Guitar Teacher » Early Rock Guitar

How To Play “Rumble” by Link Wray – Guitar Instrumental

Storm — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:25:56 +0000

I recently saw the movie “It Might Get Loud” featuring Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2) and Jack White (White Stripes/The Raconteurs). In the movie Jimmy Page digs through his mammoth vinyl collection and plays some favorite songs, one of which was Link Wray’s “Rumble”. This song was also famously featured in “Pulp Fiction”. It is a classic instrumental and a real easy song, too!. In this video lesson I show how to play this iconic early rock instrumental.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTorczDeb7A

The song is in the key of E and is really just a blues form. It does interestingly feature a bar of B7 that is in 6/4 time before returning to common time for the E minor pentatonic lick.

The chords used are E major, an open string D5 power chord over an A bass note, A major, and B7. The little lick in the tune is straight out of the open position of the E minor pentatonic scale. About as straight forward as it gets!

There is a guitar solo break built off an E major triad in the 12th position. Simply strum it really fast while sliding into the shape at the beginning of each of the first two measures. Then slide every two beats for a measure and then each beat for the final measure before returning to the open A chord.

This song is famous for being one of the first ever to feature distortion. The tone is very gritty. Link Wray famously used a pencil to punch holes in the speaker of his amplifier to get this raw sound. I might suggest not going to that extreme! But think raunchy. The song also features a tremolo pedal. Or if your amp has the tremolo built in, so much the better.

10 Early Rock Lead Guitar Licks

Storm — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:05:50 +0000

Some lead guitar licks you hear over and over again. These licks are clichés and they are valuable to have under your fingers. Just like their verbal cliché cousins, tried-and-true sayings (such as “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”) these licks can quickly get over used but they get over used because they work.

The following 10 Early Rock licks work in many styles, from Rockabilly to Blues, from Rock to Punk. Learn them and then re-work them into hundreds of “new-yet-so-familiar” phrases. The licks are all shown in the Key of A but move around the neck easily.

I covered these licks in my first Live Video Guitar Group Lesson here on GuitarTeacher.com this past Thursday. Check out the video and tab transcriptions below. I even have a cool rockabilly track for you to practice with that I first covered here. Have fun!

10 Early Rock/Rockabilly Cliches

A selection of guitar licks that fit into many soloing styles:

Accompanying Jam Track

Early Rock Jam Track – Key of A

Storm — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:07:25 +0000

Not having an early rock ‘Chuck Berry’ style jam track on GuitarTeacher.com is a serious oversight. Well, now that is corrected with the following ‘Early Rock Jam Track’, in the key of A no less! The form is a standard 12-Bar blues with a straight eighth-note feel.

If you don’t know how to solo over this I will help you out with an upcoming ‘Early Rock Licks’ post shortly. Until then you can work on the two rhythm guitar parts shown here:

Rhythm Guitar Part 1

Rhythm Guitar Part 2

Have fun!