The Kinks - All Day and All of the Night - Guitar Lesson

Kinks (Deluxe Edition)

1964 2:22

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About All Day and All of the Night

Few riffs from 1964 hit as hard as the one that opens this track. The Kinks built the whole song around a relentless two-bar power-chord figure in G minor, and getting that figure to sound right is the real work here. The chord shapes themselves are not complicated, but the attack matters enormously: every hit needs to land with a short, percussive chop rather than a long ring, so right-hand muting is just as important as fretting accuracy. At 160 BPM the riff moves fast enough that sloppy changes between chords will be obvious immediately. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop the main riff slowed down until the changes feel automatic before bringing it back up to tempo. This is a foundational piece of hard rock guitar vocabulary, and the lesson it teaches, controlled aggression with clean chord transitions, will pay off across dozens of other songs.

• The signature riff is built almost entirely on power chords, making it a great exercise in tight palm muting and precise right-hand attack.
• Played in E Standard tuning in the key of G minor, the main riff sits in a comfortable position on the lower strings but demands consistent rhythmic accuracy at 160 BPM.
• The biggest challenge is not the chord shapes themselves but keeping the riff percussive and even at full tempo, so looping it slowed down is strongly recommended.