Now, let us get on to this song. This song actually to me represents a perfect example of a rocking song. Both the rhythm part and the solo part contain all those elements that make it for me. They are sexy, they are groovy, they are cool and the tone is right, the lyrics are right, the melody is right. I mean everything just makes it for me. And so, I am taking this as an example to show what I worked on. We already talked about all this in other videos and in the comments that I always welcome from anyone. We talked about but I think it is never enough to talk about or to play these things because it is just pure pleasure when it happens right.
So, the rhythm pattern is just fascinating because it is three simple chords. The intro and the verse is just three simple chords. I will show the very intro that both Angus and Malcolm do together just a bit later. The chords G, C and D – let us get in to those in detail. The verse with the drum pattern starts in open G and not all the strings are played. Actually, on just one string, I am stopping with my middle finger here. I am stopping from playing the open A because I am not hitting the B string on the open A on this one.
Now, there comes the time to pay attention to a number of things consciously. You got to be there aware about this. So, here it goes. Striking the chord like that. There is a few things to pay attention to when you strike that G chord because it is not going to sound right if you do not strike it right and if you do not strum it right. This has been a fascinating action to me. Flap, thick as we already discussed and move quickly over the base G because you do not want to add and sometimes that happens to me. I mean the base G is played, I remember some people telling me you are doing it wrong. You see you do it right but you are doing it wrong because there is no base G played. It is only this. That is wrong. That rarely happens with AC/DC that they are playing something like that. It does happen but it is more of a rare thing for some sort of arrangement. But in this song, the whole G chord with the exception of the open A string is played.
So, just move quickly over the base G and get to the ringing open strings and the press once to this part here so like that because you want the bottom part ringing a lot. Can you hear that? And then, it is all about timing here. You have to listen carefully to the drums pattern and even then you have to be careful because this song has to be played like most do it rock and roll in my humble opinion is played right when it is played a little backwards. So, you do need to stay backwards. That is one of the biggest secrets with AC/DC music.
The two guys and even the base player Cliff, they play a little backward. There is a rhythm pattern that is giving amazing groove most of the time. But they play backwards. They are not playing straight like that. It does not sound right. You can tell it is right chords and all but it does not sound like a shoot sound. And it is not a matter of guitar, it is not a matter of amplifiers, it is not a matter of strings, it is just a matter of how you do it. He does it but you do it and you can do it exactly like that or you can get very close to it but most important thing is that you can communicate the same sort of feeling that he was able to communicate which is basic in rock and roll.
There are all these pauses in there. There is this move around like that. It makes you move like that so you want to try and recreate that kind of feeling. The way you can do that is to be aware and conscious of what you need to do in order to accomplish that task. So, you are going to have to pay attention to a number of things here. How to strike the G chord? We already discussed this. So, this is G then comes the C chord. It is just a very basic C chord like the first probably chord that we all learned on the guitar. And this muted on the E base, like that.
Actually, I am muting both high E string and base E strings. Both of them are muted. You will find a way for yourself to better mute these two strings.
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