Playing "Learn to Fly" by Foo Fighters

Video Transcript

JOE WILES: Hello and hello, this is Joe Wiles with the Rock and Roll Conservatory on behalf of Expert Village. In this segment, we're going to talk about the Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly." Let's go to the guitar. The riff starts out with a slide down from--I don't know--from about the 15th fret of the low E string, nothing to it, just a slide down. Now, we're going to use a technique called "octaving." It's kind of like a power chord, like this. In this case, we're going to use the second fret of the A string, the fourth fret--oh, we won't have to worry about that middle one because it's an octave. We don't worry about that one. We mute it out with our index finger. But we still keep our pinky on the fourth fret of this G string. Now, if I hit all these three together, it sounds like this. Hear how that middle one's muted out? If I hit all three, I get an octave. This is the low octave and this is the high octave. They're the same note, an octave apart. That's my goal with this riff. I'm going to go two and four, A string and G string, slide it up two, which is four and six, A string and G string, and I'm going to bend it, and then, I'm going to slide it back down, okay? To end off this riff, I'm going to bring my index finger down and pad the second fret of the D string here. And at the high two strings, ring out, okay. So this chord is two on the A string, second fret on the D string, both padded with my index finger, fourth fret of the G string, which is my pinky, and then these high two are just ringing out wide open. Slowly, this riff sounds like this. That octaving trick is a cool way to run lines, instead of just like running a melody on one string. You can do that octave trick and move it up, it sounds thicker. So practice that technique, it's a really cool one to have in your guitar playing arsenal, okay? In the next segment, we're going to talk about Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills." I'll see you there.

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