Burnin' Up - Seasick Steve - Tutorial + Tab

 


This is my version of Seasick Steve's song Burnin' Up. Not to be confused with songs with similar titles by Judas Priest or Jessie J, which are totally different. The guitar part is played on an electric guitar in standard tuning, is in the Key of E, and is in 4/4 time. The guitar part is quite repetitive and I have included the main guitar section played through the song and also the break, which he plays on the lower strings of the guitar.

Below are some tips to help you play this piece, and links to download the tab.

 Burnin' Up Downloadable Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT
 
  • Quick Tempo - The music has a fairly quick tempo which isnt very evident when listening to the song. In this piece, the thumb plays the bass notes on the lowest string whilst the melody is played on the higher strings. Because of the fast tempo the thumb has to play the bass notes on every beat of the bar quite quickly, and its easy to lose this regular rhythm. Because of this I would recommend you learn to play this music slowly at first until you can play through it competently. After that, slowly increase the tempo until you are up to the correct speed.

  • Distortion - Seasick Steve play this song on an electric guitar and I would recommend you also use an electric guitar to get an authentic sound. To get it sounding correct you will need to add a little bit of distortion through your amp but not too much. Although it's tempting to ramp up the distorion, because you are playing both bass notes and melody notes at the same time, too much distortion will make it sound garbled and messy. Therefore, be careful not to add too much distortion and perhaps use a single coil pickup instead of a humbucker to get a cleaner sound.
  • Pull-Offs - Because of the fast tempo some of the notes require you to you pull-offs. Doing the pull-offs is not necessary though. If you have nimble fingers you could pick every note. Although this would give a cleaner and more regimented sound to the notes, I dont think it would give an authentic sound. By using pull-offs you get a slightly different, more slurred sound which sounds truer to the original. Just make sure you get the timing of the pull-offs correct. It is very easy to perform the pull-off too quickly making the notes sound imbalanced. However, it doesn't have to be perfect but just be mindful of this when playing these pull-offs.
 
This is about all I need to say about this piece. If you are comfortable playing fingerstyle blues in E, this should be a quite straightforward piece of music. Just make sure to start playing it slowly and concentrate on getting the pull-offs nailed accurately and you should be playing this in no time.

Thanks for Reading,
Neil

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