Learn "Pomade and Corpse Paint": a song at the wrecking pace, taught as a whole song

What the song is. "Pomade and Corpse Paint" is an original fast rockabilly, written for this course in the way "Death Metal Guys" is played. It is the same kind of song, not the song: no lyric, melody or line of the record is in it (see How this was made).^[1]

KeyA, at the nutTempo140 bpmTime4/4Length100 barsWords3 verses, 1 chorus

The words count the differences between a rockabilly's crowd and the death metal guys, and the joke is sung straight.

• You need: standard tuning, a flatpick, a bridge-position pickup with some grit for the riff and the chorus and a clean, bright sound for the licks; a vibrato bar for the dips (without one, hold the notes plain).
• You should already have: power chords, palm muting, hammer-ons and pull-offs, a half-step bend, and reading tab.
• If the licks and the figures are new: from lesson 3 on, every section's card has an easy tab above it — the same bars with the power chord in muted eighths and nothing else — and so does the whole song's in lesson 11. Play the course through on those first, then as written.

The form. Ten sections, a hundred bars, the record's shape:^[4]

the guitar alone — the riff, the solos, the ending   the licks or the chords under the singer   ·   the numbers are the chords' places in the key of A

The verse is the twelve-bar blues with the V held two bars. The chorus is twelve bars with the ♭III and the IV inside every I bar — the cadence riff — and the V on the last beat of the II bar. The two solos are over the verse's twelve with the rhythm guitar out. The twelve and the chorus are presets under Psychobilly in the Jam tab.

Tone and style. One guitar, two hands, over the wrecking band:^{[6] [5]}

• The band: the kick on one and three, the snare on two and four at full weight, the bass on root and 5th with two slaps after every note.
• The muted hand: the riff and the chorus — every stroke down, the heel on the strings by the bridge so each chord thumps and keeps its pitch; some grit in the amp.
• The ringing hand: the verse's licks and the solos — the heel off, everything rings, only the first note of a hammer-on or a fall picked, a double stop one stroke through two strings; clean and bright.
• The switch between them is the thing to practise: the verse's last two bars are the riff, muted; the next verse's first bar is a lick, ringing.

The model, the measurement, and the idiom. What the sources say about "Death Metal Guys":

• The record: track 3 of Laughin' & Cryin' with the Reverend Horton Heat (Yep Roc, 2009; 3:20).^[2]
• The song: about the differences between rockabillies and the title's types, with a fast pace and blistering guitar that approaches the old psychobilly threshold without crossing it.^[1]
• Where it sits: the psychobilly course's catalog puts it on the wrecking pace with the rest of the Reverend's fast side.^[5]

The recording was measured with tools/measure-audio.py, since the tools cannot listen; a tempo site agrees at 138 bpm:^{[3] [4]}

Two tab images of the record's intro and verse lines gave the vocabulary the measurement cannot: the intro's A5 on two strings with single ♭3s between and a half-step bend on the low G; under the verse a lick, not chords — the ♭3 hammered to the 3rd, the open E, the fall on the top string, a pull-off arpeggio over the D; the solo ending in the major pentatonic and sliding down the low E from the 12th into the riff.^[9] Under it all is the wrecking pace — punk's tempo with rockabilly's changes — and the metal the joke is about:^[6]

• Every chord a downstroke; the palm-muted eighths breaking into gallops of sixteenth, sixteenth, eighth; the new chord slid in from a fret below or pushed on the "and" of four.
• In the stops, the band out and the chord hanging with the bar pressed.
• The lead on the blues scale with a bent double stop and a dip to end.
• The metal: palm-muted downpicking at one weight, the gallop, the I–♭III–IV cadence in power chords. The record's chorus makes that move on rockabilly hands that do not change — the joke — and so does this one.

The right hand. Every stroke is down from the wrist. The heel of the picking hand rests on the strings by the bridge, so each chord thumps and keeps its pitch. One bar of the muted hand, in eighths and in the gallop:^[6]

	1	&	2	&	3	&	4	&
Eighths	A5	A5	A5	A5	A5	A5	A5	A5
The gallop	A5 · a5	A5	A5 · a5	A5	A5 · a5	A5	A5 · a5	A5
Stroke	↓ heel on	↓ heel on	↓ heel on	↓ heel on	↓ heel on	↓ heel on	↓ heel on	↓ heel on
Band	kick	slap slap	snare	slap slap	kick	slap slap	snare	slap slap

• The gallop is sixteenth, sixteenth, eighth on one chord — down, down, down — with the middle stroke lighter (the small a5) and the eighth on the beat: "e-and-ONE".
• The ringing hand is the other one: the heel off for the licks and the solos, only the first note of a hammer-on or a fall picked, a double stop one stroke through two strings. It comes with the licks in lesson 5.

