(Ayla plays Hey Joe on guitar) - Hi everyone. My name is Ayla Tesler-Mabe and I just played the iconic
intro to Jimmy Hendrix's version of Hey Joe. And it turns out there is a
hidden exercise in that song. And in five other songs that
I want to show you today that you might already know and love. If you learn how to play them, not only will you learn how
to play an awesome song, you will have a great exercise to work on, to progress in your guitar playing. All right, let's get right into it. The first song is, Hey Joe, but I want to show you probably my favorite riff of the entire song that comes right after the guitar solo. And this is a great one to
work on finger dexterity and chromaticism, and it's
just a great riff all around. And this is what it sounds like. (Ayla plays Hey Joe) So again, this is a great rift to work
on using all four fingers, chromatic walk-up the
frets you can see here. I'm chromatically walking up the frets with my four fingers and this riff forces you to do that. Again, if I play it slowly, this is what it sounds like. (Ayla plays guitar) And in the original song. I don't think he quite resolves
up to this last note here, but for the sake of making
this an exercise, why not? You can also just go
down to the low E string or an E chord, something like that. But again, notice how I'm using
all four fingers like this. One finger per fret, and this will help you build flexibility and the ability to
stretch with your fingers. It's a great warm up as well. And I think it's an awesome riff to know. All right, moving on to the next song. This is a blues rock classic
from the late fifties, and this is such a great song to work on chord changes, to work
on the pentatonic scale and to work on playing
in a triplet type feel, which is great if you ever want to look
at playing blues music or rock music that comes from the blues, and it sounds like this. (Ayla plays Rumble on guitar) So that was Rumble by Link Wray. And this is a song that I always
wanted to learn how to play because it's been in so many iconic movies and it's an iconic song in its own right. But it turns out if you learn it, you're going to be
working on so many skills like I said, previously, chord changes, moving from this D Sus cord to an E Major, A Major, at the end you move to a B7 chord and this is just a great chord shape to know in general. But my favorite part is the very end. This lick here. (Ayla plays guitar) For many reasons firstly, you're playing in a triplet feel and this is a great, great exercise for playing
in cool time fields because we have triple, triple it. Which I played wrong because
I was speaking while playing and you don't need to do that. You just need to play, but think triple it, triple it, triple it, but what you're playing is. (Ayla plays guitar) And it also turns out
that you'll be working on the minor pentatonic scale
while you're playing this. And that's an awesome skill to
learn because if you learn it it's where you start if you ever want to
learn how to improvise. And for example, if I were playing over this track and I didn't want to just play chords, I could use the notes in
this lick here to improvise. (Ayla plays guitar) Such a great exercise
and such a great song. And I think it's really worth working on. Don't forget to download
this track down below to practice this song and maybe even try improvising over it if you're feeling adventurous and you want to give it a try and I hope you have fun. So this next song is truly
one of my all time favorites. And I know I say that about a lot of songs because I love so much music, but this really is one
of my all time favorites. And this is such a great song to learn, to work on chord embellishments, because if you've ever wanted to learn how to play that Hendrixian style, where you're embellishing
every chord change. with beautiful licks, this is a good place to
start using open chords and some really nice licks
to get you on your way. It sounds a little something like this. (Ayla plays Something on guitar) All right so that was
Something by the Beatles. If you didn't already
know, beautiful song. And the first thing to look at with this, is all the different chord
shapes that you go through. C Major, C Major Seven, C Major Seven or C7, they mean the same thing and then F Major and then D Dominant Seven, D7 and then G. So already, if you go through those chords on their own or with the track, which you can download down below, that's a great exercise in chord changes, but hold on, there's more, as you may have heard when I was playing, I did add some more strumming instead of just holding the chords 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. I did add some extra strumming in there. (Ayla plays guitar) And for a start with
getting the chords down, strumming them, letting them ring out, but know that there is room for you to work on some more
embellished strumming, maybe take a listen to the original and hear the way that George Harrison
plays through the song. It's very beautiful. Most of all, the song allows you to work
on chord embellishments because when we get to that F Major chord, there's a little (Ayla plays guitar) embellishment lick sounding like that. And when you get to the end of the song, instead of just holding this
G and letting it ring up, there's that really
beautiful embellish lick to throw on top. But there's another reason
it's great to work on. You may have heard when I
was playing through the song, I had some cool effects on my instrument. (Ayla plays guitar) And what that is, is a
type of modulation effect called Univibe And I had some tremble on there. And if you happen to have
Chorus, Haser, Flanger, Tremolo, Univibe, anything like that, you could try experimenting with them and seeing if you can get a really
luscious, nice sounding tone. And that is a great skill to have as an electric guitar player, because if you can play really well, which I think is the most important part and have beautiful tone in your fingers and just your instrument
