AC/DC - Angus Young: Style Licks (Guitar Lesson RO-101)

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:

♪♪

A little bit slower:

♪♪

Let's check it out in the close up.

Lick number 1, nice and slow:

♪♪

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-

♪♪

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 --

♪♪

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:

♪♪

That lick again:

2 -- 3 -- and - 4 - and -
1e and a - 2e and a - 3e and a - 4e

1 -- 2 --

♪♪

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.

♪♪

Pick,

flick off,

pick, pick, pick, pick,

flick off.

♪♪

Another little roll in there.

♪♪

Yeah,

5

7

5

♪♪

Lick number 3 sounds likes this:

♪♪

But of course it tends to get
repeated a little more, the first lick.

♪♪

But I've just put a little tag on it.

Little bit slower:

♪♪

Okay, lick number 3:

♪♪

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:

♪♪

Now some people might prefer
to do the bend with a 3rd finger.

♪♪

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:

♪♪

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:

♪♪

Making sure that you get that full tone.

♪♪

So it ends up being the same as
that note on the second string.

♪♪

Lick number 4 sounds like this:

♪♪

Very bluesy lick.

♪♪

Let's get to a close up.

Lick number 4:

♪♪

So here we're starting off with
a tone bend on the 12th fret:

♪♪

A little triplet chromatically
down the blues scale:

♪♪

Now we've got a little 5 notes
over the space of 4 rhythm.

♪♪

Basically, what that's meaning
is that this little passage here:

♪♪

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.

♪♪

Just play with it.

♪♪

Lick number 5 sounds like this:

♪♪

Now this is another repeating lick.

This bit:

♪♪

Can get repeated as many
times as you like, and

♪♪

just finishing it with that really.

You can pick every note:

♪♪

or do them all as flick offs:

♪♪

Of course you can probably
get it a bit faster with the flick offs:

♪♪

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:

♪♪

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:

♪♪

Now if you pick every note it
sounds a little bit more aggressive:

♪♪

but you can always do pick, flick, flick:

♪♪

You could use those fingers if you want.

♪♪

And this lick definitely works
if you move it up 12 frets

so your 1st finger
will be on the 17th fret:

♪♪

And of course alternate picking:

♪♪

Important thing with a
riff like this is to work out

how to get out of it because repeating:

♪♪

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:

♪♪

putting a bend on the end, or:

♪♪

sliding up here:

♪♪

is quite nice up to the 10th fret
with a 3rd finger, 2nd string.

♪♪

Also gets you to the next position
which is quite nice, or:

♪♪

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:

♪♪

But make sure that you understand
the kind of idea of having this

12 fret bend and then adding
the other note together:

♪♪

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

♪♪

further up the neck,
so we'll have it here:

♪♪

and up here:

♪♪

Both essentially the same thing.

Okay, lick number 6 here:

♪♪

Now I'm showing you the one
I've tabbed out for you is this:

♪♪

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:

♪♪

and then sneaking
little finger underneath:

♪♪

You can hold that little finger
down and play it. It's quite nice.

♪♪

And really muck about with
that quite a lot, it's nice.

♪♪

Essentially what we're doing, just so you
understand the kind of theory behind it.

♪♪

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.

♪♪

Or:

♪♪

Now exactly the same note can be
found further up the neck here,

putting little finger on the 17th fret:

♪♪

And bending the 16th fret up a tone:

♪♪

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.