Vertigo

The opening track for U2’s eleventh studio album “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”, Vertigo quickly earned positive feedback from fans and critics, received extensive radio and TV airplay and became a smashing international hit single winning the “Best Rock Song”, “Best Short Form Music Video” and “Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Group with Vocal” Grammies at the 2005 Grammy Awards. Together with the whole album, Vertigo maintains a steady traditional rock sound and as Bono himself defines it, “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” is U2’s first real rock album.

Indeed, Vertigo carries a fantastic guitar sound thanks to the excellent guitar performance of The Edge and his extensive use of interesting guitar chords and strumming techniques. Edge is really a guitarist you can learn from in terms of shaping your sound. If you compare U2 songs to most of the guitar songs that get released lately, you will hear a huge difference in sound. Most modern guitar songs utilize a pumped up hi-gain guitar sound that lacks character, while U2’s guitar sound utilizes a tastefully measured amount of overdrive, thus retaining the guitar playing dynamics, which give it authenticity and high tonal quality.

But the best way to understand this is to actually learn how to play Vertigo by U2. You’ll see that it is one of the easy guitar songs out there, but nevertheless it sounds fantastic. The guitar tuning is E standard, most of the chords used are powerchords, BUT as mentioned above, there a couple of interesting chord shapes, guitar licks and strumming patterns used throughout the song that you will benefit from learning. Especially interesting is one of the bridges, where open chords are used. This bridge is a great way to test your sound. If you’re using too much gain the open chords will sound muddy and unclear, while if you use the light amount of gain that The Edge uses in the original recording, you will hear the fullness of these chords and the presence of each separate tone that forms them.

Anyway, Vertigo is a great song to add to your repertoire, simply because people know it and love it. After all, let’s not forget that when it got out in 2004, it stayed in the top 5 of the international music charts for weeks and sold over 400 000 downloads in the States, making it one of the most downloaded tracks ever. Vertigo also had a smashing music video that got quite a good airplay on music televisions worldwide, which increased the popularity of the song even more. So if you’re looking for a nice tune to jam on or to play with your band, consider Vertigo by U2 as the right choice.

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Each Song Includes Step By Step Videos For Lead & Rhythm Guitar

Learn to play this complete song and Jam with our live band. You can choose to learn and play either the Rhythm Guitar or Lead Guitar and Jam with us. Each song has separate step by step tuition videos to take you through every single part of the song.

Plus all our songs have accompanying downloads for full Song Structure, Chord Diagrams and Tab for lead solos. And all the teaching and Jam session videos can either be viewed online, or downloaded to your PC.

Related posts:

1. Vertigo
2. Paranoid
3. She Moves In Her Own Way
4. America
5. Don’t Believe A Word

Tags: Andy Partridge, BandJammer, Guitar Songs, Learn Guitar, U2, Vertigo