This Heart song has incredible guitar work but has remained a mystery for many for so many years. This video should clear things up. Check out all my videos at: www.the-art-of-guitar.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/theartofguitar
@@lukeb0030 In those days people had their own internet at home. On paper. Magazines like that you don't throw away that easy (wives do). And in a few years it will have disappeared from the internet too, so it's better to keep them for a while.
I’m 51 and been playing since the ‘80s and thought I knew most of my favourite songs but since the internet I have gone back and realized there is much more to these “simple” songs. We used to use a record player and had to tune to the recording by ear. We didn’t even have electronic tuners. However I am glad I learned these skills but it limited what we could learn for sure.
Same here, 51 and learned from records. Started in '82 and after about 4 years I bought the Sound Connection books/cassette lessons. Still have em, but this YT stuff really makes learning so much easier. If only we'd had this when we were starting to out! I remember wondering how they did all the overdubbed parts and thinking "Wow, you've gotta be fantastic to play all this stuff at once" lol.
Heard that! I'm 56. I've spent countless hours just trying to figure out The Rain Song from sheet music before realizing that Jimmy is in altered tuning. Good practice though!
As a non-fan of Heart (I think they're great, I just never explored them) who knows at least a few non-radio songs (Love Alive, Dreamboat Annie), can you recommend a few specific songs/sections that highlight his creative power? I now realize that he reminds me a teensy bit of Terry Kath.
@@johngrunwell6101 I know you posted this 10 months ago, but in case you haven't checked any of his great work, just search any Heart between 1976 and 1979. Although much of the song writing credits go to Ann and Nancy, Roger (Howard Leese and the others to an extent as well) had a major influence on the musical part writing. After 1980 you will hear a clear difference in their music after he left the band.
One of my favorite songs I am a drummer and have always loved that song. I played with a lead player who used to work on that song for hours and hours and came close but never exactly. Now I know why. Thanks for the info !!
I watched Fisher's interview AFTER I had watched yours. The logic you use/share is so much more informational. I wouldn't have ever known about the special tuning of this one of my top 10 favorite rock songs if you hadn't shared this. Thanks very much!
Great vid Bro !! You explained and showed the differences perfectly and made this a very educational several minutes of guitar technique...thanks my friend !!
for months I've been awkwardly twisting my fingertips around on my fretboard trying to do some of these exact parts by watching '70s Heart live videos, and the whole time I didn't even know Roger was using his very own tuning! What a revelation, thank you for this break down :)
Learned a lot from this and from watching his interview. I have found the voicing for the F chord in standard tuning that works well and sounds good is play the root with your 1st finger and use your second on C (which also mutes the D) and play the G open, 3rd finger on D of the B string, and 4th finger on G on the high E string. Essentially it is like a C9 shape with your index finger on the F, this has allowed me to let the upper strings sting ring while chugging with the bass in a full band setting while slightly palm muting the lowest two strings. Hope that helps, love the lessons!
This is awesome! One thing I’d like to add; on the lead played at 4:27, the second time Roger plays it, he plays the open 1st and 2nd strings at the end of the phrase (he plays the open 3rd and 4th, as you did, the first time around). Great video! Thanks for breaking this down!
On the VG-99 with the gk2 Roland pickup installed on my guitar I can get both tunings with the foot switch and still be in standard tune making it easy to bend the 1st & 2nd strings.
We are picking this song up and this really helped. I struggled with the same tuning issues. You almost have to go standard tuning and work around it. Your F chord with the pinky G really helped me. Thanks. I super related to your reasoning and explanation.
Hey Mike, great work on getting the Roger Fisher tone out of your Les Paul. Clear back in the early ‘80s, I tried and tried to figure out how to get Roger’s tone out of my guitars. I tuned up 1.5 steps on the upper ‘E’ (to ‘G’) and ‘B’ (to ‘D’) to get Roger’s sound out of my guitar on ‘Magic Man’. Now everything sounds right! Thanks again for this excellent tip. - E
Fisher tuning wins out without question. It's best to trust the instincts of the guys who wrote the songs. Obviously the way he did it was right for the occasion.
