Racer X: Viking Kong

Hi GMC-ers!

And welcome to my second cover song. This time I will make an attemp to cover one of my favorite Paul Gilbert/RacerX compositions, named "Viking Kong".

RacerX is a band founded by one of my favorite guitarists, Paul Gilbert in 1985, who is probably best known for his work in Mr. Big.

The track can be found on their album entitled "Superheroes". The story goes that Paul wanted to do a guitar duette with Yngwie Malmsteen, who agreed at first, but never got to the studio. Viking of course refers to Malmsteen himself. Paul wanted to make a composition that is close to Malmsteen's style. He succeeded, and even tryed to copy Yngwie's technique in the song.

When I first heard the composition, what immediately cached me was the strong structure and melody of the composition, and Malmsteen's style executed with a very precise technique. I instantly wanted to learn the composition, hovever it took me a long time untill I found the time to learn it.

The song involves strong phrasing, legato, staccato and sweeping techniques, all executed in a very sophisticated way. A very relaxed left hand is required to play the insanely fast licks, and a very strong attack with the picking hand has to be delivered to make an attempt to copy Gilbert's style.

This lesson tryes to cover the original soundtrack. Originally the composition is in D tuning, however for the sake of the lesson, I played it in E tuning ( E, A, D, G, B, E ). Gilbert also plays it on E tuning on his gigs, and iprovises a lot wherever he can.

The structure:

MAIN THEME 1-9

CHORUS     10-17

BRIDGE     18-25

BRIDGE 2   26-29

MAIN THEME 30-37

SOLO 1     38-44

SOLO 2     45-49

SOLO 3     50-53

SOLO 4     54-57

SOLO 5     58-61

BRIDGE     62-76

CHORUS     77-93

BRIDGE     94-101

OUTRO      102-207

Have fun practicing!

-Zsolt