This is the basic outline of the progression, because, when it comes to the actual chords, Johnny will extend them to create more interesting chord harmony and also as a way of joining the chords, and creating repeating melodic hooks through out a chord progression, which is a trademark of Johnny’s style and sound.

The opening chord of A major is extended to an Add9 chord, as the B note added in the top of the chords is then added in the top of the C# minor chord to produced a C# minor 7th chord. We then keep this idea and extend our B minor chord to a B minor 7th. For the second half of the verse we shift up to some higher register chords, and play a chord arpeggio figure that is based around the same progression but using different voicings of the chords. Once again we see the idea of adding extension to the chords to act as links between them, but more importantly to provide melodic hooks within the progression.

This time over the E major chord we have a shifting diatonic 3rd idea that is performed on the 3rd and 2nd strings - very Steve Cropper! For the verse section I have used a bright clean sound on our studio amp, and although I am using my main humbucker loaded Musicman, I have switched to a single coil tone to give me a bright Tele/Jag tone.

Chorus chords & progression:

Now for our chorus, and I couldn’t pay homage to Johnny Marr with out including that fabled tremolo driven tone! For this, I have switched to a very light overdriven tone, with the gain hardly on.

I am using a tremolo tone from an old Line 6 Modulation Pro rack unit, which actually allows me to input the tempo of the track to make sure that I get the tremolo in time. For the rhythm of the chord progression I simply emulated one of Johnny’s hero’s, Bo Diddley, and made sure that the rhythm of the tremolo was set in time. Once again check out the video for a more in depth analysis of this tone.

We then head back to our verse progression one final time to conclude our track. I should also point out that the feel of this track isn’t straight, and it makes use of a swung 16th note rhythm, so pay attention to this when working on the groove of both of the sections.

Enjoy!