The REASON he plays this way is ASTONISHING...Angus Young

[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Applause] hey everybody this is about Angus Young And as I looked into this I listened to interviews with Angus and the rest of the band and these are the most humble forthright hard-working down-to-earth people you would ever meet and yet when you see him on stage they're in front of hundreds of thousands of people it's so cool to see rock stars huge rock stars be so down to earth and we're going to look at his gear and we're going to talk we're also going to go over the solo to Back in Black which is really a muscular thing [Music] first I want to show you something that really surprised me and delighted me because I can relate to it I found some footage of Angus talking about what created his guitar style and I was absolutely Blown Away by these clips the first one he talks about about his hands and this is something I can really relate to and you might be able to relate to also Malcolm my brother he was pretty much the same and and I think of course you you know the two of his little little fellas and you know you would try and make make chords and stuff if you were a little guy and you're playing a big big chord you got like a bit of a stretch you know and you see some guys because they've got big big long fingers like I never Clapton or something you know look at these big finger finger stretch you know you know almost but it looks better their fingers for piano or something and when you're a little guy you know you you sort of go to try and compensate yeah and Malcolm and myself if it was a major like a major a chord [Music] so you see how humble he is blows me away and now the next clip is also amazing but because it it he actually says that his stage presence the way he bends his body on stage has to do with having enough strength to pull the strings and manhandle the guitar check it out check this out people you know with a you know of an average medium I can sort of you know when they bend it they spend a string you know but with me it's like I've got to sort of go [Music] you know you have to just lean into it you know and a lot of people when you when you're playing on stage a lot of people say oh you move there's a lot of movement you know but it's actually me trying to here's the last clip and this relates to everything also he talks about why he chose the SG he also talks later about how he has hundreds of them at this point and he could open an SG store most of them are in the same color but check out this last clip because it all relates to this this stamina and strength and size and the size of our hands as guitar players it's got a kind of devil see little horns A Little Red Devil yeah and uh it if you would you would see on a lot of uh I suppose people with eclect guitars you know they would sort of go uh you know one of the big collector items for a lot of years was that was Paul Gibson's you know with the the single cut away and uh this was all solid and a bit of a very heavy guitar and if you're a little guy like me you know they they can give you a hip displacement you know and so I always thought the SG was a lighter guitar because you could just pick it up like this and uh you know you didn't really have to sort of sit and like with this big heavy heavy thing strapped around you you know you know if you weren't a hunchback you would then so let's talk about why I relate to this so much and why some of you maybe a lot of you might relate to it also my hands are small okay I've always had friends with the longer fingers hendrix's fingers are probably that long look at photos they dwarf the neck on a Stratocaster not only have my hands always been small they've never been the strongest hands in the world like if you pick up one of Josh Smith's guitars he has like 11s or twelves or 13s on it and he he for days he just he can do anything on that guitar but I pick up that guitar and my hands aren't quite strong enough so I really relate to all this and I'm five nine what I really relate to is when he talks about strength and stamina like the way he plays takes so much strength [Music] I really relate to that now ACDC was a family I don't know if you guys know this but they emigrated from Scotland to Australia in 1963 had five brothers and one sister I believe check me on that but he had an older brother named George Young and George Young became a rock star with the easy beats they had a hit called Friday on my mind and if you look up Friday on my mind it's quite a musical song so he was part of this group of people that you know wrote a lot of songs and produced a lot of records and George Malcolm and angus's older brother produced the first five AC DC records so it was very much a family affair and maybe that relates back to why they're so humble and down to earth I'm not sure but the the record Back in Black was produced by mutt Lang and there is a story and I don't know if it's true you guys can maybe confirm it or not that they were working on his guitar sound and they were compass point uh in the Bahamas I actually worked there once it's pretty cool place not the most fancy place but it was a great place for people from the UK to go and do records because it was warm tropical and there were tax advantages and that's kind of why they were there even though they were from Australia it's probably the same situation now there's a story that they were working on the guitar sound and mut Lang said so you know we don't quite have it what's missing is there anything else that you do to get your guitar soon he said well I play through my Schaefer Vega Wireless He said let's fire it up so the Schaefer Vega Tower and I think we have an image of that the original one had a preamp and it was required to bring the signal back because this was the 70s and all every Big Rock Band used these systems for their Wireless Systems but it had a preamp in it and it actually created this kind of nice Sizzle on the top end this extra bit of gain and so they've been reissued and