Wow, thanks for the insight! I have been playing that song with my band for 10 years and I knew some of the parts weren't quite right but I couldn't figure out why! That chord in the verse always perplexed me because it sounded like there were some open strings but I could never get it right! Thanks
Thank you so much for putting both tunings side by side . I only have one ele , and to tune it so radically for one song is a lot , the standard tuning is more work but this way you can whip out the solo wherever you are instead of having to tune
It may have already been mentioned here, but the intro riff was recorded backwards by Howard Leese giving it that really cool feel and sound. I have heard Roger talk about and explain his tuning, but haven't had the nerve to try it yet lol! Thanks for this video!
great stuff. I'd read there was an alternate tuning but this is the first I'm seeing. I play it standard and the only crusher for me is the part you called the 'johnny b goode' part. Still can't move that fast. Will try this way - thanks!
You absolutely nailed it!😄. Next, please do the 2nd most hardest guitar lick to do: the intro/first 6 seconds or so of "Rock & Roll Fantasy" by Bad Company. Getting that phased/spacey sound is something I have never heard a cover band (or even Bad Company) able to replicate EXACTLY live like you did with the Roger Fisher tuning. I've always said that somebody would get rich if they were to manufacture a pedal with that "spacey" sound effect😊.
Well, it looks like your going to have to get a double neck guitar. Hmm...but maybe an eight string could work, have two pairs of 1st and 2nd strings g d e b. Man a guy could make some killer lead riffs with that. Probably start a whole new Metal genre. This was a neat video and I'm intrigued by the idea. I sort of like alt tunings and technique and maybe in the future I'll experiment with this some...or a lot. I always appreciate when a player really digs deep trying to sort things out by ear like you did. It always makes he experience richer. Beside that you can usually tell when a tab doesn't quite jive and you have to dig a little. That little 'waterfall' fill that Blackmore puts in at the beginning of Woman from Tokyo I think is a series of percussion slurs near the twelfth fret instead of the pull offs in the lower frets as the tabs indicate. We learn a lot digging for stuff like that, that's cool.
Dean DeLeo had a 6/6 double neck Strat with Army of Anyone because in the studio, the riffs were written in weird alternate tunings, but his solos were in standard. I wonder if Heart were playing several different tunings on Magic Man in the studio, and then had to rearrange/fudge the song live.
Great stuff! I don't remember how accurate it was but the December 1979 Guitar Player Magazine, had an article on Nancy Wilson and Roger Fisher that talked about that solo and even had some tablature for it - a few years before the rise of magazine guitar tabs...
The song makes much more sense now man, thank you! I guess There are critics everywhere and if have to be one of them, he is bending those notes. Add tbat on top of what you got and it's a 100% cover imo, but I may be wrong! Keep up the work friend! Great content!
Hey mike I just learned that you’re based in the twin cities area when I saw you on A440s video from your heart tribute band. If you’re ever in the St. Cloud area, the folks around here would dig you guys. Rock on fellow Minnesota musician!
I appreciate you showing the parts broke down. You're obviously a great guitarist. You aren't the only one that does this but my peeve is a wish you had one segment where you played the meat of it all through. Or have you done so already?
Would you mind doing a full tutorial? I’ve been trying to learn this for ages and I can’t find any good tutorials and you seem like you could explain it thoroughly.
I was playing this song shortly after it came out (probably before your parents were born), and I always played it in standard tuning. My cousin (my drummer at the time) and I had the blind luck of meeting a fantastic female singer at the time, and we were thrilled to have a whole new style of music to play. Back in those days funky tunings weren't as common as they are now. Guitarists just had to be quick and know their way well around the fretboard I guess. Between not thinking of alternate tunings, and not having the luxury of being fiscally advantaged enough back then to have a lot of guitars, you did the best you could with what you had, even if you had to work a little harder. Not too many people thought of what you are doing now, back then. Good job!
They played it all last summer on the Love Alive tour. Sometimes over the years Ann has said she gets bored with it and it's off the set list, but then by the next tour she adds it back in.
Well... I BELIEVE that song was about Mike Fisher (Roger's brother) who she was in a relationship with... while Nancy and Roger had a relationship. If I remember correctly, there was some infidelity and a break up and.... they may have not played that song because... ya know... feelings.
Great video! I play that song in our cover band, and ran into the same problems - I make it by using Standard tuning mainly due to playing the Howard Leese lick (and not being comfortable tuning up that high - nervous I'll break a string!). You mention your band wants you to use the Roger Fisher tuning, how will you pull off the Howard lick now? Keep up the great work!
