Learn Iron Maiden's The Trooper

"The Trooper" is one of my favourite songs written by Iron Maiden. This bad ass song is from their second album Piece of Mind which dates back to 1983. Its pretty amazing how this song is still making guitarists around the world want to learn guitar riffs. To this day, The Trooper is one of Iron Maiden's most popular guitar songs and they play it live really often.

Jamplay has kindly offered this video guitar lesson to you guys FREE and Dennis Hodges is the guitar instructor as he takes you through a step by step guitar lesson in learning the to play this cool sounding song.

This is the FULL version of the song. Nothing is held back in this guitar lesson.

Enjoy the galloping rhythm with tons of guitar techniques imbued and learn the really cool guitar solo intro to the song.

Points to take note of when learning to play The Trooper

1 - Iron Maiden uses a whole slew of guitar techniques to create the classic galloping rhythm and fast electric guitar solos. If you listen closely to their songs, you will find this "standard" galloping guitar rhythm that they use in 80% of their songs. While it may sound simple on the CD's, an out of time galloping rhythm sounds plain awful. What you need to do here is to use a metronome and start slow.

2 - Power chords are an essential core of the harmony that Iron Maiden employs in the songs. Again, you need to build speed gradually and practice changing power chords till you get it down to a fluid motion. On top of that, the manner in which you strike your chords is also a key to getting the desired sound. Try it out for yourself. Do a downstroke on a power chord and do an upstroke on the power chord. You'll find that there is a subtle difference at the end result.

3 - Harmonizing a melody. Iron Maiden is a melody driven band with riffs that could sometimes be played simultaneously by up to 3 guitarists. The typical intervals used in harmoniesare the diatonic, minor and major 3rds.

4 - Practice. All being said, at the end of the day, practice is what enables you to play the guitar at a certain level of professionalism. My advice to you here is to break things up in chunks and build up muscle memory in your fingers slowly. If a part is too difficult, slow it down, break it up. Tackle a section at a time.

p.s. You might want to bookmark the  guitar songs for beginners section regularly for updates on videos that help you learn playing the guitar.