Green Day Style

Hi GMC!

Welcome to a new lesson in the style of Green Day, an American punk rock band formed in 1986. The band consists of vocalist/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool. In the recent years, guitarist Jason White became an official member after having performed with the band as a touring member since 1999.[1]

Music Style:
Green Day is a Punk Rock band with strong influences from Pop and Alternative Rock. They are one of the responsible of bringing Punk back to the mainstream during the 90's. Their style has been always around punk and pop punk, however, the quality and arranging of their music was taken to a new level since they released the album American Idiot. In this lesson I've cover mostly their rocker side but with concepts from their most recent stuff.

Tonality, Chord Progression & Scales:
Their music is based mostly on major and minor modes. The "happy" songs are ionian, while the darker and more melancholic ones are in aeolian. This composition is in A major key, but we have a mix of Ionian and Mixlolydian modes. This could sound so tricky for a punk rock song, but that's the way to explain this kind of progressions full of power chords. However, when composing punk songs, most of the musicians don't really think too much on modes, they just combine power chords until we find something that sounds cool. So try it by yourself!

Techniques:
This lesson is a punk rock rhythm lesson. The concepts covered here are power chords, octave chords, strumming, only downstrokes and muting.


Sound:
I used Poulin plugins to create the guitar tone. These are free amp emulators that are extremely recommended. The cabinet used for this guitar tone is HyBrit which is a Marshall amp emulation. Check out the settings:




I used Cubase to record audio and midi, superior drummer for drums and Trillian for bass.

Tuning: Standard 440

Tempo: 116 BPM