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Def Leppard - Animal - Guitar Lesson

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Key A minor
Def Leppard - Animal guitar lesson video
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Classic Rock

Gain6
Bass6
Mid7
Treble6
Presence5
Master7
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Roll back the gain slightly and pick near the neck for a warmer, more open crunch.
Hysteria album cover
Hysteria
1987 4:05
Listen on Spotify
Def Leppard Hard Rock 1987 A minor
Capo Advisor 0 A minor · Original key

About Animal

From the 1987 Hysteria album, "Animal" by Def Leppard sits at a steady 120 BPM in A minor, giving it a driving mid-tempo feel that is deceptively demanding to play cleanly. The song lives on its chorus guitar layers: thick, chorused power chords stacked to create that polished, radio-ready wall of sound typical of Hard Rock production of the era. Getting those chords to ring with the right crunch while staying tight rhythmically is the real challenge here. In E Standard tuning, the chord shapes themselves are not complex, but the discipline is in your picking hand: every transition needs to land exactly on the beat and with consistent attack. The verse clean-to-crunch dynamic shift is also worth focusing on. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop that chorus rhythm slowed down until your strumming hand locks in before bringing it back up to tempo.

  • The song is in E Standard tuning and A minor, so all the power chord shapes sit in familiar open-position and fifth-fret territory.
  • The chorus relies on heavily layered rhythm guitar tracks in the studio, so live you need one tight, consistent strumming hand to replicate the fullness.
  • Practising the verse-to-chorus dynamic shift, from a cleaner tone into driven power chords, is the most useful exercise this song offers a rhythm guitarist.

How to Play Animal

Tuning: E Standard · Key: A minor · Tempo: 120 BPM

Use the section loop to isolate a passage, drop the speed below 100%, and set the metronome to 120 BPM to build it up to tempo.

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