The CRAZY TRAIN SOLO ANOMALY (Why it always sounds off when we play it)

i've spent a large part of my guitar life trying to figure out the crazy train solo and do it justice and by doing it justice what i mean is i'm trying to make my soloing sound as close to the album version as possible but i ran into three problems two which i already knew about one i just found out the other day and it really kind of blew my mind so first of all when we're trying to play the crazy train solo it's a difficult solo first of all but because we're not randy rhodes you know we're not gonna sound exactly like it that's just kind of one of the things that you can't help the second thing is i learned this after about three years of trying to play the solo randy double tracks his guitar in the studio so he's double tracking the solo so he plays it twice and you hear two simultaneous solos going on when you hear the solo for crazy train so it's not like he just played through the solo said that's good see you later he played it again and they layered them together so if you listen with earbuds you'll hear one take in one ear and the other in the other ear and it's really interesting because playing them together creates the sound that you're not able to replicate by yourself when i learned this i went out and bought a chorus pedal because i thought that would make that sound but it didn't it's there's a different sound and feel to it when you use a chorus pedal versus when you actually double track your part so when you play it twice and then put them together so that's another giant reason why we can't sound like the studio version of crazy train now the third one like i said i just figured out the other day i was listening to it dissecting it even more and there were always a few parts that sounded strange to me and i couldn't quite tell why until i slowed it down the other day and listened to each take and i realized that randy is actually playing different notes for different takes now some people get man they're like randy would never make a mistake and i know that's blasphemy and i wouldn't say that but what i will say is randy was a very creative guitar player it's got to be very difficult to want to play the same thing two times in a row when you're in the studio and so there are these little anomalies that happen where all of a sudden he'll be playing two different notes and since it's one in each ear it creates this really insane dissonant effect so if i break this part down you might be surprised to hear what he's actually doing so when one take he's going like this so this three note walk down is very important to remember notewise we have d c sharp and b on the other take he goes like this could you hear the differences so that walk down especially you can hear it this sounds really weird to me sounds wrong you know what i mean now here's where the dissonance happens because the first take he goes d to c sharp to b but then when you add the other notes on top of it on the other take you're playing e to d to b those notes are very dissonant so i'll show you i'll play the d and the e at the same time sounds like helter skelter kind of but up higher very dissonant the next two notes we have d and c sharp at the same time so that would sound like this it's as dissonant as it can get right there now how could that ever sound good in a solo right that's kind of what i was wondering uh but obviously randy makes it work now the next part's not so apparent but it's this crazy walk down so that's what he does in the first take the next take he goes so it's not as dissonant because the two notes played together [Music] sound pretty good together so i'm way more focused on the sound of the walk down today let's go ahead and do this the first time i play through i'm going to play to the backing track so it's going to be the the backing band and we're going to have just a single solo okay just one solo guitar uh the second time through i'll do the same exact solo but i'll double it so it'll be two versions of the same thing and on the third one we're going to do what randy did and it's going to be the two guitars again except one of them is going to be playing those other notes so let's see what happens okay let's do that exact same lead part again except double tracked this time so i'm going to record this in post production so you only see me playing this once here but there will be another version of it right next to it here we go [Music] see how it gives it a different sound it's very interesting whenever you double track guitars what that does to the tone it makes it a lot bigger and more interesting okay we still don't have what randy did though so by playing different notes you're gonna hear it a lot truer and a lot closer to the real thing so i'm excited to hear it here we go [Music] okay that's what i'm used to hearing now isn't that strange that such dissonance can actually sound good in the context of the solo and even if randy didn't intend to do that like i said being a very creative guitar player it's easy to just kind of do different little different things each time and when you put it together you just hope for the best and in this case it creates a very interesting sound so you've got guitar players that can match note for note every single note that they do in a solo then you have guys like tony iaomi who actually go off and play two separate parts completely that sounds really great and then you have randy who's kind of doing a little bit of both he's following the old part pretty well but then here and there he does these little anomalies that throw it off just a little bit and i think it actually contributes to the sound you think of when you think of randy rhodes playing so very exciting to discover this yesterday i got all excited to make this video and hopefully it changes the way you hear randy when you listen to the album so listen to the album slow it down on youtube it's easy to slow things down listen to the isolated tracks and you'll hear what i'm talking about all those little changes and nuances make for a big change overall alright i hope that was fun informative interesting all that good stuff and i will catch you guys at the next lesson all right thanks bye

Channel: The-Art-of-Guitar

Views: 275,578

Rating: 4.920855 out of 5

Keywords: the art of guitar, lesson, how to play, lessons, six string, acoustic, electric, learn, learning, amps, method, tutorial, fender, gibson, ibanez, beginner, beginners, just starting, chords, scales, picking, arpeggios, the color system, the caged system, crazy train, ozzy osbourne, randy rhoads, solo, anomaly, why it always sounds off

Id: ifCx6o4bA4A

Length: 6min 32sec (392 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021