Bang a Gong (Get it On) T Rex

Thanks Wes,

This one takes me back, looks easy too, and I know Rodders & Vic are gonna love it!
Keep em coming.

This when I wish I had an electric and not just my trusty acoustic.

Chris :D :D :D

This is awesome Wes, one of my all time favorites and experience tells me that your tabs are always spot on. Can't wait to get home to try this!

Thanks for the compliments everyone. As far as my tabs, they are close, but not always perfect. In fact, later on I thought I had probably written the timing out wrong. Really, you can get this rhythm pattern with straight eighth notes. So here is a correction:

E A E

What I have done here is show the pattern when you change from the E chord to the A chord. The pattern and rhythm will be exactly the same for the A chord. Coming in an eighth note early is a "lead-in", very common in Blues songs.

But the chorus is played with a straight eighth note rhythm.

I really wrote this tab for acoustic. That is another reason I showed the "cheater" way to play the G5 and G6 chords.

Yeah, I'm an old T Rex fan, but that is not why I posted this song. In another thread Hilch had asked how to play Rock music. I wrote a few things, and one was the use of the flatted 3rd chord in Rock music. This is very common. So, trying to think of an example of this I remembered this song. This song is in E, the flatted 3rd chord is G.

It is a very easy song to play. It takes a little practice to sing it while playing, but if you go slow it is pretty easy.

Hope you enjoy it.

Wes

Wes strikes again!!!!

Boogie / shuffle is a thing I have a lot of trouble with playing if I think about it too much, whereas, if I don't think about it and just play it, it comes naturally.

Nice bit of work Wes, keep em coming. :wink:

Rod.....

I'm gonna give this one a try with my acoustic, but it might take a while to figure how to make it sound. I haven't used to many shuffles so that part may be short and sweet. Oh yeah putting down a track with few mistakes will take a special day too :!:

One of my all time favourites!!! I had this about 90% finished when my laptop blew up - it's still awaiting repairs!

A little trick you can throw in to vary things is this - at the end of each line of the verse, you can play the E5 and E6 this way....


E5 E5 E5 E5 E6 E5

E 0 0 / 0 0 0 0
A 0 0 / 0 0 2 0
D 1 1 / 1 1 1 1
G 2 2 / 2 2 2 2

If you listen to the record, you'll hear Bolan does something similar....

:D :D :D

Vic

Thanks Wes

I'll be trying my dardest to get this one and if it is as easy as you say

whooa I'll be playing rock reaaaaaalllll soooooon :lol:

Thanks for your help

Hilch :?:

Thanks everyone. This shuffle looks far more difficult than it really is, just listen to the recording.

My tabs aren't perfect at all, I made some more corrections. I show the correct shuffle in the original post now, plus I added the change in the chorus where you go from the A shuffle back to the original E shuffle. Gotta be a little quick for that change.

This song just shows the many variations of the 5 to 6 chord shuffle used so much in Blues and Rock. There are endless ways to apply it. AND THEY ALL SOUND GOOD. :D

This song just shows the many variations of the 5 to 6 chord shuffle used so much in Blues and Rock. There are endless ways to apply it. AND THEY ALL SOUND GOOD. :D

"Twisting by the Pool" (Dire Straits) being a fine example, albeit a lot, lot faster.

Another Dire Straits song that uses this Blues shuffle is Walk of Life. I love that song. :D

Another Dire Straits song that uses this Blues shuffle is Walk of Life. I love that song. :D

Me too, and I loved the video they show with it on VH1....:D

Wes, a question - on the cheat's G6 chord, do you really need to mute the A string? If you played it like this....

E A D
3 2 2

You'd be playing G, B and E....technically I suppose it's a G6 without the fifth (D) - funny thing is, I've never played it as a G5 - I've always played the G5 as

E A D
3 2 0

which gives you - left to right - G, B and D so technically it's a G chord....

and the D6 as above....sounds OK to me anyway!

(It's just me - I HATE muting strings if I'm playing the string either side!)

:D :D :D

Vic

Vic

If you include the B note on the A string it would make the chords G and G6. Actually, the G5 and G6 with just two notes are not really chords at all, all chords have at least 3 different notes.

If this is the way you like to play it, go for it. Guitar is all about freedom of expression. I remember reading an article by Steve Vai many years ago. He said what really drew him to guitar is that nobody could tell him how or what to play. We all get bossed around in life by somebody, but nobody can tell you how to play guitar. 8)

That cheater way of playing the shuffle in G was replacing this more common and traditional method:


G5 G6 G5 G6 G5

e---------------------------
b---------------------------
g---------------------------
d---------------------------
a---5--5--7p-5--5--5--7--5--
e---3--3--3--3--3--3--3--3--


I do not have very large hands, and so I use this cheater method at times to avoid the long stretch used here. But also, this cheater method works very well with this song because you never have to shift your hand from the index finger at 2nd fret. So, very little movement required to play this song.

There are other ways I cheat. For instance, if I want to play this Blues shuffle in F, I will sometimes play it like this:


F5 F6 F5 F6 F5

This exact method was used by John Lennon on Revolution:



With this cheater method you hold a barre over the A and D strings with your index. So this is a 5 chord with the 5th tone on top and the Root note below. In Revolution, Lennon starts with this form at the 9th fret for a B5, moves down to the 7th for an A5, and then down to the 2nd fret for an E5 as I've shown here. If you listen to the recording you can hear the 5 to 6 shuffle and then the following hammer-ons.

So, there are always ways to cheat :D But I've seen pics of your hands Vic, I don't think you would have near the difficulty I do with stretches.

Surprisingly, I do - my pinky on that hand has been broken more often than Liz Taylor's heart, and it's small in relation to the other fingers....so I actually have trouble with more than a four-fret stretch.....

Status Quo - one of my favourite bands - play a LOT of shuffles, I play them well up the neck if I can - rather than play a D as a barre at the 5th, I'll play it at the 10th....

And another way I "cheat" is : rather than play A5, A6 A7 like this:


A5 A6 A7
D x x x
A 7 9 10
E 5 5 5

I do it like this:

A5 A6 A7
D x x 5
A 7 9 7
E 5 5 5

:D :D :D

Vic

BTW, Bolan also uses E G and A in "Children of the Revolution" and "20th Century Boy" and a couple of other well-known songs to use E G and A are "La Grange" - ZZ Top and "Spirit In The Sky" - Norman Greenbaum.

Vic

Yep, that is a great way to play the 7th, I like to do the same.

E, G, A is very popular. Although it's not all the chords, the verses of Green River by CCR is a E, A, G strum. It is not a true G chord. JF simply lets up the A chord and hits the D, G, and B strings open. So it really is a true G chord, but he doesn't grab the notes on the E, A, and high E strings. This is a very common trick, especially in Blues.


E E A G

e--0---------------------0-0---------
b--0---------------------0-2---0-----
g--1---------------------1-2---0-----
d--2---------------------2-2---0-----
a--2---------------------2-0---------
e--0---------------------0-----------
1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
/ / / / / / / /


There are lots of tricks like this in guitar.