Top 5 Glam Rock Guitar Riffs from David Bowie

[Applause] hello Internet my name is Ayla Tessler Mabe one of the most significant and iconic eras of Bowie's entire career lay in the early 70s where he played an undeniable role in pioneering Glam Rock today I'm going to give you my definitive list and teach you my top David Bowie Glam Rock riffs thank you [Music] our first iconic David Bowie Glam Rock riff is Ziggy Stardust so what I'm doing is you know putting my middle finger on the third fret of the low E string and then I'm actually muting the a string and I'm doing that with my middle finger I'm letting it sort of rest across the a string so that it's muted and then everything else is open until you get to the B string put your third finger on there and Pinky on the third fret of the high E string and now we're gonna move up to a D major bar chord here at the fifth fret of the a string and if you don't know your bar chords yet don't worry there is an alternative to that that I'll show you in a moment but you can definitely hear that this part of the Riff is played up here because you can hear a slide down and don't let the high E string ring out wanted to be muted as well you're going to add your pinky to the eighth fret of the B string [Music] and then play the G string and Slide the whole shape down so you strike the chord and you let it ring out [Music] but then really just focus on picking you know the B string and then the G string so so far we have [Music] and what we're going to be doing is basically playing the top part of a G major chord putting that ring finger again on the third fret of the B string pinky on the third fret of the high E string but now we're going to put a c in the bass and I'm obviously using my middle finger to do that third fret of the a string then you put a B in the Bass by playing that second fret of the a string and then you take everything off so now there's there's an A in the bass [Music] and then the Riff repeats foreign [Music] I want to talk a little bit about the part that's panned to the right [Music] so what's changing here is instead of playing that D major bar chord you can just play an open D major chord like this and add your pinky to get that sus4 sound this time on the third fret of the high E string so what's happening here is you strum the chord and then play b g b do the same on the next chord so now we have [Music] you can hear the Rhythm changes slightly with our last chord where you play Just BG with a slightly different rhythm foreign so now if we put everything together this is what the second version of the Riff sounds like [Music] up next we have the riff from the feel good hit single Starman let's start on the fifth fret of the G string with a Bend up a whole step and then you do it again and what's unique about this is of course you don't hear it come back down so you release the bend once you've bent up to the right pitch [Music] and then play the fifth fret as normal but with some vibrato so now we have [Music] now you play Third fret slide down to the second fret and you definitely want some vibrato on that note as well so now this is what we have [Music] and now we walk up second fret third fret fifth fret [Music] and now you're going to bend up a whole step on the seventh fret [Music] and do the same sort of thing where you bend it up two times in a row and then you play the seventh fret normally with some vibrato [Music] and now you play fifth fret slide down to the second fret with some nice vibrato and this is what we have so far [Music] and now we repeat the motif with a slight variation where you play the fifth fret of the G string but this time you bend it two times in a row before proceeding is normal [Music] same as before third fret side to Second fret vibrato [Music] walk up [Music] and this is how it ends we have seventh fret whole step band bring it down and pull off to the fifth fret and then on the D string you play seven five feel free to add some vibrato on the end of the phrase at the fifth fret now when we put everything together this is what it sounds like [Music] um your phone was on Jack beat your face okay sorry oh hi it's Ayla from the future back when I made this video I thought that learning songs was the most inspiring way to learn guitar and guess what I still think that even here in the future and that's why we transcribed hundreds of your favorite songs for you on guitario.com and you can go to guitario.com trial to check it out bye [Applause] [Music] [Applause] our third iconic David Bowie Glam Rock riff is that from Diamond Dogs you're gonna start by playing the fourth fret of the DG and B strings and I would highly recommend playing this with your third finger and then kind of piling your other fingers on behind at least the middle finger so that you have uh more strength so you can pull this whole chord shape down and then back again and then you play the second fret of the DJ strands and then you do the same thing again and then you come off of the strings all together and you just play the open DG and B strings and what's really weird here is the Rhythm where they're kind of moving between different swing percentages I almost want to say which I don't think was intentional but it's a cool detail to add if you can and then you play an E flat major chord and of course I personally love playing my E flat major chords with this