The riff: the intro, and the interlude. Four bars on A, played before the singer and again out of the first solo — the psychobilly side of the song. Bar by bar:

• The dyad: the open A and the D string's 2nd fret, on one and three, muted, every stroke down.
• The answer: the ♭3 at the A string's 3rd fret in eighths — a quarter, two eighths, a quarter, two eighths — with the 4th, the open D, after it.
• The bend: the low G at the low E string's 3rd fret pushed a half step and held a beat, the ♭7 leaning on the 7th; the heel off for it.
• The walk: G, G♯ up the low E into the verse.

The rhythm and the dyad-and-♭3 shape are the record's; the 4th in the answer, the held bend and the walk are this song's.

The grips. The power chords are the wrecking pace's: the index on the root on the A string, the ring and pinky on the 5th and the octave two frets up. The shape moves up the neck, muted, every stroke down:

• The twelve: A5 open, D5 at the 5th, E5 the open low E under the same shape.
• The chorus: C5 at the 3rd, B5 at the 2nd; G5 a string down for a riff that wants the ♭VII.
• The riff's A5 is the shape on two strings; the Sun chick is the other hand's, the 3rd as a double stop, ringing.

The twelve and the chorus's changes. The plain bar under every section is the power chord in straight muted eighths. Where each root sits, all under the same shape:

The two cards below are the twelve and the chorus's changes in eighths, nothing else — deterministic, the same every time. They come back as the easy tabs of the verse and the chorus.

The licks. The verse is classic rockabilly at speed, and its vocabulary is the Sun players' — the record's verse guitar plays licks, not chords, its tab shows.^{[9] [5]} Four licks, each drilled alone, all in the rockabilly box at the nut with the heel off:

The box's notes are drawn and drilled first, then the two A licks together as the verse plays them, then each lick on its own card.

The verse. The singer hollers four lines over the twelve — two back to back over the first four bars, one over the D, one over the E with its pickup — and the licks answer: each phrase in the first half of its bar, the lick in the second. Bar by bar:

The singer's line is a holler more than a tune: one note struck three or four times and the step to the blue ♭3, the lines ending low, one leap to the high A. It is one note to a syllable in a baritone's range, C3 to A4 (a woman sings it an octave up); each verse to its own words. The heel comes off for the licks and goes back on for the riff in the last two bars.

The chorus. Twelve bars in power chords, muted, every stroke down — the cadence riff in every A bar, D5 galloped and in eighths, the turn through B5:

The cadence riff, one bar — A5 galloped, then the C5 pushed on the "a" of two and the D5 on the "a" of three, I, ♭III, IV, the move the metal records are built on:^[6]

The pushed chords land a sixteenth before the beat: "a-ONE". The hook is the voice over it — "Pomade and corpse paint" on the E four times and the 3rd held; "Saturday" scoops up a whole step; over the D5s the D four times, and "right" held on the F♯ through the B5.

The ending. After the second solo, eight bars:

The stop is the band out: the A5 struck unmuted on one, two and three, then struck on four and held with the bar pressed a whole step, the heel off the strings for all four.

The solos, and their three figures. Both solos are twelve bars over the verse's twelve in the A minor pentatonic box at the 5th fret — index on 5, ring on 7, pinky on 8 — with the rhythm guitar out, as on the record, so the lead plays alone over the slap bass and the kit. Both are built on three figures that stay put, each heard more than once, so a solo has a shape rather than a scale:

The threes — the pull-off C to A on the e string with the G after it, three to a beat against the sixteenths:

The stab — the root struck twice short and once long, the ♭3 above it, the root again; short, short, long, the ♭7 under it, the root — the psychobilly lead's jab on one note:

The chuck — the double stop on the B and e strings, the ♭7 under the ♭3 at the 8th fret and the 5th under the root at the 5th, in eighths — the Sun players' answer, up in the box:

Between the figures come the song's own marks: the double stop with its lower note bent a whole step, the root shaken, the bend under the E, the bright turn over the E bars, and the slide down the low E from the 12th fret back into the riff. The first solo, bar by bar:

The bright turn. Over the E bars the first solo goes to the E major pentatonic a fret below the box — B, G♯, E, F♯ on the top two strings, the index reaching the 4th fret — with the threes' pull-offs, as the record's lead goes bright there.^[9] The second solo plays the E's own notes there instead: B, G♯, E, G♯, B held.

