Learning to Fly
I’ve been trying to learn a lot of stuff on the electric guitar lately – mainly solos and leads. I’ve come pretty far in knowing what chords go where, and the different chord progressions, but now I’m trying to take the next step forward.
Once I got my awesome guitar amp, it opened up a whole new world for me. And one set of headphones later (much to my wife’s delight), and I’ve been practicing more pure rock stuff and getting a little bit better each time.
Last week my teacher showed me the lead for AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”. A great rock standard, and the lead in it isn’t too bad. My amp has an iPod input, so I can hook it right in and play along with the song. Although the chord changes are a little hard for me now, I’m slowly getting faster and more accurate with them.
The thing I really like are the blues scales, and being able to use them along with some easy riffs to actually sound like I know what I’m doing. Although it takes a while to get any of these techniques down well so they sound good, I feel like all those years of playing bass in the garages and basements of my youth are finally paying off.
Probably this week I’ll try and run through the lead of “Stairway to Heaven”, and see how much more wanking I can do on it. And then who knows? Maybe I’ll grow out my hair, wear tiger-striped spandex, and join a retro hair band…
… or maybe not.
LOL! No Stairway to Heaven allowed!