Loved the video (love the type of video). As a side note, didn’t realized that it was you who spoke to their guitarist and he showed you the sweep pinch harmonics:) It’s such an unusual technique. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else do it. Also shows that there’s a ton of people out there worth learning from, far more than we often think.

great vid!

Very cool analysis… and the best part is it’s a REAL WORLD analysis! A discussion of how to approach it if on stage, under the hot lights, adrenaline-rushed. I’m not interested in those sitting-in-my-house under perfect conditions videos that permeate the internet. Very cool stuff, man.

Awesome guitar song, great drums too

Still a little beyond my current ability - but - thanks for the breakdown .. This explains in great detail why I keep thinking this song is harder than one thinks it is .. Genius

A TRICKY classic for sure! \m/

Really cool mate...nicely done I used to do a cover of this on a hard tail ..no trem ..I’m sure you feel my pain...lol. Again..really cool ..nice one

That was cool.

To switch between power chords rooted on the 6th string and 5th string, I just roll my fingers over. That is, use the tips of my index and ring fingers to fret the E and A strings, respectively. Then I roll off the fingertips and fret the A and D strings with the pads of the fingers, letting the tip of my index finger mute the E string.

I hope young people appreciate how amazing it is to be a click away from learning all this subtlety. All we had years ago was a book of really bad guitar tabs.

Since the radio too bro! When we were kids it was the “ooooh Barra-cuda!” 🥰

When I think of Barracuda I think about that awesome performance Jerry Cantrell and Gretchen Wilson did of it . That intro riff is one example of how tricky really great rhythm playing can be. I always want to rush it but it loses its weight and gets less heavy the faster you play it.

I always play the zig zag part in parallel 4ths at the 7th fret to the 9th fret across the A D and G strings.

On the recorded version, there are definitely multiple guitars woven together, especially the harmonics. The hardest thing is to make one part out of all that that still sounds like the recording. In some of the sections with tons of harmonics, I mix in some fretted notes with harmonics. It sounds almost the same but reduces the chance of missing some of the harmonics.

Thanks for the deep dive! Did he offer any info on what pedals / settings he used? I always thought it was a combination Phase Shifter & Flanger?

Roger really put a lot of artistry into the guitar work on this song.

Sweet

If I could only take 10 songs to a desert island Barracuda would be on that list. Epic song my Dad had on 8 track back in the day.

Would love to hear a short demonstrating tip number 11 with those echoing guitars!

Ahhh, the good old multistring pinch harmonic. I used to love doing that at home, but never had a practical use for it.

Have you heard the Adrenaline Mob cover of this song? It's great, especially Russell Allen's vocals. I'll go listen to it once more to see how many of these detais Mike Orlando got right 😄

Barracuda is the single most fun song my band does. Not being in a *Heart* tribute band (we're an 80s Ladies tribute) means we can play around a bit (I play the solo a lot more loosely and I hit whatever harmonic dives I feel like playing). But yeah, nothing feels better than the outro groove where we have two guitars, bass, drums, and keys totally locked in. Having Nancy's patch as a factory default on the Axe Fx III doesn't hurt, either =D (We also do Rebel Yell, so I use Steve Stevens's patch).

Mike can you please do “Never” by heart. I have seen different ways people do it on RU-vid but you always seem to have a great knack for listening to the way it should be played. Mind if I test you on this one? Thank you :)😊

Wow! I never realized how criminally underrated Roger Fisher is as a guitarist!

That echo idea is so cool. You have two guitars. You might as well arrange for two guitars

that's very intresting how it's played, i'm actually so used to the GH3 wavegroup version of the song that its literally what i think of when i think of the song lol, i wonder if they played it correctly...

I always do that part where you thought it was tapping by muting my strings and doing pull-offs. Now I know that’s not right but it sounds great

Give Nazareth "This Flight Tonight" a listen. I think Ann stated the rhythm had been the influence for Barracuda.

One of the great driving tunes of all time. Keep it under 75 mph, people! 😊

Umm OK…I’m playing that song completely wrong…haha…fantastic work Mike…I have always loved Roger Fisher’s guitar tone on those old Heart records 👍

Comfort over coolness. If it's difficult to play because of your guitars position, move your guitar to a comfortable place so you can execute your parts without risking injury.

Was wondering if anyone would ever notice the 2 guitars echoing each other at the very end. And I still haven't heard anyone talk about how that part toward the end that sounds like a portamento-d monosynth line happening behind the guitars is done.

can you do 12 reasons why Holy wars the punishment due is hard? Also can you play conquer or die by megadeth?

Serious. That 5/4 thing STILL gives me nightmares.

Nazareth wrote This Flight Tonight and they feel Heart borrowed the riff a bit, which they did, but you can't copyright a rhythm pattern.

So did he ever actually upgrade this guitar?

I never realized Hearts guitar player had that much going on in the song. Have a new appreciation for him.

Yeah its funny how sometimes we hear a song and it sounds easy enough, but then you break it down and its alot harder or intricate fingerings, and weird, less used chords. And visa versa too, sometimes i put off a song for awhile coz i think it sounds too difficult, then you realize you nailed it easy in half hour.

My teacher wanted to teach me this and i was like pssssh... too easy. I was wrong. And here I am trying to find videos to get extra tips lol

"Loosen up that palm so its not so stiff"

Talking about Heart... Then saying '..started listening to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Metallica,.. All that kinda stuff.". wait, wut? Metallica and 'that kind of stuff?' Heart, Black Sabbath, Zeppelin, ok... Metallica, nope. 3 are Classic Rock mainstays. One is not. As for the video, this is great and I really enjoyed your video with Roger as well! I forgive the Metallica slip. ;-)

To add another layer of difficulty, I believe he actually plays those single harmonic notes overhand… like piano style…

Its like theirs 10 different levels you can play this song at lol

Its a nightmare and everybody plays like they want to

What kind of Jackson is that? A Dinky?

I think the mid-1980s (mostly non-original member) version of Heart played it faster than the original. Nobody since Roger in that band has really done justice to the song. They don't get the nuances or the fills right. They can't play the solo. The gliss on the lower E-string towards the end of the solo gets overlooked by a lot of people. Even Howard Leese just did a run there instead. RU-vid probably helped people see what Roger was doing originally. He is self-taught and very idiosyncratic. It's very difficult to copy him.

How many **YEARS** will it take to get good enough to play that? All I know is there's no way in hell I could play it right now... 😂

not everybody plays the harmonics in the first little solo section.

You have to wonder who comes up with that level of complication.

Sweet