SRV and String Muting

My favorite YouTube guitar teacher is Marty Schwartz of GuitarJamz.com.  He's personable, funny, and both a good player and a good teacher.  He's also prolific on YouTube - he must have hundreds and hundreds of video lessons, ranging from scales, to blues licks, to funk playing, to song tutorials.

Marty posted tutorials on two Stevie Ray Vaughn songs this week that I've spent a little time working on (and have bookmarked to make sure I dn't lose track of them):  "Cold Shot" and "Couldn't Stand the Weather".

Going through the two songs, the notes and the chords just aren't that hard - the hard part on both is the string muting.  The pick (right) hand moves up and down across all six strings like a metronome - back and forth, hitting all six strings.  The fretting (left) hand has to finger the notes you want, and also mute all the strings you don't want.  Marty shows how to do it, and it really does sound like SRV.

It's not easy to do, at least at first.  I can now kinda sometimes do it, and it's a great feeling to actually hear it come out sounding right, but I need a lot more practice before this will feel natural (and really sound good.)  The key, as with most things, is to start slow - really slow - painfully slow - no, even slower than that - and not go faster until you can play it right at that speed, every time.

"Walk This Way"

Last night, while Sarah saw her Owl City concert at Baltimore's Inner Harbor, I had a chance to see some live music myself. First I saw a few songs by a country band in front of Phillips Crab House, then a good classic rock cover band in front of the Hard Rock Cafe.

I was particularly interested when the cover band launched into one of my all-time favorite songs, "Walk This Way." This is not a song I've seen very many bands attempt - for the reason that it's really damn hard to make sound right. And the band last night didn't really do it either. They were good, and got a nice groove going, but they didn't capture it.

It's not that the chords are hard. A and C. And the opening riff isn't hard either, though it does required a fast picking hand. But the verse is tricky, and I've never seen a cover band get it right.

I finally stumbled on a YouTube lesson that shows how to do it. Justin Sandercoe, who has some great lessons and song covers, nails it. As he says in the video, this is an easy song to play badly, and a really difficult song to play well.  All hail Brad Whitford, who plays it every night without a second thought.