No band exemplifies rock'n'roll quite like AC/DC, whose songs mainly consist of four chords, great choruses, and no bull. The Australian rockers have written some of the greatest rock anthems of all time such as You Shook Me All Night Long, Highway to Hell, and Thunderstruck to name a few. With that kind of success, you’re bound to have people riding in your wake, and few bands have spawned as many rip-off bands like AC/DC.

Lick of the Week

This week, we show you how rock legend Angus Young plays one of his most famous licks from the song You Shook Me All Night Long. Like many others, Angus uses the minor pentatonic scale for most of his tunes.

Angus keeps the melody of the solo simple but makes it vivid by adding an effective phrasing. Therefore, he uses bendings, let-ring, staccato, and vibrato. In the end he uses a quarter step bend which gives the lick its typical blues-rock feeling.

Note: AC/DC does not tune their guitars to 440 Hz. If you want to play the lick to the record, you have to tune your guitar a quarter step down.

If you want to learn to play the guitar like Angus, download Fretello now for free. Among many other things, our app teaches you how to use typical phrasings from rock'n'roll for your own solos.