Here’s a video overview of the guitar part to “Revolution”, aka “The Russian Song”. To hear more about the background of this song, read about the first performance.

Here are the two more interesting parts that I came up with for the tune.  The first is during the sort of “interlude” section which appears at the very beginning and middle of the song.  Straight 4/4 rhythm in a minor.  Chords are Em, F, C, G.  However, I stuck to strict octaves on this section and used the G chord to play a Liszt-inspired 4-octave chordal pattern (pay special attention to the fingering in the 4th measure):

It’s not quite as challenging as it could be because it’s at a reasonable tempo and it’ only in one direction: up!

Now, there’s a really famous Liszt piece that features this technique in the right hand. If you’re a cartoon fan of Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry, you’ll certainly recognize this. And I must say, that the octave lick that I’m playing here is a piece of cake next to this beast. Here’s a snipped of music from the piece I’m referring to, the Hungarian Rhapsody #2 by Franz Liszt. You’ll notice that the octave pattern goes both up and down, spanning three octaves:

Here’s a video of a amazing performance of the piece. If you want to see these octaves in action, skip ahead to about 5:20, but why not just watch the full performance? It’s quite incredible. I don’t think your eyes will be able to keep up with her hand, but at least you’ll get the idea.  Oh yeah, and you’ll recognize the famous cartoon soundtrack shortly thereafter.

OK, back to the world of mortals!

I decided to put together a little bit of shredding for the centerpiece of the song.  The backing progression is simply the syncopated a-minor lick.  Here t’is:

Note the repeat!  It needs to be played twice.  The nice thing is that it’s all played in one position except for a little section in the fourth measure where you shift your index finger up to the 15th fret.  Other than that, it’s straightforward.

Maybe I’ll develop it a little more for next time, maybe extend it so it’s twice as long (with a second half that’s different from the first) that leads into the chromatic section and back to the main a-minor pattern.

OK, time for some House music!  Classical purists won’t care for this, but I find it pretty interesting.  And, if you wanna work on some rhythm, this is a great one!

Davide played this nice, but strikingly similar to an alarm clock, song in Batubar called “Mugwanti”.  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it, but it was there that I got the idea that it would be pretty challenging and fun to learn the synth part on guitar.  So, I did and we performed it a couple of days later at Summer Sunscream in Cebu, Philippines.

In terms of the notes, it’s real simple – 95% of the notes are E-flats.  There are just a few B-flats thrown in for good measure (during the octaves descent in the even measures).  It’s the rhythm that’s tricky, but here it is notated for anyone who’ like to learn it.

The “key”, if you can call it that, is E flat.  And, I suppose that’s only because the original tune is centered in E-flat.  At first, I thought maybe this would warrant tuning the guitar down to E flat to get a natural resonance, but it’s totally not necessary.  Just playing the E flat is sufficient, plus it’s not the kind of lick where you’d be inadvertently hitting open strings or something like that.

If you look at the opening rhythm in the image above, you’ll notice there’s a sixteenth note followed by a sixteenth rest, followed by an eighth note.  Why’d I do it this way?  Because the opening note has a very light touch to it and that rest should be accentuated.  I could have also notated it, I suppose, as two eighth notes and marked the first note as staccato, but it’ more overt this way.

On those octave descents, notice the lines that are connecting the notes.  This is just to indicate the slide nature of the synth.  Actually, copying this exactly is super hard, especially the slides down.  Personally, I usually don’t play those.  But I do like to play the slide up from the eighth note in the following measure.  That’s much easier.

A quick note on the rhythm:  For the most part, it’s straightforward once you learn the pattern.  There’s only a little bit of syncopation at the very end, but it’s a common pattern:  the 3-3-2 pattern.  I don’t know the science behind this pattern, but it appears all over the place in popular music and among people who play-by-ear.  Is it due to an innate sense of rhythm in humans or just because it’s so popular that people unconsciously copy it?  I’m not sure.  But anyway, this rhythm is basically a collection of 8 even notes (like 8 eighth notes) where the rhythmic stress appears on the 1st, 4th, and 6th notes.  If you were to tap this out, you could count 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2 where you’re stressing each of the “1″s:  1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2.  If you become aware of this pattern, you’ll notice it all over the place in popular music.  In this case, the pattern is compressed into two beats, so each of the counts is a 16th note, not an 8th note.  So, have a look at the three arrows above:

• The first points at an eight note tied to a sixteenth note (that’s 1-2-3).
• The second points to a sixteenth note tied to an eighth note (that’s another 1-2-3).
• The third points to an eighth note (that’s the final 1-2).

By the way, this is the best way to notate this passage…much better than two dotted eighth notes followed by an eighth, for example.

Another trick is finding a good synth sound on the guitar that nicely compliments the bright lead sound of the synth in the song.  Lots of modern guitar software will allow you to do this.