The Black Keys Style Lesson

The Black Keys Style

Post your take

now playing:

  • Lesson
  • My notes

  • The professor

    THE PROFESSOR The staple of every rock guitarist’s diet, learning the Minor Pentatonic Scale is the first step to mastering any rock band’s style. 

    Hi GMC!

    Welcome to my new lesson based on the American Rock duo called “The Black Keys”. They were formed in 2001 in Ohio by Dan Auerbach (guitar, vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums) and they have become one of the most popular Garage Rock artists of the 2000’s.

    Music Style:
    Their style has a very raw, blues rock sound that is usually described as Garage Rock, because of their lo-fi production, self-produced and recorded in basements recordings. In this lesson I tried to re-create the style of their most popular songs like “Lonely Boy”, “Tighten Up”, “Howling for you” and many others.

    Tonality, Chord Progression & Scales:
    They have strong blues influences as well as American folk music ones. That’s why we will find lots of Pentatonic scales, as well as Aeolian and Mixolydian modes in their songs. This lesson is in E minor and the two scales used are E minor and Pentatonic minor.

    Techniques:
    This lesson is not tricky but groove is everything in this one. Be sure to learn each rhythm slowly and work on it over a drum loop or metronome. The techniques used in this lesson are strumming, palm muting and sliding.

    Sound:
    I used my POD hd500 to build a sound based on AC30 combo.
    I used Cubase to record audio and midi, SSD 3.5 for drums and Trillian for bass.

    Click here to download my Pod HD500 Patch.

    Tuning:
    I used standard 440 tuning

    Tempo:
    170 BPM

    Ok guys – let’s start grooving!

  • Login to use my notes. No GMC account? Register here.
Scrubbing / forward / rewind: arrow right, arrow left keys
Jump to start: Home or `s` , you can also click/tap the lesson part again (the numbers above player)
Go to next part: PageUP or End.
Volume: ArrowUp / ArrowDown keys
Go to any part: Number keys (combinations also possible)
Pause or play: `k` or space key
Fullscreen: `f`, esc to close
Increase / decrease speed : `+` or `-`