I have used Mick’s custom guitar tuning for the basis of our Tech Session piece, demonstrating how he crafts his songs with alternative chord fingerings, and chord voicings giving a very rich and different tone. I have also shown some lead guitar ideas based on his soloing style to demonstrate how to solo using this tuning. I have based this track, guitar licks, techniques and composition around three classic tunes featuring Ralphs guitar work, Bad Company’s “Can’t Get Enough”, and “Movin On”, and Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes”. I would strongly recommend that you check out the tuning notes on the accompanying video before delving into the transcription.

Bars 1-5: 

Kick off our track with a shuffle feel Blues based riff in C, performing a tight cut off rhythm that pushes into each bar. This riff uses familiar sounding bluesy chords, C5, and C6, in a traditional blues/rock style.

Bars 6-9: 

See the progression modulate to F major and Eb major, including the Eb7 chord to our bluesy riff. We return back to the original riff in C, that includes a bluesy quartertone bend on the Eb note, the minor 3^rd in bar 9.

Bars 10-17:

Repeat the first half of our chord progression including the Blues based riffs performed around C, F and Eb. The verse riff concludes with the chords of Ab, Db/Ab, Bb and Eb/Bb, using Keith Richards inspired chord fingerings

Bars 18-23: 

Include our “Can’t Get Enough” inspired chorus section, which features more Keith Richard style chords outlining an I, IV, V in the key of C major. This section is where this tuning demonstrates its full potential, with its droning high register notes, and low octave base notes, that create a wide rich tone, that works with the consistent chord fingerings used throughout.

Bars 24-25: 

Conclude our chorus progression with a descending chord figure that utilises the droning open C strings, and is inspired by the Bad Company track “Movin On”.

Bars 26-33: 

Introduce the middle 8 section, and a half time feel, dropping the dynamic of the track. For this section I drew inspiration from the classic Mott the Hoople track “All the Young Dudes”. This section features a melodic motif based around a consistent rhythm figure that performs an arpeggio followed either a bending or pull of phrase, that alternate. This lead figure outlines the descending chord progression, gradually building to the final solo section.

Bars 33-45: 

Illustrate our harmony solo section, that is based around a two bar melodic phrase that follows our I, IV, V chord progression in the key of C.

Bars 46-49: 

Conclude our piece with the lead melody outlining the chords of Ab and Bb major, before concluding with a descending line that follows the final descending chords.

The Gear 

To enable me to achieve the altered tuning I used a fixed bridge guitar, namely a Music Man Armada. This was plugged into my Mesa Boogie King Snake combo, with some additional drive dialled in using the solo by the new Ernie Ball Expression Overdrive pedal. Aim for a slightly cleaner tone for the chord parts, as too much saturation will sound muddy and lack definition with the full open tuned chords. Try adding a little extra boost for the solo section to aid sustain.