(La Grange by ZZ Top)
- In this lesson, we're learning La Grange by ZZ Top.
It's a guitar staple in the history of classic rock.
We'll be covering some chords like C5, E flat 5, F5, and A
but we're gonna be spending a lot of attention
on riffs within those chords, those power chords
I just mentioned played with up strum rhythms
and skipping some strings and ham runs.
A bunch of cool techniques.
We'll focus on the main riff section,
the chords that are played during the solo,
as well as the bridge.
So get all tuned up and we'll get going.
We're gonna learn a classic Billy Gibbons riff.
It takes two parts to complete this main cool riff
but I wanna go ahead and start by taking our first finger
and putting it across two strings,
the second frets of your fourth string and your third string
so we're just taking that little pad
on our first finger, laying it across
the second fret of our fourth string
all the way to the second fret of our third string.
Sometimes in part one and part two
we'll either include just these two strings
or we'll go so far as including the fifth string as well.
Virtually that's considered an A chord.
Let's go ahead and give that a look from another angle
or without the fifth string.
Which brings us to part one of this riff.
What I want you to do is begin by only strumming
a little down up strum those two strings like this.
Sometimes I like to mute it a little bit
for tonal effect.
It gets a little bit more dampened like this
down up or down up.
You don't have to add that effect to it yet,
whatever's more comfortable.
We have down up following that quick one two strum
I wanna hear four up strums like this.
One two three four.
So it's six altogether like this.
One two three four five six.
Try that again we're gonna go down up up up up up
or here we go one two three four five six.
To complete part one of this main riff
we're gonna go ahead and add a really cool
single note riff section that skips some strings
and uses some double stops.
What I want you to do is take your pick
and do an up pick of the open fifth string.
Then with your fretting hand,
reach your pinky over to the fifth fret
of your fourth string and play a down pick.
So you have open five and then you're playing
fifth fret of your fourth string down
then go back to the five and what I want you to do
is have your first finger from that A chord
still on the second fret of your fourth string
but your pinky is no longer reaching on
the fifth fret of the fourth string
but now the fifth fret of the third string
so when you play these two strings together
you get that cool sound like that.
Little dissonant, but really rock and roll.
So you have this.
So far we have open five open double stop
and then we're gonna go ahead and do that again.
The second time if you wanna add a little bend
with your pinky, that adds some attitude to it.
It's pretty cool.
That riff goes like this.
The open five fifth fret, open five two strings,
open five two strings.
So when we add it to the first part here
we have down up up up up up now the riff.
Try that one more time before we just repeat that.
Try it one more time, we have down up up up up up.
Now that last thing I did replaces the first down strum
that started this riff so now as we repeat this
I don't want you to go down up up up up up
for a total of six strums.
Get rid of that down.
Just do five up strums after this.
One two three four five.
Here's little bit better context.
So we have at the beginning down up up up up up riff
one two three four five only and then back to that riff
one two three four five.
How how how how, whatever he's doing it's super cool.
Alright, so that ends the first part.
If for any reason that's feeling challenging,
it's because it is a little challenging
but the second part we're about to learn
is really cool, a lot easier,
and actually played more often than the first part
throughout the song throughout the riff.
So here's what we got.
We're gonna go back to that shape over here
but instead of including just these two strings
let's get the open fifth string involved as we go
down up up up up up.
Now you can simplify this by simply going
three five which means your middle finger
is playing the single note third fret of your fifth string
followed by the pinky two frets higher
on the fifth fret of your fifth string
or you can add a little open fifth string like this.
Okay so you're going up down down.
With my strum hand I'm just giving that three
and five simple down picks.
So you have this down up up up up up
down up up up up up.
You wanna keep it nice and tight
like you're playing the beginning of the riff
before he really opens it up.
You can go back to that palm muting sound.
Or you wanna go full throttle
just play it nice and hard, no palm needed
and get rid of that open fifth string there.
Three five down up up up up up rest three five.
You got a lot of options just to jam along with this riff,
it's really cool.
So let's try putting part one and part two together.
Take your time with this.
One two three four.
Do that two more times.
And one more time.
Now it's going to that second part oh three five
down up up up up up oh three five.
One more time.
And there's your riff.
Alright, so we have a key change kicking in here
over the solo and it's your job
as the rhythm guitarist to support that solo
with the right chords, so here they are.
We start with the C5 power chord
which means we're taking our first finger
and bringing it to the eighth fret of your sixth string
followed by going two frets up and one string down
with your third finger on the tenth fret of the fifth string
and your pinky also on the tenth fret of the fourth string.
That's your first chord.
We'll be spending a lot of time there.
From there I want you to take your first finger
and bring it to this guy.
It's your sixth fret of your fifth string.
Your third finger's gonna come up two frets
one string down and your pinky's right underneath it.
Look at that, same shape
just in a different position on the neck
and different strings.
You have the sixth fifth and fourth string
followed by the fifth fourth and third string.
This is a C5 power chord.
This is what's called an E flat 5 power chord.
Okay we're gonna bring that up two more frets
and that makes it an F5 power chord.
From another angle you have the eighth and tenth frets
on your sixth fifth and fourth string.
