Playing "Ballroom Blitz" by Sweet

Video Transcript

JOE WILES: Hi, this is Joe Wiles with the Rock and Roll Conservatory on behalf of Expert Village. In this segment we're going to talk about "Ballroom Blitz". We're only going to do the key riff, the key guitar riff that's in that song. It's a really simple riff but totally effective. Pick up the song, go download the tablature from the internet so you can learn the whole thing; it's a really cool tune. Let's go to the guitar and take a look. Now this is another song that doesn't start off with the guitar. In fact it starts off with that signature drum pattern. When the guitar finally kicks in you're going to want your index finger on the 7th fret of the A-string, okay. Put your ring finger on the 9th fret of the D-string. That's going to be the basis for this whole riff, okay. After this we're going to stretch our pinkie up keeping our index finger here not so much important about our ring finger. We're going to put our pinkie on the 10th fret--excuse me, the 11th fret of the D-string. We're going to slide up to the 12th fret and back to the 11th fret. Slowly it sounds like this. Again that sounds like this. To speed, that same riff sounds like this. Oh, remember it doesn't start on the downbeat of this song. If you were counting at one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Your riff would actually start on the two. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. You don't come in on the downbeat, okay? Sounds like this. One. One. Practice that one a few times. It's a good lick to have in your guitar lick arsenal. So make sure you have it at the ready in any given key that you maybe required to perform it in. In our next segment we're going to talk about "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden and I'll see you there.

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