Stray Cats - Rock This Town - Guitar Lesson

About Rock This Town

At 180 BPM in A major, "Rock This Town" is a serious test of right-hand stamina. The signature rockabilly-style guitar work, handled by Brian Setzer, demands tight alternate picking and crisp string muting to keep the driving rhythm from turning into mush at speed. Getting the slap-back feel right means playing slightly behind the beat, which is deceptively tricky when the tempo is this relentless. On top of the rhythm work, the lead breaks call for fluid, single-note runs with a confident country-inflected bend here and there. If the picking hand starts to tense up in those runs, use the Practice Toolbar to loop the passage slowed down until the motion feels relaxed and even. E Standard tuning keeps everything accessible, but do not let that fool you: clean execution at this tempo is the real challenge. Stray Cats brought Punk Rock energy to a vintage rockabilly framework, and you need both the aggression and the precision to sell it.

• The rhythm part relies on tightly palm-muted alternate picking at 180 BPM, so right-hand control and stamina are the main technical hurdles.
• Brian Setzer's lead breaks combine single-note rockabilly runs with country-style string bends, requiring a relaxed but accurate fretting hand.
• Playing slightly behind the beat on the rhythm parts gives the track its swinging, slap-back feel and is worth isolating with looping it slowed down.