Last Nite Guitar Lesson

The guitar players in The Strokes are Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr, both of whom have very cool parts in this song. In fact, it's the interplay between both of their parts that is inspirational for students, as it shows us how we can creatively work with the same chords. The verse especially highlights how one player using bigger barre shapes encourages the other to work with smaller triads and other grooves to add more play to the piece.

So, as well as learning the track as Franco teaches it in the video, we're also going to think about how you can creatively open up the fretboard to prepare you for playing with others in an ensemble or band setting (if that's your aim… If not, it's still super fun to do so)!

So, let's dive in by first checking out the video…

Last Nite Intro Chords

Our intro (which also features at other points in the track) is an incredibly creative use of what is essentially one chord… C! The first guitar part is quite literally a C octave, which is just the note C played twice on the neck! The cool thing about this is you need to still strum all 6 strings, but be able to hear only the A and G strings that you are fretting, which looks like this:

As you can see here, the strumming for this section is just downstrokes, and repeats until the verse comes in. i would advise that you don't need to count bars here, just listen. Use those fantastic ears of yours to listen to the track whilst you play, and look out for the clues that the verse is about to come in.

As for the second guitar part, we are working with essentially the same chord (C major), except we are now rolling between a Csus4 (just without the 5th) and a C5 chord. Remember that "sus4" means suspend the major 3rd and use the 4th instead. It works without the 5th just as well as with it! Those chords and strumming look like this:

If you were to write that as a chord progression, you would see | Csus4 | C5 | Csus4 | C5 | - This is a very cool part that is played on top of the C octave, and the two together make up the intro. Remember that intro section does come back in later on in the song as the chorus! This is one of two parts in the entire song, so learn it well and when ready continue below to the second part.

The Verse Chords

Next up, we have the verse section, which is simply the chords | C | C | F | G | G | and once again we have different parts for the different guitar players. The main rhythm player is using the A shape barre chord for all three chords, and doing a very cool 16th note strumming pattern. The shapes and strumming look like this:

Once you have the pattern down, remember to make the whole thing very staccato, meaning to make each chord strum short and sharp, without any sustain. Franco demonstrates this beautifully in the video when he talks about this section, and it does make a huge difference to the sound.

The second guitar part uses triad shapes for the same chord, and a very bouncy upbeat, almost ska like, strumming pattern. These chords and strumming look like this:

So, once again, it is the combination of the two parts that make the verse sound so cool. If you are, or have ever been, in a band with two guitar players, this is a great lesson for you. It's a masterclass in creating cool parts that are different, based around the same progression, but work beautifully together. The CAGED system is a great source of inspiration here, which is something we would get to as an intermediate player.

The other sections…

There are two other core sections to consider, which we didn't cover in the video which are the bridge and solo. The bridge is the part just before the solo kicks in, and is very similar to the intro. The only difference is that it seems both guitar players are playing a C octave, but this time with a new rhythm pattern, that looks like this:

Then, as it goes into the solo, as the rhythm player, you are basically playing through a verse, but with a longer F major, like this | C | C | F | F | G | G | - It's then time to solo! We haven't taught through the exact solo here, but what would be fantastic is to use any lead playing you have done in the past to try to improvise a bit of a solo at this point! You are using the C minor pentatonic, and the guitar player uses only pentatonic box 1 as shown below:

Conclusion

There we have it! The whole song in parts, which you can now piece together gradually! Take your time with it, and if you want to get in touch with any questions, please do. We also would absolutely love it if you took the time to share this blog post and lesson, as it helps us spread the word! All the best, and speak soon!