Well,

as I said several times in the past, once my first new tutorial was up, I would start adding older tutorials that I had around.

Here’s AC/DC’s Back in Black, Part One and Part Two.

Back in Black Video Tutorial Part One

Please note: I am going to re-shoot ALL of my tutorials. All of them, and add a lot more. Even on demand tutorials. I did say that I am unstoppable and I feel like I am.

Not all that I said back then was correct. I have learned quite a few things since I shot these ones, and I am proud to be shooting brand new ones, with revised parts.

However, being kind towards myself, I can still say that what I said back then is mostly still fairly true. This is why I am in fact re-proposing these to you (along many other older ones that I am about to post).

Besides, I feel like I want to put all I did in the past – well, the decent things I did – here on this blog/site, so to have “My work” all reunited in a single place, to signify my and hopefully, yours, process of learning.

Thank you,

Fil 🙂

Back in Black Video Tutorial Part Two

Technical Notes:

These two videos were both shot at once, then broken in two, as YouTube at the time didn’t allow for more than 10 minutes in length per video. They were shot in my recording studio, Studio58a.

Since I am rather logorroic (one who speaks at lengths) this wasn’t a bad thing after all: I did get on the nerves of quite a few people back then and probably, still now.

My intent here was really to communicate as much as possible how timing, feeling and musical intention were mandatory for rock and roll and more so, for bands such as AC/DC.

Nothing is or was done by chance with AC/DC: everything was thought and cared after. Every detail, every nuance. This is something we often do not realize or overlook, we just listen to the chords and decide a song or genre is easy because we understand it. My suggestion here was – and it still is – that it is not as easy as it may seem. It’s simple, indeed, the structure is: this also was meant to be exactly so by the Young brothers. It’s not easy or simple because it is so by nature, but because someone made it seem like that intentionally.

But it’s extremely difficult for me (as a musician) to be able to re-express what they did with the same feeling and band tightness. A work of art really. And a shining example of what can be done solely by playing: no tricks existed at the time, no technology that could “quantize” real instruments and put that at tempo (it could be done, put cutting tape and then re-attaching adhesive, but it could only work for short things: cut and paste simply wasn’t there yet). If we as musicians could learn to do this, I think it would be the greatest goal reached musically.

Guitar used here: an older Gibson SG Angus Young Signature, the first series, with an AY signature pickup in the bridge position. A nice guitar that eventually I sold as I already had some vibrolas SGs.

The amplifier used here was an “Alessandro Beagle” head, 10 watts, 2 x EL84s, on my vintage 1969 4×12 1960A cabinet with original G12Ms in it. Still my best cabinet to this date. At the time, the cabinet had a non original red color. It was changed years later to green and now it’s being refinished into black (with original tolex).

At the time, I used to record these simply putting my laptop a few meters away and hit record on its own audio application. No multitracks, nothing. Simple audio/video recording with the laptop own internal microphone.

BTW The song’s in the key of E, chords E, D and A for the verse, A,E,B and G,D,A for the chorus. The opening lick and the solo (mostly) are from the Em pentatonic scale. Also great use is made of both bottom and top E strings, played open in the riffs and licks. Standard tuning.