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Jeff's Lesson Notes

"Johnny B. BAD ASS!"
Sugar Rush in Studio City, CA

 

This lesson is the 11th installment in our VH'izing cover songs series...  We subtitled this song "Sugar Rush in Studio City, CA"...  We really did have a serious sugar rush when we recorded it thanks to what can only be described as Hot Rod cookies baked by Alan Davis's psycho baker wife Kim who apparently thinks that if 1 cup of sugar in a recipe is Ok then 3 cups must be awesome... 

This song actually came about by accident, it wasn't supposed to happen when it did, and this lesson was supposed to be something else all together...  I had lent my White Kramer to a friend who also happens to be a tenant of mine...  So I shot over his place to pick up the guitar and some rent and somehow we ended up recording some music...  We had received a few requests for a Vh'ized version of "Johnny B. Goode", but I didn't have any ideas for it so I had put it aside..  Alan had the brilliant idea to mesh "Johnny B. Goode" with "Top of the world" style riffing... I thought it sounded like a cool concept.  So we plugged in and proceeded to drive what's normally a quiet Studio City neighborhood insane with what can only be described as stupid volume levels...  For the rehearsal only of course..  Recorded volume was much lower... But not too much lower...  LOL.... 

Sugar rushing aside this song is a great example I think of taking the Van Halen guitar style and using it in a sentence or to create with....  I've altered the Chuck Berry double stops to be more VH'like in sound and vibe...  I've also used a classic VH 1 era Phase 90 sound by running a Script Logo model classic Phase 90 in the FX Loop of the amplifier...  This is a killer sound.  Also for more on this topic, please read my setup notes which are in the heading of the intro portion of the song tabs page...

Take note of the scale use on this song too..  I'm in the key of "A", which is a transposed key for this song that's more comfortable for the VH guitar style....  Also the mode of "A" that's being used is "Mixolydian" primarily..  That means that instead of our regular "A" scale, A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G#...  The 7th is now a "minor 7th", so it's flattened a half step to give us a scale that contains the pitches, A, B, C#, D, E, F#, and G...  Instead of the G# that's in the standard or "Ionian" "A" Major scale.... 

Keep that "G" in mind for any scale ups you may do...  That's not to say that the "G#" doesn't ever get used because it does...  The Vh style is a lot about chromatic runs and semi-chromatic runs...  I use those a lot in this as well...  For more on semi-chromatic use you should definitely watch my "Jazz part 2" lesson on the JFRocks Lessons page...  That lesson is also a must see for any Van Halen freak too....

Enjoy the lesson, and take it in pieces...  I don't usually like to suggest how you use my lessons as that's a very personal thing on your part but in the case of a big imrov lead song like this, the lessons are in the details...  Each line of tab is its own lesson so please try to take it that way.  And also utilize the JAm TRacks too... 

We'll break all of this down in GRAPHIC DETAIL on the video guitar lesson, so please be sure and load that up... It will help you with the tabs and lesson a great deal....



 

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