you can buy one I mean I I wish they weren't so expensive because that's like a fifteen hundred dollar boost pedal and I'm sure you know most pedals you could get these days would would get you the same thing but at that time you can kind of hear it there's an extra Sizzle on all his guitar sounds now I've gotten my sound today I really want to mention this because I really I can back these amps I'm using a bad cat hot cat for this sound and this is the lead Channel [Music] and then for the rhythm guitar I just switched to the clean Channel what's not the clean channel the low gain Channel [Music] and it's kind of the right sound [Music] [Applause] go to the lead Channel [Music] so today I'm not using any pedals I generally use pedals for my lead tones today no I'm just using the lead channel on the hot cat so these guys make a lot of different models check them out they're friends of mine they're a good company they're a small company and uh they're they're kind of blowing up right now so so check them out but his sound let's let's actually look at the solo first let's look at the licks in the solo before that I want to mention there is a special on the master class so click the link below and the master class is up to 150 hours 1800 videos there's 100 video beginners course I just added 19 exercise videos to get your hands warmed up uh so we're going strong and if you want to if you want to try it there's a 14 day free trial so you can you can opt out if it's not right for you anyway let's look at the actual solo okay and we're gonna go lick by lick it's really short so this will be really quick but you can see how aggressive he is and how he man handles this guitar [Music] [Music] so that's the first volley and he's shaking it so hard [Music] right and then we move to the next Lake let's check it out [Music] then he comes up here and then now at this point if you play all these licks in a row my hand gets fatigued and I fight through it and I keep going but if you do them all in a row that's one thing to play them one at a time but all in a row your hand starts to build up some fatigue [Music] and it's got this really really cool ending what's this [Music] foreign so that's it it's stamina and strength and a lot of guitar players don't talk about this but playing rock guitar with lots of bends and vibrato takes a lot of stamina and Angus is honest about it he talks about how he literally had to bend his body to make these moves [Music] so anyway let me let me just play one more solo it's really fun more in my style and uh but over the I I recommend these chords to play over because there's a there are a few changes one of the things I love and I talk about this a lot is I love playing over chord changes that force you to adapt a little bit so in this particular situation where I'm playing over the chorus of black and black I'm playing in B mixolydian then I drop to a mixolydian and then when the turnaround happens I go to G and then I go to D and then back to B so it's really fun and when you sort of changing modes and changing Keys that's where a lot of the nice surprising notes happen let me show you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you so give it a try sometime these chord changes are great to play over so AC DC was formed in 1973 and Angus and his brother Malcolm you know they were so tight and they respected each other so much Angus was asked at one point what it felt like to be one of the greatest guitar players in the world and his comeback was I'm not even the greatest guitar player in my band I mean it's pretty wonderful and I always loved the fact that Malcolm played that Gretch with the one pickup I mean it's just just so cool I want to talk about angus's rig I went through it and in recent years he just had a ton of marshals on stage like nine Marshals and they were all reissues except for one okay and then he had in the smaller venues he had five triple stacks and the reason for that is that he could walk across the stage and not lose any of the sound I don't know if you guys ever been through this on a big stage but if you have a 412 Kevin even a one stack and you go to the side a little bit it's gone they're very directional so having a wall of amps served a purpose for him a wall of 412 cabinets so triple Stacks five across for the smaller venues and I think they'd add a couple more for the Giant stadiums anyway they had nine Marshals uh eight of them were reissues but the one that was vintage it was a 1972 and it might have been a 50 watt it was connected to an amp in the back of the stage that was mic'd up so what the audience hears is a vintage Marshall that's like one of his favorite vintage Marshals it was probably used it forever and the other amps are just for stage fill and then the mixer has one more Modern amp that he mixes in from time to time and if I had to guess I would say that that's just to bring thickness into the Vintage amp sound so a Modern amp would be brought in but it's just that simple I was fascinated by this and then of course he's got the Shaffer Vega Towers sitting there there's a an A and A B one's a backup and those add that extra Sizzle that's his like gain pedal pretty cool [Music] anyway thanks so much guys for joining us let me look at some questions one more reminder the master class is on sale right now there's a special offer check it out if you want lessons and you can do it for two weeks free and opt out if it's not right for you oh I'm glad you liked the solo um I learned it and I'm telling you playing his solo from beginning to end without a pause your hand will get fatigued and that's okay but generally when I solo I build in little rests and I build in moments that kind of rest my hand even when I'm playing so if I'm doing a line and a vibrato that causes some fatigue but if I go [Music] that kind of solves the fatigue and that's kind of a restful figure to play so you'll see me doing stuff that's aggressive and takes a lot of strength and then changing it up with something that's a little more mellow [Music] and that's how I deal with it but you can see him on stage when he plays this solo and he does not play it note for note and I'm glad I don't like when people there's no need to play a solo note for note after you've done it you can tell he's working hard to get it done because he just plays so aggressively you know [Music] trying to do is bring my little finger into it because my little finger is not the strongest Phil X talks about this too and so I bring it into the action on purpose I say if I can use my little finger here I'm gonna yeah you're asking for tips on hands not being tired build and rest and the best way to do that is take breaks let me show you that that's this is this is the best way and the audience will love you the band will love you every everybody will love you for for this way and it's very simple you just don't play wall-to-wall check it out check this out foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] even that's a rest because these fingers are resting while that one holds the note so just build it into your style that's what I do um yeah but if you play wall to wall it's a cool sound and a lot of rock is wall-to-wall playing you know for whatever reason but uh it's nice to leave those pauses the audience loves them too Hobbs New Mexico I'm from Albuquerque great to see you from a Hobbs tennis so I am like Angus in the sense that I am much more comfortable with a lighter guitar and Les Paul is very very hard to find lightless balls and that's why I searched I searched for like two months before I found this one on reverb and bought it and the Frets were wrong so I had it for two days and I had it refread it because I wanted jumbo Frets but at seven pounds 13 ounces it's very comfortable now one other thing these pickups are Arcane pickups and I'm going to do a signature pickup with Rob from Arcane and this man is brilliant check out the neck pickup [Applause] [Music] let me move it over here and see if I get any of this Reverb [Music] check out the neck pickup he made me it's it's like a P90 and then I really like the bridge one of the things I really learned a little bit too late I was always getting a very nasal sound out of my bridge pickup on Les Paul's and I realized a lot of has to do with how hard I pick if I pick really hard it gets pretty I hate to use the word nasal but it gets more nasal than I wanted to be if I pick soft [Applause] that's the sound I want oh some things you just learn late you know so there you go you know I should have paid attention more anyway it's it's you know using a bridge pickup this is this is a tip that I have for you guys if you play softly the tone will be sweeter foreign just don't pick too hard so anyway [Music] yeah so one more solo and I'll take a couple more questions it's been really fun I want to thank all of you for for joining us today I really really do and I wish I could answer all the questions but they're they're going by pretty fast um yeah and if you guys join the master class we do a very very long form live stream where it's pretty it's so casual and uh so you can actually ask more questions and we'll uh we'll take more time with stuff anyway I'm gonna play another solo [Music] [Applause] hahaha [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah guys yeah let's pause our are not easy because there's so many versions and so many weights and so many so many of them are frankly not great uh you know that's the thing about a lot of the boutique Builders and including PRS if you get a John sir or you get uh you know a Mario Martin or you get a Tom Anderson or a Michael Tuttle or a PRS the quality is superb at every level every price point and every single one of them is superb and Gibson is just not that way you know just been too many years of different regimes and and and you know and mass production too you know it's so this is not a criticism but if you want to Les Paul search for months search for years try everyone you possibly can eventually you'll find one it might be fifteen hundred dollars they might want 8 500 for it that's the thing the really good ones these days are so expensive so just be patient keep looking and you'll find a good one you know and if it's a PRS buy any one of them through the internet and they'll all be great it's just the way it goes you know I love my prss but I didn't feel right using a PRS for this video If I had an sgo would have used it of course but this less Paul with these pickups sounds really good to me through you know the the bad cat hot cat one last question somebody asked what gauge strings I use and I spent most of my career using 10 through 46 and they 10 through 46 sound really good for chords because they do they're stable they hold together there's a thickness that happens with cords but now I've switched back to nine so when I started early on I would use eights or nines and then when I moved to LA became a session musician it was about the chords more Rhythm than lead and the tens just seem to stay in tune and be very very stable but at this point in my life I like 9-46 now there is a lot of talk about how eight sets like eight through 38 or whatever the gauge is actually can make a distorted amp sound better there's a couple of people who have claimed this so I'm going to investigate that next I put Eights on some guitars and it has been said that it actually hits a distorted amp better when you use AIDS so I'm headed lighter and lighter I want my guitars to play themselves I want it to be as effortless as possible and I want it to be easy and I definitely want to keep practicing I like to get faster and better on guitar and it's it's really really fun anyway guys I thank you so much for joining this live stream I really really appreciate it and I'm gonna play this out and we'll see you on the next one alright guys take care [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Tim Pierce Guitar

Views: 626,138

Keywords: tim pierce, guitar, studio, recording

Id: imo8PJjgjEs

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 11 2023