Shoot to Thrill

There are so many ways you can approach the chords in this song. Watching live clips, you’ll see Angus just flying around the stage — sometimes it’s a G5, sometimes a full G, maybe a partial A or full A chord. He’s not overthinking it, he’s just giving it energy, and I think that’s the key to capturing the spirit of this track.

For my tab, I wrote the rhythms as I heard them on the studio version, but when you play it, don’t be afraid to feel it out. Same thing with the picking parts — Angus often accents with his three fingers, and for the breakdown/bridge, I tucked my pick under my middle finger and used three-finger picking to add some dynamics. That section really comes alive when you give it some feel and variation.

As for the outro solo, Angus’s vibrato is so unique. Mine isn’t quite the same, and when I try too hard to match it exactly, I lose some of the feel. So instead I went with my own flow, keeping Ben Eller’s advice in mind about matching vibrato to the pulse of the song (eighths, triplets, sixteenths, etc.). Angus probably wasn’t analyzing it that way — he was just letting it rip — so I tried to capture that spirit. I tabbed the solo exactly as I heard it from the recording and played it back as best I could.

This was such a fun song to dive into, especially dialing in the guitar tones and working with the amplitude — honestly, that was the most enjoyable part for me. For Malcolm’s rhythm part I used a Gretsch Streamliner, and of course the classic Gibson SG for Angus. I hope the enjoyment I had playing this comes through in the video.