Hey, how are you doing? Justin here.
In the lesson today, I'm going to be teaching you 6 Angus Young style riffs.
Like rock lead guitar riffs. A lot of Angus's style is built on blues.
They're essentially blues licks from kind of, you know,
Chuck Berry, T-Bone Walker, Albert King kind of style licks,
but played a little bit heavier, a little bit faster.
So what I'm going to do is- Yeah, there's 6 licks.
I'll just take you through them one at a time.
Lick number 1 sounds something like this:
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A little bit slower:
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Let's check it out in the close up.
Lick number 1, nice and slow:
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Using my 3rd finger here:
5
8
5
7
5
7
5
7
Roll, back and plenty of vibrato.
I've got a whole lesson on this rolling technique if you're struggling with that.
Pick, pick, flick, and it's important to realise that this
note here is the note that's on the beat, so it's:
3 -- 4 -- and a-
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So make sure you've kind of sussed that out because it's a good one
to be practising repeating along with your metronome.
Just make sure you're there with the rhythm.
3 -- 4e - and a 1e - and a 2e - and a 3 --
4e - and a 1e - and a 2e - and a 3 --
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Lick number 2 sounds something like this:
♪♪
Bit slower:
♪♪
Okay, let's check it out as a close up.
Okay, lick number 2 nice and slow:
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That lick again:
2 -- 3 -- and - 4 - and - 1e and a - 2e and a - 3e and a - 4e
1 -- 2 --
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Making sure you tone bend,
drop it down,
tone bend with vibrato.
Then we've got here 8-5 flick off.
8-5 again, but picked.
Now I usually pick,
pick,
flick.
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Pick,
flick off,
pick, pick, pick, pick,
flick off.
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Another little roll in there.
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Yeah,
5
7
5
♪♪
Lick number 3 sounds likes this:
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But of course it tends to get repeated a little more, the first lick.
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But I've just put a little tag on it.
Little bit slower:
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Okay, lick number 3:
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Now this first part gets repeated a lot.
Now I've just written it out 2 times officially for the lick,
but of course you would do it as many times as you like.
It's this:
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Now some people might prefer to do the bend with a 3rd finger.
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I don't recommend doing bends with the 4th finger, only with the 3rd finger.
So, I mean you can if you like. It's up to your style, it just doesn't work for me.
So, if you're going to do this style with your 4th finger here:
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You'd probably swap over your 3rd finger for the bend, doesn't really matter.
I suspect Angus's is going to be doing it here with a 2nd finger:
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Making sure that you get that full tone.
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So it ends up being the same as that note on the second string.
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Lick number 4 sounds like this:
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Very bluesy lick.
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Let's get to a close up.
Lick number 4:
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So here we're starting off with a tone bend on the 12th fret:
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A little triplet chromatically down the blues scale:
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Now we've got a little 5 notes over the space of 4 rhythm.
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Basically, what that's meaning is that this little passage here:
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Finishes with this note on the beat.
You can use hippopotamus or university.
Hip-po-po-ta-mus
U-ni-ver-si-ty
If you want to get your group of 5 there.
Hippopotamus or university have 5 syllables, so you'd have:
1 -- 2 -- 3 - trip-let - hip-po-po-ta-mus
And bringing this back onto the beat there,
but it's really a blues riff so you can play with the rhythm there a bit.
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Just play with it.
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Lick number 5 sounds like this:
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Now this is another repeating lick.
This bit:
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Can get repeated as many times as you like, and
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just finishing it with that really.
You can pick every note:
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or do them all as flick offs:
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Of course you can probably get it a bit faster with the flick offs:
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but it doesn't quite have as much guts if you do it that way,
and of course that- This one can go right up the neck:
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There's lots of different variations that you should play with, of course.
Okay, lick number 5 here we've got:
8
7
5
over and over again:
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Now if you pick every note it sounds a little bit more aggressive:
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but you can always do pick, flick, flick:
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You could use those fingers if you want.
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And this lick definitely works if you move it up 12 frets
so your 1st finger will be on the 17th fret:
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And of course alternate picking:
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Important thing with a riff like this is to work out
how to get out of it because repeating:
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you'll find fairly straight forward,
but then you've got to figure out how you'll finish it.
Now, probably the most most obvious one is:
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putting a bend on the end, or:
♪♪
sliding up here:
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is quite nice up to the 10th fret with a 3rd finger, 2nd string.
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Also gets you to the next position which is quite nice, or:
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you could put a bend on, wouldn't really matter.
Lick number 6 is kind of a country style riff that Angus uses quite a lot.
I'm going to show you one way of playing it, which is going to be this:
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But make sure that you understand the kind of idea of having this
12 fret bend and then adding the other note together:
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Very commonly done in AC/DC stuff, so make sure you check out
lots of variations of this yourself.
And I'll also show you a quick close up of how to do the same lick
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further up the neck, so we'll have it here:
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and up here:
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Both essentially the same thing.
Okay, lick number 6 here:
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Now I'm showing you the one I've tabbed out for you is this:
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but there's loads of variations with this. The concept that I'm trying to get you
use to here is bending this 12th fret:
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and then sneaking little finger underneath:
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You can hold that little finger down and play it. It's quite nice.
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And really muck about with that quite a lot, it's nice.
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Essentially what we're doing, just so you understand the kind of theory behind it.
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As we're bending, we're really reaching these 2 notes here which are 14th and 12th
Which are essentially part of little A-chord there.
A-shaped bar chord. That's why the lick works.
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Or:
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Now exactly the same note can be found further up the neck here,
putting little finger on the 17th fret:
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And bending the 16th fret up a tone:
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Well I hope you've enjoyed playing around with those Angus Young styled licks.
The big deal here is to make sure that you practice
variations of them, don't just learn like a set lick.
And what I really recommend that you do is that you get a backing track
of some sort of blues or rock backing track
and then practise using each of the licks, one at a time, and experimenting with
how you play it, so you learn variations of it.
And then try to mix it in with all the other licks that you know
so play one lick then go into this new lick, deliberately, kind of thinking
about it and play the lick and then go on back into your regular playing.
Try and get that new lick in as many times as you can.
Now that's a little bit conscious. In real life it shouldn't happen like that,
you shouldn't really be thinking much at all, just be feeling and doing.
But in order to get that way, to get it kind of instinctive
you need to have practised these things a whole lot.
It's that repetition that kind of makes it natural for you to do those kind of licks.
So practise, consciously, thinking about it, trying to get those licks in as best
you can and as often as you can and probably what you'll find is
the ones that kind of naturally fit with your style of playing
that'll come out on their own without having to think about it. And the ones
that maybe don't fit so well with your natural playing style - maybe you won't
play them so much, but that's cool because they weren't the ones
that were naturally right for you so don't stress about it, you know.
It's lot's of good fun. Plenty more AC/DC licks.
Highly recommend the "If You Want Blood You've Got It" live album by AC/DC for
licks stealing, cause it's live and Angus's guitar is really kind of clear
in the mix and it's quite an easy one to transcribe from.
Not too much production kind of covering things up.
Really raw and lots of really proper blues lick in there,
so check that album out - that would be a highly recommended one.
But remember, transcribing is the way forward.
Don't just be getting licks from me and off tab books and stuff.
Try and get into working out stuff by ear because you'll learn it loads better
and you'll really get inside it and you'll pick up the vibrato better
and the styling of it, the rhythms of it and everything else.
Cause remember, music is about listening not about reading.
Anyway, have fun with all of that and I'll see you for another lesson some time soon.
Take care.
Bye.