shape but in this song you definitely want to use this shape so you end up with the sixth fret of the high E string so that note's definitely in there and then you end up playing slightly less full voicing of a B flat major chord third finger on the eighth fret of the D string your second finger on the seventh fret of the G string and then you bar with your index finger your first finger across the sixth fret of the B and high E string foreign and then you move the shape all the way up here basically playing an F major chord up here um root on the 15th fret of the D string and you start by playing [Music] the whole chord you just strum it and then you arpeggiate it playing each string one at a time [Music] and then when you land on that last note here you kind of end up strumming the whole thing again though you mostly just want that note to be what's ringing out most prominently [Music] so so far this is what we have [Music] [Applause] the only thing that changes the second time is when you come up to this F major chord [Music] it's a little bit less busy than the first time where you strum it there's a bit of a pause and then you play foreign each of the strings individually same as before [Music] slide down off of the cord when you play it now you know Diamond Dogs [Applause] our fourth riff almost needs no introduction because Rebel Rebel is one of those anthemic songs that most people know without even knowing that they know it let's learn it okay he's kept the whole thing so we're gonna start by arpeggiating a d sus2 chord which is basically a D major chord minus your middle finger [Music] then with your available middle finger you take that third finger off and then put the middle finger there on the second fret of the B string [Music] then you play an E major chord that you want to strum twice it's not the end of the world if you play the full chord with all six strings I think you definitely want to at least avoid the low E and really just focus on strumming you know the middle and upper strings and then you play the low E [Music] and then you end up putting your pinky on the second fret of the B string and pulling it off [Applause] then you end up playing G D foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] our fifth iconic David Bowie Glam Rock riff is from the lesser-known song watch that man so like a lot of glam rock songs from this era that have huge guitar sounds there is more than one guitar track going on at any given moment but we're going to focus on the one that has the most lead guitar type of stuff going on this starts with a g major chord USC at 9 and this is a great chord movement to know you play your four finger G major chord and then you move your middle finger and index finger down a set of strings and it becomes C add nine and of course because C is the root note of that chord avoid the low E string because that does that need to be there now we're going to move to this chord shape where what you want to do is move that index finger down to the a string and then move your middle finger here to the second fret of the D string foreign [Music] so you can hear we play the first two chords just once and then you strum this E minor seven over B chord a couple times [Music] so basically we're going to come up to the sixth fret of the G string play that with your middle finger and then bar with your index finger across the fifth fret of the E string and the B string and you'll want to get the G string in there as well because we're going to do some hammer-ons there and of course we'll need to have that fifth fret covered the rhythm part the rhythmic aspect of this [Music] is probably the hardest part because you can hear there's a pause [Music] and then it comes in so it's coming in on beat two and I wasn't playing on one or and but I was thinking them so that you know I know when to come in at the right time foreign [Music] and now we have a hammer on where you take that middle finger off and of course you hammer it back on [Music] and then you end up playing a bunch of upstrokes here [Music] and you can even get some ghost notes in between each strum and then this whole thing repeats and the rhythm of what you're doing on the a major Triad changes a little bit foreign [Music] so basically what's happening there is as soon as you play these chords [Music] you come back to that Triad two up Strokes in a row and then it settles into this movement here which continues on throughout the verse where you're just hammering on getting some upstrokes in there and if you put everything together it sounds like this [Music] I hope you've enjoyed this lesson and have fun learning these fabulous David Bowie Glam Rock riffs please leave a comment down below of what your favorite era in David Bowie's career was and I hope you have a great day bye [Music]

Channel: Musora

Views: 44,474

Keywords: david bowie, top 10, ziggy stardust, rebel rebel, guitar riffs, glam rock, david bowie guitar riffs, guitar riffs for beginners, guitar riffs electric, guitar riffs tabs, guitar riffs tutorial, diamond dogs, guitar riffs to learn, guitar riffs best, guitar riffs easy, ziggy stardust david bowie, ziggy stardust guitar lesson, glam rock 70s, rebel rebel david bowie, rebel rebel guitar lesson, starman, starman david bowie, watch that man david bowie

Id: dwRCqgui9H4

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 12 2023