Another fantastic job Alexis. The work you put in to your songs must be immense as you always make it look so easy, which I know it is not. Bravo!
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Yep, it doubles the tempo. You can most easily hear it in the drums but you can also hear it in the pulse of the song.
A switch in strumming would keep the main tempo the same but make certain sections busier (eg a chorus). A change in tempo, everything gets faster. Singing, bass, guitar.
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Great Job Alexis. 
R.
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@jkahn @liaty @DavidP @SgtColon @Libitina Thanks for watching!
Heck yeah, every single song I do I feel like I get better at something. This one really hammered on the e shaped barre chords. As you say, I’m still hesitant but it felt impossible 4 weeks ago and I feel maybe 80%? there now.
Thanks as always JK, I’ll again credit Justin here with his emphasis on timing. For the entire 4 weeks I had my 5 min timing slot where I focused on rhythm everyday. At first just tapping my foot to hearing it, then playing with the original track and finally playing with the backing track. The real tests were playing the intro without drums or a click and playing the double time sections.
Also thanks for the heads up, I updated the title on Youtube!
As JK says it doubles the tempo. As the guitarist, I’m treating it as a shift to 1/16 only to keep it simple during playing. You could probably tell since I don’t shift the speed that I’m tapping my foot.
Thanks Stefan, it’s probably less immense work and more immense time (but maybe those mean the same thing, lol.) since I only actually work on 2 songs a month (Right now one from Justin’s book and another from Troy Stetina’s). A double edged sword really because there are soooo many songs I want to get to but it will take a while. At the same time, I don’t lack for content and feel like I’m really sinking my teeth into each song. But it’s a life long journey I guess, I’ll get to every song and give each the time they deserve step by step, song by song.
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You nailed that one Alexis. Not an electric player so I don’t have any constructive advice to offer but to be honest you played it so flawlessly that I don’t think you need any. Excellent cover!!!
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Thanks Eddie!
Another one firmly nailed. Alexis. Good solid tight rhythm playing. You continue to make great progress with your rock study. You’re inspiring me to learn some rock tunes.
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Thanks for taking a look James. Definitely learn more rock songs! I’m always going to encourage more rock, lol.
Your time in learning/practicing is really paying dividends. And you’ve got a good mix going between you and the BT. It’s going to be interesting to hear when you start mixing these really good rhythm tracks with lead guitar. Another well done!!
Another great song from the Rock Songbook ticked off Alexis. Sounded great, terrific crunchy tone. Well done.
@sairfingers @oldhead49 thanks for watching!
Next song “smells like teen spirit” has a short solo that I’m going to try to do as well as the rhythm. Hopefully that’ll be the first song I’ll mix lead and rhythm on.
That was great Alexis, well played and great timing and tone. I’ve got that JG songbook, makes me want to pull it out and try it!
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Thanks for watching Mari, love the rock songbook! Would definitely recommend messing around with some of the songs there.
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Great work, Alexis. Looking forward to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirirt’.
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I watched this one when you released it, just came to watch it again and noticed that I didn’t chuck a like or comment on it… whoops! This one is more complicated than it seems, you did great!
I’ve been working on it, and just played the riff along to the song for the first time. WAAAY more variations in the song than I thought there would be. I checked out your video to see what you did about the variations - I think you did really well, Particularly on the bridge part. It’s quite hard to hear what the guitar is doing on the record because of the layers, but I think you did a pretty good job there. Gives me some ideas
Riffing for the whole song is quite a challenge too, took me a bit of metronome practice to get the riff up to the right speed.
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Thanks JK
I remember thinking the same thing when I learned it. Piecing it together was difficult since the record has so many variations. I know I wanted to keep it simple and have one electric guitar playing the riffs and one “acoustic” (just my electric using an acoustic preset) playing the chords but I wanted it to sound okay or at least semi complete without all those variations. The bridge was the hardest part here since it’s the most different.
This is tough as I mentioned in the original post. Staying accurate and on time was a huge struggle for me. Overall though a really fun song that I felt like I learned a lot with. Good luck with it and can’t wait to see it if you post the AVOYP.
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Hey just a quick question. I noticed that the Justin Guitar rock song book was mentioned and I’ve never heard of that before. Could I get some details? How is the book, on a scale of 1-10 are the songs easy or hard, would you recommend? Thanks!
~Landon
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Justin sells genre songbooks that contain 50 songs to learn and rock is one of them. Hard to say on a scale of 1-10 cause the structure of the books offer all levels of difficulty. Each of the songbooks are separated into 4 sections:
- beginner - 15 songs that should be doable if you finished up to grade 2 of Justin’s course.
- intermediate - 15 songs that are primarily doable if you are in grade 4/5 of Justin’s course. A lot of them are using E and A shaped barre chords.
- intermediate+ - 15 more songs. These are songs that have some slightly more tricky stuff. Be it particularly difficult riffs, unusual timing, or different tunings. (Example: killing in the name by rage against the machine since it’s in drop D tuning)
- full tab songs - Most of the book is a mix of chord charts with some tab to teach you the major riffs. However, The books culminate in 5 songs that are fully tabbed, every guitar part. Solos and all.
I’m almost done the first 15 songs in the beginner section and I’ll probably start the intermediate section soon after since I’m in grade 4 right now. First post in this topic has the songs in the beginner section listed in the order they appear in the rock song book (link here).
I’m sure you can guess by me using the rock song book as my study but I love it. Justin has videos for many of the songs in the book so you can technically learn those for free on his website. Why I love it though is that to me it’s curated list of songs to learn by difficulty. It also exposes you to some seminal songs in the genre that might not be on your radar and teaching techniques that you may not think of learning yourself without the book guiding you.
Here’s the link to the songbook section of Justin’s website where you can see all the genre books:
Anyway, I’d recommend. Hope that helps.
-Alex
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Thank you so much! You answered all my questions in detail and pretty mush sold me on the book. My next question was “where can I buy the book” but you provided a resource. Thanks again, and I’ll be sure to check out the books.
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This book arrived in the mail today 
Your songbook study project inspired me to start my own study.
I’m sure that your leaning notes and your recordings will be helpful for me. Seeing the final results from a fellow student is great, especially for songs that don’t have video lessons.
Keep it up ! You only have 2 more songs left before finishing the 15 beginner songs !
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