Sweet Home Alabama

This is a true intermediate piece of rock music - no easy feat!

Sweet Home Alabama has a ton of variation and riffing throughout, so we're just looking at some excerpts here.

Here's the opening of the song. We get 2 repetitions of the intro riff which then alters slightly to form the verse riff on the 3rd and 4th repetitions. Already we see a lot of variations in the riffs closing out each repetition!

Jumping ahead, we have this new 4 bar riff which is all that separates verse 1 and verse 2.

After verse 2, we get our first chorus. Can you see how similar this is to the 12 bar blues shuffle? We're still spicing up each repetition with unique riffs at the end.

Lastly, we'll have a look at the first solo in the song. This falls directly after the first chorus. If this is your first time learning a solo this complex, be patient! There's a LOT packed into this. Break each section down, work out the timing, and get a feel for it.

Once you get comfortable with a section you can work on improving the speed and combining it with other sections.

There you have it! Some classic rock songs are simple, even quaint, by today's standards but this isn't one of them.

It feels surprisingly modern to me and it's certainly challenging.