Highway to Hell Guitar Lesson

But hit the brakes for just a second - I need to hit you with a disclaimer - there won't be any tabs available in this lesson write-up. Instead, please make sure to keep using Dion's excellent video demonstration as your main reference.

With that said, it's time to floor it again!

The rhythm parts

Intro/Verse

This section is a prime example that keeping things simple is sometimes the best option. Three chords are all we need to play through the intro and the verse - let's take a look:

I'm sure the A5 and G chord shapes are probably familiar to you if you're tackling this track. The '5' is an instruction to play a powerchord, and G major is one of the first chords a lot of players learn. But what about the D/F# chord - what does that mean?

Whenever you see a '/' between a chord, it's an instruction to play the chord on the left side, with the bass note written on the right side. Therefore, D/F# is played as a D major chord with an F# on the bass.

There are two ways to approach playing this chord. The first is to use your first finger to catch the 2nd fret of the E-string, and quickly pivot into G. The second option is to use your thumb to catch the 2nd fret, and then transition to the G chord as normal. As you can probably tell by the chord diagram, I prefer the first option - I believe it's more fun to play, and it helps me distinguish a difference between the two chords.

With that all said, let's take a look at the rhythm played using these chords. The rhythm is broken down into eighth notes, and you'll want to down-strum every chord to really capture that AC/DC energy. Let's break the rhythm into bars of two to best visualise it:

Pre-chorus

The pre-chorus is yet another example that you do not need to overcomplicate things. This two-bar section takes things one step further, as we only need one chord!

We actually need to introduce the E5 chord at the very end of the verse - strum it twice as sixteenth notes on the 'and' of the fourth beat of the final bar. From there on, simply down-strum eighth-notes on every beat for the first bar using a palm-mute. The palm-mute helps keep the dynamic a bit lower and keeps things clean.

Then, for the second bar, you'll want to remove the palm-mute and really dig into the strings to start building volume and dynamic before the chorus kicks in!

Chorus

The chorus opens things up a bit harmonically, as we're swapping out the powerchords for full-fat triads! Here are the chords we're going to need for the chorus:

Another big change is that we actually want to use up-strums when we're playing rhythms using eighth-notes. Doing this helps to 'lift' the chorus up, and takes some of the heavy feeling away that down-strokes are great at creating. Let's take a look at the rhythm:

To wrap the chorus up, simply end on one strum of the D major on the fourth repeat and let it ring out for two bars. The verse kicks in again just at the end of the second bar - and we're back to familiar territory!

Bridge

The last rhythm section we need to tackle before the lead parts is the bridge. This is another relatively short section, and only uses two chords - D and G. However, when playing G in this section, we only want to hit the top four strings.

The key to getting the bridge right is making sure you're playing the correct rhythm. There are two parts to the rhythm, which we'll take a closer look at here:

The first time that 'rhythm 1' is played, the D major at the end rings out for a whole bar. However, the second time it's played, it transitions straight into 'rhythm 2' without the chord ringing out, taking us straight into the solo!

The lead parts

Solo

If short n' sweet was a solo, this would be it! Angus Young truly serves the song here by giving us just eight bars of melodic pentatonic goodness! Let's break it down into digestible phrases to make it easier to piece together at the end.

Phrase 1

This is as blues-rock as it gets. Variations of this lick have been used in thousands of songs, and it's easy to know why - it just works every time! I want to take this opportunity to remind you that the video lesson should be your main resource for learning the solo. What we're going to do here is take a closer look at the shapes used.

With that said, this first phrase is based entirely in box 1 of the A minor pentatonic. I'll continue to highlight the frets/notes needed in pink throughout the rest of this lesson.

Try not to be too careful with your bends or muting here - this is all about getting the energy up and as Jack Black eloquently put it in the School of Rock movie - "sticking it to the man".

Phrase 2

The second phrase starts in the same fashion as the first, but continues by shifting into box 5 of the A minor pentatonic scale. This is typical of Angus Young's play-style and phrasing - it's heavily pentatonic based, but he likes to explore the various boxes along the fretboard to create melodic interest and create dynamic shifts.

Phrase 3

To keep things concise, the third phrase stays within box 5 of the A minor pentatonic scale - check out all the notes played below:

Phrase 4

Finally, to wrap the solo up before playing more lead lines over the chorus, we need to head back to A minor pentatonic box 1. Young is pretty much just outlining an A minor arpeggio here, and finishes off with a signature slide into an A an octave above.

Chorus and outro lead fills

Clearly not done with soloing, Angus Young gives us some more tasty lead lines while the rest of the band hold down the groove for the final chorus and outro.

In the spirit of remaining concise, all of these phrases are played within box 4 of - you guessed it - the A minor pentatonic scale. Though you could learn each phrase note-for-note, I think it'll be more worthwhile to improvise your own lead lines using the shape provided below. If anything, I think you'll have more fun with this, as you can treat it as a call-and-response guitar conversation with Angus' playing on the record!

To keep things in style of Angus Young's playing, be sure to include plenty of double-stops and bends. The most typical double-stop he's playing is on the 12th and 13th frets of the E- and B-strings respectively. He's using bends to keep his playing quite 'vocal' and conversational, which is another huge stylistic feature of his playing.

I hope you have a lot of fun improvising over these two sections! To keep things clear, staying in box 4 is just a suggestion to keep in style of what's being played on the record. By all means, explore the other positions on the fretboard to come up with something that's a blend of Angus' style, and your own!

Addendum

The very final of the section feels separate to the outro, it feels more like a 'post-outro' - but I thought that 'addendum' would be a more appropriate name to avoid redundancy…

Anyways, enough of being pedantic - this part features a very fun technique - pick tapping. As the name suggests, this is quite literally the tapping technique, just using your pick instead of your fingers. To perform this technique, you'll need to tilt your pick on its side, so that you're attacking the fret/string with the sharp/thin side of your pick. You'll find that doing so will let you pick quite a bit faster than you'd usually be able to by tapping with your finger! This of course needs practice, but I promise the speed will come quickly.

The two frets that you'll need for this outro are the 12th fret of the high E-string - which you'll probably want to catch using your first finger - and we need to pick-tap the 15th fret of the same string.

To my ears, it sounds like Angus Young is slightly bending the string as he's tapping. To do this, use your first finger to very slowly bend the E-string. I'm confident that you'll find your tapping hand follows suit with no issue.

And very finally, the ending that every live performance dreams to end on - the big and quick strum on the A powerchord. There's no real trick to this - simply strum the A5 chord as quickly and aggressively as you can before letting it ring out to end the whole track on a bang.

"I sincerely hope you've had a lot of fun with this truly legendary classic rock tune! It's an amazing example that you don't need to be flashy or overcomplicate things to create incredible rock music! A big thank you as always to Dion, and I hope you continue to enjoy the lessons to come! 😃🤘"