You have the sixth and eighth frets
on your fifth fourth and third string
and then finally you've got that exact same shape
just two frets higher on the eighth tenth and tenth frets
of your fifth fourth and third string.
C5, E flat 5, F5.
Cool.
If you're feeling good about the rhythm of part two
from the main riff, well, your strum hand's in luck
because what we're doing is that same idea of
down up up up up up down down, two big down strums
at the end over these last two power chords like this.
Over the C5 we have down up up up up up up
and then down down down up up up up up down down.
Now you may notice that I'm kind of breaking up
that first C5 power chord.
You can call it muting, pulsing, whatever.
What we're really doing is just breaking it up
by either using one of two hands or both.
So let's look at that again.
When I do that C5.
Okay, if I want that to stop I can use my fretting hand
by simply lifting it off the fret board
but still touching the strings like this.
Okay, so it was resonating
and then we dampen it by just lifting our fingers
and you can do that in context like this.
If you wanna practice that technique within this song,
that's totally cool.
It's a good song to do it on.
The other way you could do it is by using your strum hand
and you could just have the palm of your hand
just make contact with the strings.
Look at it this way.
Now if you look at this from the right camera angle
you can see that sometimes you might just wanna do both.
Your pulsing with one hand, muting with the other
so on and so forth.
So I do that over that up strum section like that
down up pulse up pulse up pulse up pulse up pulse
down down down up up up up up down down.
Do whatever feels comfortable.
Don't overthink that section.
Just whatever feels comfortable to get that effect.
Down up up up up E flat 5 F5 C5.
Down down.
Just repeat that progression at least four times
to pay tribute to that section and you're in good shape.
Alright, let's jump right into the bridge section.
There's two different parts.
We start with the third finger placed on the fifth fret
of your fourth string.
Now we have the pinky place on that same fret
but of a different string.
You're gonna have to skip to get to it,
it's your first string.
What I want you to do is just play those back
and forth nice and slowly but do a down pick
on the fourth string and an up pick on the first string.
Try doing that two more times.
One more time.
So anytime we play that we're gonna be playing it
three times back and forth so we have one two three
before we slightly modify the shape.
We're gonna keep our pinky planted
but I want you to use your middle finger
so that you're no longer playing
the fifth fret of the fourth string
but the fourth fret of the fourth string
and you're gonna keep going back and forth.
Down up down up down up then drop it one more fret
with your first finger to the third fret
doing that same rhythm of down up down up down up
and you've completed the first part of this section.
So all you're doing is just descending
a half step at a time.
Fifth fret, fourth fret, third fret back and forth
with those down and up strums like this.
Down up down up down up move on two three
and then finally your third fret two three.
Okay let's try that nice and slow.
One two three four down up down up one more time.
Move on.
Down up second time and third time
to the third and fifth fret.
Second time and your final time.
Okay, now we're gonna move onto that really cool section.
I want you to hear it first.
It sounds like this.
Cool.
It's pretty accessible, it sounds really cool though.
You're gonna start by taking your pick
and just play that open fifth string twice
with a down and then followed by an up pick
so we have down up.
Then prepare for another down pick
but I want you to take your middle finger
of your fret hand, place it on
the third fret of that string, pick it,
and then without having to pick it again
use your third finger of your fret hand
and just hammer up the half step.
You're hammering up one fret higher
to the fourth fret like this.
Down up pick and hammer.
In context.
Okay, so that next little chord that you see there
is again that A chord that we've been playing
throughout this section just like that.
So you're gonna strum the fifth fourth and third string
after doing the down up hammer
and then to wrap things up you're just gonna go ahead
and pick that fifth string one more time.
You can do a down pick there.
So we have down up pick hammer down down.
One more time.
Down up pick hammer strum
and then your fifth string played open one more time.
So dynamically these feel like very different parts
but they're beautifully just strung together
for this bridge section.
Let's try it together, here it comes nice and slow.
Three picks back and fourth.
Down up down up down up down up down up one more time
and then three times for this shape, two three,
and then here comes that big riff.
Play that a couple times just to pay tribute
to what's happening in the bridge
and you're in good shape.
Let's put everything we know together
starting with that main riff.
Part one, the more intricate of the two,
we'll play that three times nice and slow
followed by part two which we'll play four times.
We'll then move into the chords that are accompanying
that solo, C5, E flat 5, and F5.
Just think the power chords.
Play that four times.
Then we'll move into that really dynamic bridge
playing it twice and we'll come back to
that main riff, the second part, wrap everything up
playing that a few times as well.
I'll count us in.
One two three four down up up up up up riff.
Up up up up up riff.
One more time there.
Now you can dig into the chords a bit more here
for the second part, oh three five.
Let's get three more times.
Oh three five twice.
Oh three five one more time.
Alright, here comes that C5 power chord over here.
Same rhythm, two down strums at the end there.
Down down.
C5 up up up up E flat 5 to F5.
Let's do that one more time
before going to the bridge.
Here it comes.
Big riff.
Alright three times per shape.
One two three.
Big riff then back to the main riff part two.
One more time.
And end on that A chord.
You just learned a timeless rock song
that I hope you play for years to come.
Great job on that.
Keep practicing and we'll see you guys for more next time.