Riff #12: Alive - Pearl Jam (Songs Guitar Lesson RF-012) How to play

Hi! How you doin'? Justin here

and in this lesson today
we're going to be checking out

the riff to 'Alive' by one of
my favorite bands Pearl Jam.

It's a properly awesome riff.

Not particluarly difficult to play

but often taught wrong so
I'm going to show you the right way.

Let's get to a close up and check it out.

Ok we are starting here with a
little A open power chord.

We're just plucking the 5th string,
4th string, and 3rd string.

1st finger doing the little mini bar there.

Doesn't really matter if you
accidently hit the 2nd string.

It doesn't sound great but
it doesn't really matter

You definitely don't want to
hit the thinnest string.

And you might want to use your thumb
to mute that thickest string,

just to keep it nice and clean.

(plays A open power chord)

That's played once for the down pick.

Then we've got

which is a slide.

The third finger is sliding from around
the 4th fret, maybe the 5th fret

up to the 7th fret.

Lifting off and you've plucked the
open D string.

And then hammer on your
1st finger into the 7th fret

followed by your
3rd finger in the 9th fret.

This last note is actually picked so it's

pick the open D,

hammer the 7th fret

and then pick this note at the 9th fret.

This is the 4th string.

Now at the moment,

because I'm demonstrating

I'm sliding up to the 7th fret

and it's a bit organised

but it's a bit looser than that.

It's kind of a slider

I think it finishes on that 7th fret

but you gotta feel it a bit
looser than that.

So 9th fret, 7th fret.

Then you got

which is the open two middle strings

down and up

then put the chord down.

Very common rock thing.

Good thing to practice.

So down pick,

up,

down with a chord.

Then this second time,

bend, 9th fret semitone,

back, 9th fret, 7th fret,

and then the open D string
and G string again.

Our middle two strings.

Then right at the end, we've got
an F chord here.

This is the 8th fret, a power chord

with the 5th string group

and we go
down, down, down, down,

move it up two frets,

down.

This is now a G

and then you lift off your third finger

so you've got 10, 10, 12

which is kind of like a C chord.

It's a C chord 2nd inversion.

Little power chord C.

S'pose you could go

if you want but the record
sounds like.

OK. Let me just play it
nice and slowly for you.

Here we go.

And normal speed.

Well that was 'Alive' by Pearl Jam.

Awesome song, great band.

If you haven't checked them out before,
if you're a bit too young

Pearl Jam are the business.

When I was a teenager,
that was like as good as it got

and I spent many years playing Pearl Jam songs

in sweaty little toilets around Australia.

Really awesome, great stuff to work out.

Really good fun to play.

Really nice two guitar part things
quite often as well so

go check out Pearl Jam,
if you don't know their stuff already.

See ya for another riff some time very soon.

Take care of yourselves. Bye bye.