Very cool song - wow a lot is happening in a little hit off the radio - had no idea. .You are very perceptive and appreciate you sharing. Do you teach around NYC?.
Pretty good, thanks for the tuning insight... I've just kinda flogged my way thru in standard. Its real burner when you nail it. Hendrix woulda loved this guy 😃
I admit that I've never paid much attention to that song, even though it was a radio staple at one time. (I won't date myself). There is a lot more going on there than I expected. It's impressive guitar playing. Thanks!
Always loved the tune. Mostly because of the guitar solo. Thanks for taking the time. I will see how this sounds on my variax with "digital" alternate tunings. But just for fun. I'm not trying to cut this one vocally. Update: Variax sounds great. I don't use the detune feature on the variax much but it's perfect for this type of thing.
I still remember exactly where I was, driving a work truck, at age 19, on a particular Street, when I first heard this song on the radio and I just went "wow"!! You should do another RU-vid segment about the amplification and/ or pedals that Rodger Fisher was using to get this guitar tone. It sounds like he was using a compressor to get that smooth saturated tone. (another commenter here says that the compressed sounding guitar intro was due to a backwards solo, with the tape flipped around and played from end to beginning, which if true would definitely help to explain the lack of frontal attack when the pick hits the strings. What do folks do nowadays to get a backwards sounding guitar? Is there a digital way to do this, or is it something you can only get by flipping a tape around? There are numerous examples of Hendrix records containing backwards guitar solos, by the way. Did he learn this technique from someone else who did it first?). Hmmm, it'd be interesting to see this guy try to figure out how to play a tune by Adrian Legg; Adrian is a friend of Ann Wilson, she produced one of his records, and Adrian is one of the most unique guitar stylists on the planet. (Check out the Premier Guitar Rig Rundown with Adrian, and be prepared to be amazed). "Mrs Crowe's Blue Waltz" is dedicated to Nancy, apparently she's married to a guy named Crowe.
There is one more tuning option. If you use a VG-99 or similar guitar synth you can set it up to alter the tuning on those two strings at anytime you want it using the expression pedal. Yes, those things aren't cheap, but it is a viable alternative.
At 7:25 I'm wondering if it would be easier to do the 4 note chromatic walk up on the A string 12th fret instead of D string 7th fret. At least that way you end up on 15th fret for the ending of the lick without the long jump. Great song though - I remember when it came out (aging myself) and always thought it was one of the sickest solos. The lick at 8:23 was always my fav! Great video - love the channel!
The Wilson sisters lived a few houses down on lake Washington in Belleview when I was in high school. One night (parents were in Europe) we had a keg party that my band played at. The cops came and shut it down. So the next morning all the gear was still set up on the lawn, and I was just starting to move it when 2 dudes came walking up from the lake path. It was Roger Fisher and his new bass player (he had recently been booted from Heart.) They were visiting Ann and Nancy and had heard my band night before. Long story short, I ended up jamming with them for a grip. Until Fisher turned my Marshall all the way up and was going for feedback. And I'm 16, and having to tell a rock star that the cops had busted our party, arrested people... and maybe he should turn it down! Doh! But, as Roger was playing my axe, my only option was the drums. Fisher asked me what to play, and I said "mistral wind?"... So I played drums as best as I could. Too bad I was a suck ass drummer at the time! Anyway, a great memory. I made him autograph my Dog and Butterfly album before they bailed. I was 16 years old, summer of 1979.
Rodger's F6 chord seems perfectly apt for Magic Man, as in the title and the lyric lye's a numinous quality, which the F6 chord compliments. This song bit me the first time I heard it (Anne's voice), and that chord has haunted me since. Cool, vid.
I want to learn these licks and would prefer to stay with standard tuning as your playing convinced me that it sounds pretty great that way! Not to mention I prolly don't have the cajones to torque my 1st & 2nd up that high 😂 I wish though you would do a clear lesson dedicated on those parts in standard tuning! 👍 Video
You could just use a hybrid string gauge. Go normal on the sound strings and use 8’s on the unwound to make it easier to bend. Or just on the first 2 strings. I do the opposite with Eb and D tunings.
