Chords for Learn To Play: Riffs in the Key of Frank Zappa Lesson on Guitar

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[A] _ _ _ _ _ _ Hello friends, Joe here at Reverb.
Today we are going to learn three riffs in the key of Frank Zappa.
_ Now, let's talk a little bit about Frank Zappa.
_ Zappa was an American-born
_ songwriter, producer, _ composer, _ _
lyricist,
_ cosmic genius of the modern age,
_ very influential artist.
The most prolific artist of all time, in fact, with 60 to 70 releases, a lot of those being
double LP releases.
If you're familiar with Zappa's catalog,
you can hear an evident huge variety of different styles and different genres.
This massive array of different colors almost created a category of its own.
It's hard to imagine any other artist being able to cultivate such a unique color like Zappa did.
So beyond the studio recordings, Zappa took that same energy to the stage,
never playing the same set twice.
_ Taking a song and revamping it and throwing it into a completely different territory and extending it into a huge opus.
Also, taping almost every single live performance he ever played.
So today we're gonna learn three very cool Zappa riffs.
And it's just a tip of the iceberg as far as what, you know, the Zappa stuff that's out there. _ _ _
It's actually interesting to think that Zappa probably would not enjoy a video about
somebody playing his riffs and talking about his riffs.
But the reason that we're doing this is so that you can
take them in and allow yourself to be influenced by them and push them out in a different way and
hopefully do that with everything that you learn, no matter whose riffs they are.
Okay, let's talk about gear.
_ Zappa loved to take Les Pauls and SGs and Strats and
rip them apart and put them back together and put some weird switches in them for different phasings and different tones.
And we don't have Zappa here today to take apart and put it together a guitar for us.
But we grabbed an early 70s SG Deluxe.
_ _ And it's a beautiful rocking guitar and it is hopefully gonna get us part of [F#] the way there for tone.
_ Zappa liked to use Marshall amps for the most part, driving a big 100 watt Marshall.
We can't really do that in this room,
but we've got a Marshall 18 watt that we got plenty juiced up to get some good drive.
In the 60s and 70s,
Zappa loved playing with wah pedals.
He used wah on tons of his solos.
He used wah in the traditional sense for the wah-wah effect.
Sometimes maybe he'd get that tone by one of the switches that he'd wired up through one of his guitars.
Sometimes maybe leaving the wah pedal in a certain position.
So we're gonna try to dial in some of that tone today
through A, a Crybaby wah pedal and B, a pedal that we love here at Reverb, made by Daredevil.
It's called the Atomic Cock.
This is a pedal that you can dial in any
amount of the squawking tone that you get from a wah pedal from leaving in a certain position.
The first riff that we're going to learn is from the song Apostrophe from the record Apostrophe.
_ And it is the first riff that Zappa plays at the beginning of his solo, and he plays it four times in a row.
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_ Okay, so here's how we're gonna do it. _
Fourteenth fret pull off to the 11. _ _ _
[F#] 14 [E] on the D.
_ Back to the 11, hammer on the 14, slide to the 16. _ _
_ _ _ _ Great. _
Index on the 14 D.
_ _ Bend up on the 15 of the [D] B. _ _ _
Back to the 16, pull off to the 14 of [E] the G.
_ _ _ _ _ Index to the 14 of the D.
_ [D] _ And then to the _ 17th fret of the A string.
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_ _ Okay, so let's do it four times through slow. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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[A] _ [D] _ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _
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[A] _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ Okay, so we're gonna see when we play it up to speed, these pull offs happen super quick.
_ That one and then this one here. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [C] Okay, let's hear it up to speed four times.
One, two, three, four.
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_ Okay, on to the second riff.
Second riff is from Frank's solo in a song called Stuff Up the Cracks from the
1968 record Reuben and the Jets.
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_ [Cm] _ We're in the key of C, _ _ _ and
it is again minor pentatonic.
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_ _ _ And again, in real time, this pull off happens really quick.
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_ _ _ And this is a signature move of Zappa.
A lot of his solos had this really [F#] quick pull off.
_ _ _ _ [D] This became a signature move for Zappa.
He used this kind of pull off technique all the time in his solos.
Okay, so there's the fingering. _
[F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ Now, let's learn the wah pattern with that.
What you want to do is you want to gradually bring the wah back and _ _
then slam it for the pull off.
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So Zappa wants to accentuate that pull off, that quick cool pull off with the wah. _ _ _
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Alright, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ so for the third riff, we're gonna learn something a little more recognizable, a little more popular.
The riff from Willie the Pimp from Hot Rats in
1969.
Again, we're gonna find a minor pentatonic riff.
It's actually very simple and able to be applied in a lot of different ways, just like the other two.
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Okay, let's learn it.
_ _ Now, as a lot of minor pentatonic riffs, there are a couple different ways to play it.
This is the way that I like to play it. _ _
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_ _ [A] _ _ _ Now, like I said, you could play this a couple different ways.
You could use open strings and play it like that, too.
I personally like to have my pinky kind of anchored there.
It makes me feel like I'm getting a little more handle over the riff.
However, there is another way to play it using open strings.
And if you want to play that way, go ahead.
It's yours.
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_ [F] Okay, so there you have it.
Three riffs in the key of Zappa.
_ Minor pentatonic, _ quick pull-offs,
_ mid-range cutting tone.
Let's try to sneak some into our playing. _
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[D#] _ [C] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ [C] _
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