Chords for The 7 LEVELS of Smells Like Teen Spirit (Main Riff)

What's up everyone, it's Mike here from The Art of Guitar, here to show you the seven levels of
Smells Like Teen Spirit.
A lot of people who play this riff, they always say ZZ,
like they kind of put it in the same level as Smoke in the Water, Enter Sandman,
all those riffs that people perceive as generic and very simple.
What I like to do is I like to
take those kind of riffs and break them down so that you guys can see there's a lot of levels
to them and there's different ways to play them depending on where you're at with your guitar
journey.
Okay, so let's check out how I see a lot of people start out when they do this riff.
They keep it real basic with power chords.
So maybe they'll go like [F] this.
_ [Bb] _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Db] _
[F] _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Ab] _ [Dbm] _ _
[F] _ _ _ That's a cool way
to start out like if you played Guitar Hero before, that'd be like the beginning level
before you moved up.
And then level two would be if you wanted to start to add the scratchy sounds.
And so you got to do some left hand muting.
As you know, this isn't a lesson of how to play it
necessarily, but just to show you the levels.
But if you already know how to do palm muting,
you know that you just cover the strings a little bit with your left hand, _ then you get that sound.
Okay, so here's what you could do now.
You can go_ _ _
[Bb] _ [Ab] _ _ _ [E] _ [Db] _ [F] _ _
_ [Bb] _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ [Db] _ _
[F] So that's the same riff but with the
scratchies added to them.
I heard somebody call it the scratchies before, so I kept calling it that.
The third level is where you add a little bit of noise and you do that with open strings.
And this
is kind of that trashy, noisy sound that you can add to it to make it a little more interesting.
So now you go like this.
_ _ [Bb] _ _ [Ab] _
_ _ [Dbm] _ _ [F] _ _ _ [Bb] _
_ [Ab] _ _ _ [Db] _ [A] _ [F] _
It's [D] funny to connect the chords, [Ab] you [F] just hit the open strings.
The fourth
level is where you're going to add the upstroke finally.
So instead of just going_
we're gonna go
_ like that.
Now it sounds a lot more like it.
So level four, here we go.
_ [Bb] _ _ _
[Ab] _ _ [Dbm] _ _ [F] _ _ _ [Bb] _
_ [Ab] _ _ [Dbm] _ _ [F] _ _ _
And I played it that way
for a long time.
Sounds good, especially when you use distortion when it kicks in.
Level five is
where you do what I call the Cobain chord.
And that's when you take a power chord _ and your ring
finger just kind of bars.
I don't know if it's accidental when he does it because you never know
because his technique is so crazy.
That proves to me that it's a really, really important lesson in
my opinion that having perfect technique sometimes can handcuff somebody if they're wanting to come
up with something very original.
So I believe because he has strange technique when it comes
to power chords, he developed his own sound through that.
And here's what it is.
Okay, if you just do a
power chord, you get this.
_ _ If you bar across, you may hit the octave.
So you would get this.
So it's F, C, F.
_ _ But if you bar it across and you accidentally hit the next string as well,
you get this sound. _ _ _
_ It's kind of like that come as you are sound.
And when you play that,
it's just got that Nirvana _ _ tinge to it, which is really original.
You know, a lot of people try
not to hit that because it's a strange interval for a lot of people.
It's that fourth interval
that people avoid.
So if you just add that in, _ suddenly you hear the sound, the actual essence
of Smells Like Teen Spirit coming through.
So this is level five.
Let's add that to what we already
had.
_ _ [Bb] _ [Ab] _
_ [Dbm] _ _ [C] See [Ab] how it's actually here as well? _
It's in there as well.
When you move [Db] over, _ when you're on
the fifth string as your root note, it's not as drastic because now if you accidentally hit the
extra string, you're just [G] doing a major bar chord anyway.
But when you do it here, it's where you
get that sound is when you start on the sixth [Ab] string for your root note [Db] _ versus _ that sounds okay.
Okay, so that's level five.
Level six is where you really start to get into how he actually does it
on the album.
From a lot of scrutiny, I really went in, slowed it down, listened to every detail.
And this is kind of interesting because check this [F] out first of all.
[Bb] _
_ _ [Ab] _ _ [Dbm] _ _ _ [F] _
_ _ There's a couple little
details that bump this up to level six and here's what it is.
Okay, so you start with that Cobain
chord, right?
You go, _ so instead of going click, click, click, click, which is what you usually do
in the recording, if you listen carefully in the beginning, he misses the first click.
So it ends
up being this instead.
_ [Bb] _ _ _
_ Really listen to it and you'll see that that's what's going on.
And then
he moves to the next chord and goes like this.
_ [G] _ There's [Ab] that open _ string connection point.
And
then we go to the next part and then it becomes this.
_ _ [G] There's the regular clickies, okay?
And
we have, [Db] _ _ [F] notice there's an upstroke now as well when you go to the fifth string root note.
So we
have this.
_ [Bb] _ _
_ [Em] Like that.
_ [Ab] _ _ [B] _ [Db] _
[A] Then something interesting, he just goes real quick.
It's like, [F] _ _
so there's a
couple little extra hits in there.
Let me do that all at once now.
_ [Bb] _
_ [Ab] _ _ [Db] _ _ [F] _ _
Hear the sound of that?
Now it's
getting really close to the original.
So I consider level seven a bonus level, kind of like what I did
with the Smoke on the Water where he was using his thumb.
Well, if you watch Kurt play this live,
he does a very interesting thing in a few videos and that's where he starts with an upstroke.
So you might not think that makes a difference, but check this out.
If you go downstroke _
versus an upstroke, _ there's a little bit of a different sound that happens with that.
But the problem is, is you run into a strange feeling if you're used to correct strumming.
Once again, he goes off the beaten path and creates his own style through doing this, at least live.
So here's what happens when you try to do this with the upstroke being first.
You get this.
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ [Em] _ [Ab] _
_ _ [Db] _ _ [F] _ _ [Bb] _ _
[G] _ [Ab] _ _ _ [Db] _ [F] _ _ _
_ _ _ I don't think I could get used to that because I'm so used to having my
set patterns when it comes to strumming.
This feels way better to me.
_ [Bb] _ [G] _ [Ab] _ _ [Db] _ [F] _
[C] If you watch the original video for this, he's all down.
He's like this kind of thing.
And he even does that live during the chorus, a lot of downstrokes.
But in the intro live,
he will do this upstroke.
So keep an eye on that.
Little details that are kind of interesting,
at least to me.
Okay, so one more time with the [Bb] upstrokes.
_ _ _ [Db] _ _ [Bb] _ _ [G] _
[Ab] _ _ _ [Db] _ [G] _ [F] _ _ [Bb] _
[Em] _ [Ab] _ _ [Dbm] _ [G] _ [F] _ _
It does affect your rhythm as well.
So there's a lot of things that just changing the direction of your picking can affect.
So watch out
for that.
Okay, hopefully you guys enjoyed that.
Seven levels of Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Let me
know what level you guys are playing it at.
And let me know if you have any luck bringing it up to
the higher levels.
Okay, and I will catch you soon