Hey, I'm Andy Alledor and in today’s lesson I'm going to be teaching you how to play Steve Vai’s classic fret burner, The Attitude song. Let’s get to it.
First thing to think about with The Attitude song is that’s it’s in an odd time signature or meter. There's a couple of different ways to can it. And the transcription that we did this month, we had an assist from Steve Vai. And so from his recommendation, it was written in 7-16th. So if you think of the quarter note as 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, which is about a quarter note equals 120 on a metronome then 16th notes are 1-e-and-a-2-e-and-a-3-e-and-a-4-e-and-a-1-e-and-a-2-e-and-a-3-e-and-a-4-e-and-a meaning 4 subdivisions per beat. Those are 16th notes. Slower 1-e-and-a-2-e-and-a-3-e-and-a-4-e-and-a. And if you have 7-16th time signature then you got 7 of those 7-16th notes in each bar, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7 like that. And that’s what this is 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7 like that. And then when it played, the first 3 notes are 8th notes. So that would be 6 16th notes. In other words, each 8th note is worth 2 16ths, 1-e-and-a-2-e and then we have a 1 left with that last 16th note.
Now, if you aren't familiar with time signatures and subdivisions like this is, it’s going to sound very confusing. But fear not because there's a fill to the whole thing especially played against the stray drum beat and the drum beat we have programmed very similar to the one that’s on the tune. So when you hear the drum beat, 1-2-3-4. You can easily understand how it fits against the beat but it’s also important to know what it means if you're reading it or just understand the rhythm. Another way to think about this is if you thought of the beat as a double time beat which is what this sounds a little bit like. Instead of it sounding like 1-2-3-4 quarter note equals 120 sounds like 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4, quarter note equals 240 then it would be 7 8th notes, 1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and-1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and-1-and-2-and-3-and-4-and-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7 like that, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-1-2-3-4-5-6-7.
Okay, enough about the time signature. The best thing to do is understand the feel of it and how it goes against the drum beat. And what happens is because the drum beat’s a stray drum beat, the guitar riff turns around.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services