Thursday, 25 July 2013

Suffragette City by David Bowie/Mick Ronson - Guitar cover/lesson - MG005

Having left the Classic Rock cover band I’d been playing in for a few years, I thought it would be useful to document the guitar parts of the songs as we had arranged for the line-up of single guitar, bass, drums and vocals.
When learning tunes for bands my preference is to do lots of research, learn the parts as close to the original and then tweak to either suit the band arrangement or my playing style.



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The first song is the classic David Bowie Suffragette City, as recorded and released on the seminal Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars album which of course has electric guitar duties were handled by the great Mick Ronson, who also played piano and ARP 2600 synthesizer (used for the baritone  saxophone parts of the song).

The classic Mick Ronson sound is a Gibson Les Paul into a fuzz pedal  into a Marshall Major and during the solo a wah wah pedal set at about half-way, I have not tried to recreate this on the recording, instead opting for my “go-to” sound of Guitar Rig 5 modelling a Marshall Plexi.
"Suffragette City" is a pretty simple song both in structure and guitar so it doesn’t need TABed out, just listen to the rhythms and fill your boots! My version tends to lean a little towards the hard rock/metal style of playing but it’s near enough a punk song anyway.

Arrangement:
Intro, Verse, Chorus, Intro, Verse, Chorus, Solo, Chorus, Intro, Outro, bridge, Outro

All chords (except as stated) are standard barre forms or part of (power chords) with roots on either the E or A string.

Intro                      slide into A barre chord and ring out
Verse                    A5/A6, F, A5/A6, F, G, A5/A6, B, D, F, G
Chorus                  A, D, F, C, G
Outro,                   A, F arpeggiated
Bridge                   E, A

Playing notes.
The song has a great live energy so don’t worry too much about accuracy and instead concentrate of feel and groove. All down strokes drives the song on.
The Outro has a little sax melody from the 5th bar, which I like to recreate on guitar.

The other interesting thing is how prominent the acoustic guitar and piano is on the track. If it wasn’t for hearing the isolated guitar tracks I wouldn’t have picked up the F arpeggio in the outro.

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