Sharp Dressed Man

Description

In this tutorial you'll learn how to play the great song Sharp Dressed Man as made famous by ZZ Top. This song is packed with fantastic rock guitar playing, and today we're going to break down every note that you hear on the classic studio version of this song.

First there's the call & response based main riff played in stereo by the two rhythm guitars, that we'll call "guitar 1" and "guitar 2". Then there's the rockin' verse part, which is played only by rhythm guitar 2 in order to leave space for the vocals. If you were to play this song with just one guitar you'd combine Guitar 1 and 2 for the intro and then switch to guitar 2 for the verses.

After two verses we're into the first guitar solo, which is played by a slide guitar in a open G-tuning.
Halfway through this solo it switches to standard fretting as opposed to the slide. If you were playing this song with just one guitar you'd have to play a solo in standard tuning, and we'll talk about that as well. After the first solo there's another verse and finally there's a long and rippin' outro solo played by a fourth guitar in standard tuning.

We'll break down every note of this solo, talk about what gear, tone and attitude to use, the really creative use of hybrid picking and much more. The song is in the key of C, in 4/4 and the quarter note equals 125 BPM, so let's dive right into it!