“The picking speed on that open A is insane”: Marty Schwartz reveals the song he found the hardest to teach
The YouTube guitar tutor says he’s “more of a feel and groove classic rock guy”.
Image: Terry Wyatt / Getty
YouTube guitar teacher Marty Schwartz has revealed the song he found hardest to learn ahead of one of his tutorial videos.
Schwartz has been helping along hopeful self-teaching guitarists via his channel Marty Music for more than a decade, and Epiphone even launched a Signature Marty Schwartz model, the Marty Schwrtz ES-335, back in August in his honour.
In the new print issue of Total Guitar, Schwartz revealed the track which he has found the hardest to learn so far, and subsequently teach, is a classic 1983 track from Ozzy Osbourne.
“The hardest one was [Ozzy Osbourne’s] Bark at the Moon,” says Schwartz. “The chords aren’t too hard, but the picking speed on that open A is insane. I’ve seen videos of Jake E. Lee teaching it at a clinic and he couldn’t even play the solo… and it’s his solo! That made me feel a little better because my hands aren’t really fast.”
He adds, “I used an app to slow it down and keep it in pitch. I tend to start at 70 percent, where I can feel like I nail it every time, stick with it for a couple of weeks, and then speed up by five percent every couple of weeks… [but] I got that one to 90 percent and it was starting to feel like falling off the cliff!”
You can watch Schwartz’ tutorial for the track below:
Schwartz has four million YouTube subscribers and over two billion video views. “Marty has arguably taught more people how to play guitar than anyone else in the world,” says Epiphone on the product page for his signature model. “So as you might expect, Marty knows quite a bit about what features a great guitar should have.”
His new ES-335 features a 60s SlimTaper Rounded C neck profile with an Indian laurel fretboard, small pearloid block inlays, and a Marty Music logo on the back of the headstock. It has a 5-ply layered maple body, capped with an AAA-figured maple veneer and finished in Sixties Cherry. It also comes fitted with Epiphone Alnico Classic PRO pickups, each with a push/pull volume control for coil splitting, while the neck pickup’s tone control also features a push/pull phase switch.
Find out more about the new Marty Schwartz signature model via the Epiphone website.