No More Faking This Lick #2 -Crazy Train Solo Ending

as someone who has constantly faked his way through this, THANK YOU!

There's to much emphasis on note for note perfection these days, sounds great your way or the original 🤘🎸

Man I can play the rest of the solo nice and clean but that last part is always so noisy. My setup is also a reason cause it is noisy but still after endless tries that last part still bugs me.

That Gibson is stunning

welp....this seems the easiest way to play that last part i was stuck on. so many vids out there seem to be wrong and hard, but this way seems EZ and close enough!

I dont feel so bad now knowing im not the only one who was doing this Randy riff wrong. but honesty I learned the whole song awhile ago maybe few years ago but that solo riff I am still working on. thanks a lot for this video definately helps me a lot.

When I listen to the outtro the last lick doesn't sound pentatonic. I think randy ascends straight up sequentially up the major scale into the final bend.

Hah! I thought I was the only one faking the ending! I used to do some sort of hammer-on minor scale and just made sure I'd end on the righ bend and figured most people wouldn't notice (but I knew).

I've played that lick way wrong for 40 years.

I know exactly what you are talking about Art-of-Guitar!
So cool to find another die hard Randy guitarist. I always hate it when people BS the end of this amazing ending. Randy's solos were like songs within songs. One of the greatest melody players to ever pick up the instrument....

Randy was a perfectionist, true. But I honestly believe that this was a studio take that he literally "winged it" on and left it in because it sounded cool. It should not take 40+ years for professional guitarists to figure out what he did on this track. I have listened to the isolated guitar recordings and they are still a blur even at 1/2 and 1/4 speeds. Truly a master in his craft. Being able to articulate all those notes despite the speeds he was playing at. Very few players can do that without sounding sloppy. Randy just happened to be the best <3

👍👍

Thank you very much. Finally, after more than 30 years you've provided me a course correction to "unlearn" that extremely taxing movement I picked up from an Ozzy song book. I found Believer to have similar stumbling blocks towards the end of the solo.

Great video and gorgeous LP Custom !

Thank you my man!

Great video, great guitar

In exploring solos, I don't think I've ever found so many different versions of the same lick. The interesting thing is how complex most of these are. I really appreciate this version; it is by far the easiest to play and sound smooth and it is possible that only Randy himself really knows exactly how this was played. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you very much. Great presentation 👍

Yup I too have been working on this ,so many people doing different things , the video 30 years after the blizzard of oz is interesting also . this helps though thanks :-)

I play it like this

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------17--19b(21)-19-
------------------------------------------------------------------------14-15-17/19--------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------13-14-16---------------------------------------------
-----------------------------11-12-14-13-14-16-----------------------------------------------------------
---------------11-12-14----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11-12-14-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's similar to what the vid shows, but I always played all legato ( hammer ons) until the last two notes. I figured this out back in 2010 when I was trying to learn the fast part by ear. Not exactly what Randy played, but I like the sound of it. It's a great lick and has different variations too. Good vid.

This lick always confused me and I've been playing guitar for 21 years! I like the tip about practicing before bed and when you first wake up. Rock on

Anyone else seriously struggling getting this up to speed?

I'm not 100% sure but I think it is e minor till the flat 6th then the same in the next octave then 7th and the slide sequence that ends with the bend and vibrato tho i might be wrong

Right on

Awesome

Thank you for your candor and confirming nobody is perfect. Because it's sometimes hard to feel good at guitar for most of us. Still you are playing very fast.

This has been bugging me for 20+ years playing guitar... THANK YOU.

And probably the scariest lick for 97% of the population

Subscribed!

It's close...a lot closer than I see a lot of other people play it. Randy actually discussed this part of the solo in a seminar before he died. The only things I see and hear differently and that Randy himself mentioned are on the D string, it should be: 11h13h14 instead of 11h12h14

And on the B string: 14h16h17 instead of 14h15h17 and no alternate picking in the beginning of the run.

Aside from that, this lesson is great and I think you do a great job of breaking the riffs down. Just watched your video of the double-tracking done in the Crazy Train solo and how each track had parts that were played slightly different but yet the dissonance that it creates just..."works". Take a really close listen to the bluesy lick in the break of the first chorus and you can CLEARLY hear 2 separate runs with some different notes being played, yet it's amazing how it all comes together.

Thinking of that stretch that turned out not to be a stretch, one rule of thumb I've found to be surprisingly (though not 100%) universal is that when you're trying to play someone else's solo and you need to play something particularly, annoyingly physically awkward, it's probably transcribed wrong. Might be wrong notes, might just be wrong fingerings, but broadly speaking, pros don't choose make their lives harder than they need to be.

Of course you need to allow for physical differences between people, backgrounds in different techniques, whatever - but if you're hitting a brick wall with something that just seems nonsensical, it's definitely worth re-evaluating.

Has anyone ever told you that you look like Mike Shinoda and Jesse Valenzuela had a baby lmao

Thanks so much for this. After trying to play the end of that solo upteen times ive finally got it right after watching this 😉

Holy smokes Mike. You're right. It IS 6 16th notes into 3 sets of triplets. I always thought it was straight 16 notes from start to finish. As for the end... who cares. As long as you hit the bend at the right time! :)

Your my new hero !!! THANK YOU !

ha ha great . every time i’ve had to play this out i re-go over the last run and never do it the same way. and you’re right , Rhonds changed it over time . there is even an audio interview / lesson where he says he changed this run.

Nobody will ever be Randy

Great video thanks. Randy’s lead playing live was the best. Powerful

Ten videos - ten different solos. Just play what the hell you want if it’s close enough. Randy changed it all the time.

Can you do a video on Randy's Texas Soundcheck?

thanks

I had been playing the first pat of this as slide 11-< 12, 14, 16 and 12/14/16 on A string as well. This method is much easier and sounds the same to me up to speed

I’ve tried for several years to truly learn this last part of the solo and I’ve failed miserably. I’ve studied tablature from the studio version and from Tribute.I’ve tried it playing it at 25% speed over and over again. I can’t come close (and I’m not that bad a player). Im done trying. Now, instead of the 78 notes Randy plays in that next to last measure, I step to the front of the stage, make a face like I’m the biggest badass on the planet, and I defiantly play just one note and hold it for the rest of the solo.

Is that richlite?

E Mixolydian (same as D lydian or A major) scale position 9-12 (same as blues root on 5th) starting with pinky on low E string, and ending with pinky on high E string and bending up a whole step. You can bend or hammer on or tremolo or whatever...

What you're doing is real cool, thanks for taking the time to show everyone your skills. My first concert was Ozzy when I was 13 years old. About three weeks later, I heard that his guitar player had died.

Some licks are meant to be learned because they have applications to build your solo library (not to mention understanding). Others are cool but in the artists style which you could only learn by dedicating yourself to playing his licks note for note until you have pretty much everything he's done. I learned Mr Crowley note for note because I think most of the guitar work is really important. Crazy Train sounds cool but I don't think that lick is anything but Randy blazing through some random scales he's done 10,000 times before so it was like second nature. I have no problem playing something generic there. In 30 years I never had anyone say I did it wrong.

I do the exact same thing although on the low E string, I’d slide from 11 to 12 and then hammer onto 14 and 16. But your way seems much simpler, thanks