How to Play Stray Cat Strut by the Stray Cats

hey there my friends Erich andreas your guitar sage here and today I'm going to show you how to play stray cat strut by the stray cats super amazing fun song in this video I'm going to show you how to come up with that crazy cool rockabilly tone and then we're to talk about this intro lick that I just did the verse the course in the bridge we won't be looking at the solos we look at those in separate videos so be looking around links below or the side or what have you for those bits and pieces okay and and then finally I'll do a fourth video which will be the whole performance of it just be looking for that again and the links are to the side here okay so let's jump in with this lick well actually I tell you what let's talk about tone here first really quickly and then we'll jump into this song super super fun tune by the way um okay so first off um you know obviously a nice old Gretsch this is a 6120 that makes a nice start if you don't have that then that's okay you could use like a tele or a strap what sound really nice with this or any number of guitars that aren't too powerful in regards to their pickups of course the the bar the nice Bigsby is really nice or some sort of tremolo system so they can get those nice sounds that you couldn't get if you didn't have that okay yeah you could do some vibrato but it's not the same is it's just a different type of sound so that's helpful right also I want to have a nice clean tone so Brian goes into 1959 baseman's I believe that's his preference here I've got a fender blues jr. and I have it set pretty cleanly and we just want a real nice clean tone that has maybe just a teeny bit of bite so that has a little bit of that edge on it okay and as far as the the slap back we've got a slap back delay on here basically we want it to go pop up we want it to just get that little one repeat and it's just right after pop up I've got a teeny bit of spring reverb on there that's it you don't necessarily need that but I just have it on there naturally on that amp okay so let's dig into this alright so first off the tune if you haven't noticed already is in the key of C minor so there's a lot of C minor action happening here so you know your music theory great because you'll be able to dig in to this and be thinking that way a lot of the blues scale the Dorian of C C minor Dorian sea blue scale and then of course the core progression for the most part is the C minor okay so the first lick here goes okay and so basically what we're doing here is we're doing a double stop we're sliding from seven to eight and we're shaking the bar and then we're going okay so this is frets eight and ten and then we've got a nice some meta chord here this is a be augmented okay and then finally this is barring strings two and three at fret six and then last we've got breath seven on the D string from eight so together it's gonna go like this I slide down okay so that's the intro lick now the verse is very simple it's very subtle I've seen Brian play this live and he usually will tuck his pick into his hand and use his thumb and just kind of play real softly you can still use a pick um otherwise you can use the technique where you kind of hide it in your hand like that while you use your thumb okay so after the lick then we have these are up strokes and the notes are seen a sharp G sharp the second time around use playing octaves okay so if you don't know this octave trick here watch my other videos just type in your guitar sage octaves or go to my free course your guitar sage calm slash 30 you can learn all about that kind of stuff okay so that's the second time around we're basing this off of a C minor and eight sharp seven a G sharp seven and a GM doesn't we're basing these office the first time around just the low notes second time third time he's going to be playing the full chords he's doing something like this like a so he's hitting the downstroke and then he's hit enough stroke so so that's the third motif that we're doing and the fourth motif once you start singing is this just kind of chunk in the chords like when I come on straight cats and actually when he plays this g7 here he does do a backhand or sweet cats it kind of pushes that so you're gonna grab that C minor chord and bring it on down okay now we're taking the same exact chord progression we're going up a fourth you don't have to know what that means I'm gonna show it to you basically you're gonna be at the F now you're gonna be playing minor D sharp major so it's very close to the same corporation C sharp major and c7 so it's gonna be a string and that's a push to on that last chord so okay so that last one you're pushing and your chunk in these cords right so you're using some right hand muting which if you need to help with that here on YouTube your guitar cities right hand muting I'll help you with that in the air now from here we've got we've got the we've got solo we've got arm sorry we've got the the vs. we've got the second part of the verse now there is another part of this tune we're not going to go into the solos yet because really technically we're we're getting into that area here but there's this other section I want to show you very quickly which goes like this it's basically the part that kind of comes down a little bit and it's like it's before the solo for solo to before all that okay now moving on again we're not going to do the solos yet moving on we're really going now to the end of the song okay we're they okay and all we're doing there is we're going this is based off of the blues scale which if you don't you need help with a blues scale I have help for you go to your guitar see Tom get the free ebook I've got a free book there that will help you and it's got the blue scales in it and that's what a thing is very helpful okay so we're basing this off of C minor blues and so you're gonna double stop strings one and two this is at the eighth fret so you're gonna go in a Bend so you go right down the scale then you're walking up and then you're grabbing this which is based off of a C minor we've got a nine in there okay right at the top so basically what you're going to do is instead of playing that whole C minor chord you're gonna play the top of that C minor chord so from the fourth string down you're going to act your pinkie right there at the tenth fret and a nice nine tone in there wait for Brian to jump up in the air and then get that chord there okay you know what to do there alright my friends now that's going to be it as far as this one again a solo one solo two will be somewhere in the side or links in the description of this video hey if you need help with anything on guitar I'm here to help you hey check out your guitar your guitar stage calm actually the unstoppable guitar system.com the link is also below where I have a whole course on rockabilly and how to learn that and a bunch of other stuff blues and some great stuff there so please let me know how I can help I'm on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram in all those great places and I love to help folks play guitar so and if you haven't already please check out my free course at your guitar sage calm slash 30 this is the course that I built for folks all around the world that wanted to learn from me and didn't have the money to and I built this course for them and it's a great place to really build your foundation so your guitar sage calm slash 30 make sure you check that out as always my friends be kind to one another span of your animals and be kind to other species we're not the only we are not the only species on this world we need to be kind to one another including our fellow animals so please help me in doing that and don't trust the man see you play your guitar

Channel: YourGuitarSage

Views: 507,532

Rating: 4.7975268 out of 5

Keywords: how to play, stray cat strut guitar lesson, stray cat strut, stray cats, chords, yourguitarsage, erich andreas, swing guitar lesson, verse, chorus, swing guitar licks

Id: g-bojlcRKbQ

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 08 2016