running through the amp. If you can combine that
with a great sensibility in regard to the way
you construct your tone and your amp settings,
pedals, all of that, you are going to be flying. That's a way of saying you're
going to be sounding great. So our next song is a little bit more in your face, rock and roll. This is, Shout It Out Loud by Kiss. (Ayla plays guitar) All right. So that song obviously starts with an iconic arena rock
harmonized opening lick and the part that I was playing. (Ayla plays guitar) It's such a great one to
work on bending accuracy and vibrato, and first looking at bending accuracy. You're bending up a half step. But you don't hear it come back down, you just bend up and then you have to release the string without
taking your fingers off. Cause then that will happen. That's not what we want to
have happen in this instance, you release just enough pressure so that when you release the note, release the bent, you don't
hear it come back down, (Ayla plays guitar) Then the last one, you
hear it come up and down. And then you land on this 13th fret, and try to add a whole lot of
rock and roll vibrato on there really wide and aggressive
vibrato sounds great. So that one's a lot of fun
to work on, but of course, it's so great for working on your bending, your vibrato and just the ability to make
one note sound beautiful and great. (Ayla plays guitar) So the last song was about working on single note lead type playing and this one is, as you probably saw more chord based and all about your right hand as well, that was Simple Man by
Leonard Skinner, a classic, you might've noticed
while I was playing it, I was really watching my right hand cause I don't usually
put that much attention into picking exactly the right note at the right time, the A string versus the D string
and the G string, whatever. But for this one, it's part of the riff, so it's really important to focus on your picking accuracy for this one. So this is a great song for that. And you can follow along with the tab on screen to see what I was playing. And again, this song, not only are you going to
be learning an iconic riff, you're also going to be
working on picking accuracy, making chord changes
while being really precise with your picking hand,
all of that good stuff. It's so great to work on. And it's more challenging
than you might think, especially to do all of
this while staying in time. Because even if you play
all the right notes, if they're not in time, they're still not quite the right notes. So turn this into a thumbs up by focusing on all of the
aforementioned things. And this is what it sounds like slowly. (Ayla plays guitar) And then it restarts. Be sure to download the track down below, to practice along, jam along. I made those tracks for you
with all the love in my heart. I had a lot of fun doing that, and I have one more exercise
for you in an iconic song. It's a little bit challenging, but if you want to get into lead playing or just work on finger dexterity, this is a really good one to work on. And it sounds like this. (Ayla plays guitar) So that went by pretty quickly. If you want to download a
slower version of the track to practice along to, again,
it's down below, check it out. That was the iconic opening
lick of the final solo of Good Times, Bad Times by
Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page. And I listened to this lick over and over again in slow motion. And the first part of the lick is a little hard to make out at times, as far as the precise
timing of what he did, because he was probably
lost in the moment. And he may not have played it exactly as an exercise with precision because that's not the
point of music anyways, but for the sake of this exercise and extracting the lick from this iconic opening line of the solo, you essentially end up with this really cool way of descending the minor pentatonic scale. (Ayla plays guitar) So essentially you have
this repeating kind of motif that descends down through the scale. With pull offs. Pull off. Pull off. Pull off. Pull off. And once you get more
confident with the frets, you're playing and the
strings and everything, it's really cool to start to emphasize and accent certain
notes, like for example, instead of playing every note with an equal amount of emphasis, ta da da da. Try to emphasize Da, da, da, da, and the reason for that
is it further accentuates this feeling of falling down the stairs and then landing on your feet, which is a feature of a lot of, I think my personal favorite
rock guitar players, Jimmy Hendrix did this a lot, Jimmy Page, all of those guys, playing crazy stuff where it feels like you're
kind of lost in time and space and then landing on, you know, a part of the groove that listeners and musicians all can grab onto and say, "Yes, okay, we've arrived." Great work. And so there are so many reasons
to work on this, of course, for finger dexterity, giving you a cool lick to
pull out at a jam session or anytime you're improvising, learning how to play the song, starting with the lick or even just learning the song
all the way through, I think, is something really cool
for any guitar player to do. So there are six hidden exercises and iconic songs that you can work on. I have always been a fan
of playing music first. I always learn things by learning songs, but sometimes it's fun
to look for the exercises in these songs that are going to help
build your musicianship. And sometimes it's just more fun to find these hidden exercises if you're spending a lot
of your time practicing to a metronome, this might be
a fun way to spice things up. Please leave a comment
down below of anything I may have missed, a hidden
exercise in an iconic song that you know of that you'd like to use to practice and have a wonderful day. Thanks for tuning in. (jazzy music)
