As far as scorching blues guitar playing is concerned, everyone needs Moore. Gary’s seriously rock vibrato and consummate blues phrasing will take a fair amount of technique to master. Having gone through many years as a rock player, Gary employs a take-no-prisoners approach to both tone and attack – so be prepared to give your guitar a fairly rough ride while studying this piece! Gary has gone through some changes in the kind of equipment he chooses over the years and so we can’t be absolutely sure which gear he chose for these sessions. We can guess, of course, and ears tell me that the original track sounds like a Les Paul/Marshall Bluesbreaker combination.

In an interview he said that he played through the clean channel of a Soldano amp, using an old Marshall Guv’nor pedal for overdrive. But I’m pretty confident that you can get somewhere in the right area with a humbucker-loaded guitar and an amp with some extra balls.

One thing that becomes immediately apparent when you listen to this track is Gary’s rather extreme vibrato technique. This might be a hangover from his rock period, too: it’s very deep and fast, which is perhaps slightly uncharacteristic for a blueser, but there you have it. The only way to master this kind of heavy vibrato is to sit and practise it methodically. Try a few practice bends and push the vibrato to extremes. After a while it will start to feel a bit more natural, but it will probably take a while to get completely up and running. Be patient!

Another couple of techniques to watch out for during the solo are a spot of palm muting and the pinched harmonics that almost immediately follow it. These definitely betray Mr Moore as an ex-rocker!

Cold Day In Hell. Scaling the fretboard

Scale-wise, we’re in the very familiar blues pentatonic area throughout – one that you should be familiar with in all positions. It’s always worth taking a few runs at random from a transcription like this and seeing exactly what a player does with an apparently limited series of notes. What you hear is style and phrasing – both of which have to be learned along with the very basic ideas about which notes are being played where.

If we take a look at what’s going on with Gary’s right hand, you can probably hear that his pick attack is relatively ‘heavy’. This adds to the overall aggressive feel of’ Cold Day In Hell’ significantly and can be achieved by using a heavy pick and considerable welly. It’s always a good idea to hear how your guitar responds to different levels of pick attack – and it’s a simple enough experiment. All you have to do is fret a note and see how much of a dynamic range you can muster. Start off picking as softly as possible and then bring it up in stages to see how much energy you can put into the string. You’ll find that it has quite a dramatic effect on your tone.

Lead Guitar:

Rhythm Guitar:

 

 

It’s just a part of Gary Moore Cold Day In Hell guitar tab and music sheet.

Through the link below you can download a full transcription of

Gary Moore Cold Day In Hell with backing track

DOWNLOAD HERE