Hello GMC!
Welcome to my new series inspired by Indie Rock bands. We are talking about a very wide genre so we will be covering many bands. Let’s see what wikipedia says about “
Indie Rock”:
“Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others.”
In this first lesson I will show you a tune inspired by the band “The Strokes”. The Strokes are an American indie rock band from New York, consisting of Julian Casablancas (lead vocals), Nick Valensi (guitar), Albert Hammond, Jr. (guitar), Nikolai Fraiture (bass guitar) and Fabrizio Moretti (drums and percussion)." - Wikipedia
Music Style:
The Strokes are one of the most popular bands of this movement and also responsible for taking the
Garage Rock again to the mainstream. Their main influences are 70’s rock bands like Velvet Underground and Television. That’s the sound and the type of melodies that they include in their music. In this lesson I tried to compose a piece that combines their most used chord progression with some melodic playing and classic rock licks.
Tonality & Chord Progression:
This tune is in B minor and the first progression is one of their favourite ones. The movement from Im to IVmaj is very often used in their compositions. They mostly use major, minor, octave and power chords since they are very influenced by garage and 70’s punk bands.
Techniques:
The techniques used in this lesson are palm muting, only downstrokes, alternate picking, bending and vibrato. It’s not so difficult excep for the last part where you have some rocker licks in the style of Nick Valensi.
Sound:
I used my Pod X3 Live to record this lesson. I used the emulation of the Vox Ac30 with a 1x15 cabinet. If you want the tone you can ask for it at my
personal board. My guitar is a Gibson Les Paul Studio. The drums and the bass sounds are from the Hyper Canvas VSTi.
Tuning:
I used standard 440.