Chords for Jeff Beck "Scatterbrain" on Guitar | Reverb Learn to Play

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[F] _ Hey friends, Joe here at Reverb.
Today we're going to be checking out the riff from Scatterbrain from Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow.
A lot to kind of unpack with this riff.
It's definitely a quick riff and it sounds pretty complex, which in some regards it is.
And the time signature is also a bit weird, it's in 9.8.
And there's some language behind this riff that kind of alters its tonality a little bit as the bass under it moves as well.
So we're going to talk about that too.
_ Starting here on the 8th fret of the A string.
And then we're hammering on and pulling off the 9th fret. _ _ _
_ _ Then [Gb] we're going up [Db] 9, [Ab] 11.
_ _ _ _ [Gb] _ _ [Ab] _
_ [B] Back down to 9, up to 11.
And then up to 8 on the [Ab] D.
_ [Bb] _
_ _ [F] _ [Gb] _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Bb] _
_ [F] And the way that I like to pick this is one stroke for the hammer on and pull [Gb] off.
[F] _ And up stroke, [Ab] _
down, up, [Bb] down, up. _ _ _
[Ab] _ _ [Bb] _ So it's almost as if it's down, up, down, up the whole time, but you're just leaving out the hammer on the pull off.
You're letting your left hand do the work there.
[Gb] _ [Ab] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Fm] _
_ [Bb] _ _ Okay, [Gb] then you go _ [Ab]
back _ down to 11.
[E] _ Back [E] up to the D string.
_ _ _ 9th fret of the D.
Back [Bb] to 8.
_ _ _ _ [B] _ _
And then we're going back to 9.
Slide up to 11 and back down.
[Bb] _ _ [Db] _ And then just kind of going back down that scale, which we're going to talk about the scale in a minute. _ _
[Gb] _ _ [F] _ So as far as the shape, we have kind of a half step and a whole step on both strings.
Starting at the 8th fret.
[Ab] _ _ _ [Db] _ _ [F]
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, [Gb] 9.
_ [Ab] _ _ _ _ _
[Eb] _ _ 1, [Ab] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, [F] 9.
_ [Bb] That's the riff and it repeats four times.
And actually on the fourth time, it alters a little bit and then it changes key.
But for the sake of this lesson, what I want to talk about is how that riff gets played twice
over one bass note and then it gets played two more times over a different bass note.
So although the fourth time the riff gets altered at the very end and then it moves up,
we're kind of going to forget about that right now and talk about the language underneath the riff
and how one note makes all the difference.
Bb is the bass note as the riff starts, _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ which gives this [C] riff, which gives these notes,
[Ab] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ [C] _ a Bb [Ebm] Phrygian tonality.
We've got our [Eb] b2 right here, _ minor third,
[Bb] _ _ _ [F] _ _ [Gb] _
_ fifth, b6 here.
[Ab] _ _ _
_ _ [F] _ [Bb] _ So over Bb, it's going to sound Phrygian.
_ _ Now, when the bass note moves up a half step, the third time the riff [B] happens, _ _ [Bb] moves up to B.
So what does that do to the riff?
Almost on the record, it sounds like the riff changes, but the riff doesn't change.
The riff stays the same.
And that speaks to how much power the bass has to give a different blanket under a tonality
and it completely, you know, kind of makes our ears go, huh, what happened there?
_ [B] So as the bass goes up to B, [C] we're playing the same shape, the [Ab] same riff. _
_ _ _ _ [B] _ What does that do to the riff?
It makes the riff Lydian.
I love hearing this kind of [E] stuff and it makes me kind of explore more because if you take
a certain riff, a certain shape, a [Gb] series of notes, and you change the bass note,
you get something totally different.
For example, if you played an F sharp _ underneath this riff,
_ _ [Db] _ _ _ [Gb] _ _ [E]
it sounds major, just a [Bb] major scale.
And in this case, B [Eb] flat, it's a Phrygian scale and B natural, it's a Lydian scale.
Let's play it slow tempo.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, [F] nine.
[Ab] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Gb] _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _
_ _ [F] _ Up to speed.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
[Ab] _ _ _ _ _
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_ _ [F] _ _ So there's the riff from Scatterbrain from Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow.
Thanks for watching.
Hope you learned something today.
And we got a couple other Jeff Beck videos on the site, so check them out.
See you next time.
[B] _ _ [Db] _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ _ _ _