In today’s lesson I’ll teach you how to play Duane Eddy’s 1958 classic Rebel Rouser. This is a song I listened to on repeat back in the 1900s (as my kids would say), when it was featured on the Forrest Gump soundtrack. Thirty years later, here I am finally learning it on guitar. Life is like a box of chocolates, indeed!
This one is quite fun to learn. Relatively few parts to worry about, but just when you get comfortable — things get tricky and switch keys. And then switch keys again… and once more after that. The riff follows the key changes, moving up in key by 1/2 step each time. This keeps you on your toes, but things stay quite manageable.
In addition to my main video lesson, I have a few bonus items to help you out — including a full playthrough with tabs, as well as a play-along video jam track. Practice notes are available as well, which include a few fun challenges (e.g. playing the riff entirely on the 6th string).
Here’s a video of me playing through the riff in each key, in consecutive order, just as Eddy plays things on his album version. I play each riff one time before moving on to the next one… note that Eddy repeats the first riff (Key of E) and final riff (Key of G) multiple times in his official recording. This is played atop the drums & bass backing track I made, which is available below.
Here’s a video jam track I made, where I cycle over an 8-bar blues in the Key of E (with drums and bass only). This matches the generic progression used in this song, meaning you can play the Rebel Rouser riff in the Key of E while this is playing. You also could work on improvisation, triads, strumming, or anything else you want! Like all my play-along practice tracks, the possibilities are limitless.
If you want to play along with the drum & bass while following the key changes, I made three different audio jam tracks to help you out! Each of these is 6-7 minutes long, which I find to be a great length for mini-practice sessions. The video above uses one of these tracks in the background.
Each track goes through the 8-bar progression once per each key, with drums and bass only — before seamlessly switching to the new key (E to F to F# to G). After the final progression (G) is played once, things relax for two full measures, before things start over again. This entire process repeats 4 times total. Start slow and build from there… I find Eddy’s full speed version (104bpm) to be quite fast!
Here’s a collection of the lessons I’ve made that’ll help with the various techniques used in this song.
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