Angus Young is undeniably a fiery guitarist. He fuses the larger than life rock ’n’ roll swagger of Chuck Berry and the fiery blues licks of Buddy Guy into a high voltage lead guitar style, a perfect counterpoint to the rhythm playing of his late brother, Malcolm. Decade after decade, the Young brothers excited fans everywhere with their iconic songs and riffs that often came to a climax with Angus’ legendary lead breaks.
Angus’ bends, vibrato and phrasing are instantly recognizable and often imitated, but it’s his stunning use of open strings that you’ll cover here. In particular, his use of open strings in conjunction with fretted notes has created many memorable riffs and burning solos, the wide intervallic gaps helping to build excitement and tension.
Below are three exercises inspired by Angus’ use of open strings in his guitar solos. These exercises are designed to help you build core techniques around open string soloing, as well as providing a starting point for your own creative ideas. The following examples are all in the key of E minor, and make use of the E blues scale (E-G-A-Bb-B-D) with some occasional chromatic passing tones.
These examples should all be approached slowly and for short periods at a time, allowing you to build your technique with confidence and clarity.
MatchMySound: play-along enhancements
For this lesson, we’ve partnered with MatchMySound to offer the ability to record yourself and see how close you are. MatchMySound is a great tool to help track your progress.
Click on the word ‘options’ (lower left, below the tab/notation) to select from ‘demo audio track’ (just guitar), ‘backing track’ (just the backing), ‘full audio’ (backing and real guitar audio) and ‘metronome’ (just a click to play along to).
Below that, select ‘options’ for how you can record your performance.
At the upper right, the magnifying glass images let you alter the playback speed for learning and pushing your playing onwards.
Follow the cursor to keep up with the tab/notation accurately on screen.
Lastly, to view the music better by filling your desktop/tablet/phone screen, click on the square brackets at the top right.
Example 1: Open third string with fast pull-offs
Here’s a fast pull-off phrase on the open third string played in triplets (groups of three). A trademark Angus technique is to use a repetitive fretting hand sequence that gradually ascends the neck, moving from a controlled sound to utter rock ’n’ roll chaos. Focus on accenting the first note in each group of three to keep the timing tight.
Example 2: Open string riffing
Angus’ use of open strings wasn’t just for his lead breaks and solos; they formed the backbone of his most iconic riffs and intros as well. Here you’ll be alternating fretted notes with open strings, enabling fast playing with big intervallic jumps.
While the note groupings are in three (one high fretted note then two open strings, at least at the start) the overall rhythm is based on 16ths (four notes per click). This makes high notes pop out in varying places during constantly fast soloing. Aside from Angus, other players that do this include Michael Schenker, Joe Satriani and Paul Gilbert.
Example 3: Open strings, slurring and the minor pentatonic
Incorporating open strings and fretting hand slurs that use pentatonic based notes can be used to build excitement and unpredictability in a solo. Use this as a starting point to experiment with your own ideas: take a familiar rock or blues phrase and insert an extra open string, hammer-on or pull-off to spice it up.
Example 4: Putting it all together
Here’s a mini solo to finish with, utilizing each of the previous open string examples that you’ve worked on so far. Don’t be afraid to sacrifice a little accuracy for extra rock’n’roll attitude intensity as you progress. Angus has always given his all and so should you!
Angus Young in action!
AC/DC – Thunderstruck
This is arguably the greatest example of Angus’s use of open strings in a popular AC/DC rocking classic. The intro certainly confirms this – they decided the best approach to filming was not to focus on the audience but instead, plenty of close ups of Angus’s blazing fretting hand on the open second string (no picking, too). Masterful and majestic, let there be rock indeed!
