Old Yellow Bricks by Arctic Monkeys - Staccato/muting

Hi everyone!
Has any of you ever tried to play Old Yellow Bricks by Arctic Monkeys? (here’s the song in case you don’t know it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLaeOrDmWQ4
At first it sounded super easy and I thought I could totally nail it, even though I’m a beginner (I’m at the module 8 of B2B).
However, after recording myself playing I noticed that my rythm was very bad because this song is played with staccato notes, while I was playing them with legato. I’ve been trying to watch some tutorials especially to mute the strings between one note and the other, but still I find it very hard.
Has any of you suggestions to learn this kind of rythm? Or do you know if this topic will be covered in the next modules of B2B and if it’ll be better waiting?

Looking forward to your answers,

Angela

1 Like

Josh talks about this in the fast workout video for Module 10, lesson 4: Some Kind of Wonderful by Grand Funk Railroad. The trick is to slightly lift your fretting finger right after plucking the note, muting it and “cutting it short”. You can also mute the string you just plucked with your plucking finger. It’s actually quite tricky to get right, but with practice, it can be done. Just don’t try to do it at full tempo straightaway. Start slow and increase the tempo as you get better.

2 Likes

This is how I do it, @angela.r and how I just randomly jammed along with the song to be sure before answering lol. I never did get into the lifting with my fretting hand thing, but I guess I haven’t had to practice that, either, since I am happy using my plucking hand. I should probably work on the other since I can see arguments for both methods, but for right now, yeah, I use my plucking fingers to cut notes off.

2 Likes