The second solo. The same three figures over the same twelve, the other way about — the root shaken first, the bend twice over, the threes on three strings, the stab high and an octave down on the D string, and the low root dipped into the ending. Bar by bar:

The hand comes back to the nut on the dip, for the ending's cadence riff.

Three ways through the song. All hundred bars are on one card, in order, the same every time. Take it three ways:

1. Listen first, with the guitar up, until the form is in your ear.
2. Play along with the band and the guitar, a section at a time with the looper, up the ladder 110120130140 bpm.
3. Play it yourself with the guitar part silent and the band and the singer up, so every bar is yours.

Loop the one section that is not clean rather than the whole song; the switch between the hands at the verse's edges is the usual one.

How to make a song in this style. This lesson is six assignments, each played with the band, and each says exactly what to play. They draw on the six habits a song in this style is made of:

1. Two hands, and the switch: the heel on for the riff and the chorus, off for the licks and the solos; every stroke down.
2. A riff on the ♭3 opens the song, comes back between its halves, and ends it alone on one string.
3. The verse is licks, not chords: the singer's holler in the first half of the bar, the Sun lick answering in the second, a walk into every change.
4. The chorus is the metal cadence on rockabilly hands: I, ♭III, IV pushed a sixteenth early, the turn through the II.
5. A solo is three figures that stay put — the threes, the stab, the chuck — with the song's marks between them and the bright turn over the E.
6. The words go one syllable to a note, eight to eleven a line, the last word low; the song moves keys with the same shapes a string over.

Every card in the assignments is the song's own bars — the verse, the riff, the solo and its figures — with some bars left to you, and the riff and the lick in E below. The assignments say what to do with them.

The terms. The words this course uses, one line each:

• The heel is the side of the picking hand resting on the strings by the bridge, the tab's "x" (palm muting).
• The gallop is sixteenth, sixteenth, eighth on one chord, every stroke down, the middle one lighter.
• A power chord is the root, the 5th and the octave on three strings, written A5, D5; the dyad is the riff's A5 on two.
• The riff is the four bars on the dyad and the ♭3 with the bend; the interlude is the riff again between the solo and the last verse.
• A push is a chord struck a sixteenth before the beat, on the "a".
• The cadence riff is the chorus's bar: A5 galloped, then C5 and D5 pushed — I, ♭III, IV.
• A lick is a short ringing phrase from the rockabilly box: the hammer, the fall, the 6th, the slide, the chick, the arpeggio.
• The chick is the Sun players' double stop of the 3rd and the root on the G and B strings, ringing.
• A walk is two or four single notes into the next chord's root in the last beats before a change.
• The threes are the pull-off with a note after it, three notes to a beat against the sixteenths.
• The stab is one note struck short, short, long with the ♭3 above and the ♭7 below.
• The chuck is the double stop on the B and e strings in eighths, the 5th under the root and the ♭7 under the ♭3.
• The bright turn is the E major pentatonic a fret below the box, over the E bars.
• The dip is the vibrato bar pressed a whole step and let back; the stop is the band out under the hits.
• A box is the frets one hand position covers, and the notes of the scale inside it.
• I, IV, V, ♭III, II name chords by their place in the key: in A they are A, D, E, C and B.

The song was written the way every part in this app is written (docs/STYLES.md), the course the way the courses are (docs/COURSES.md), and the prose to docs/WRITING.md.

• Every bar is written note by note in the data module's event language: a dyad or a power chord with the engine's flags (the palm, the dip, the slide in, a free note), a single note, a hammer-on, a pull-off, a slide, a bend, a double stop. The tab draws them and the band plays them like any part. Every card is the song's own bars, the same every time it is opened: before 19 September 2026 the plain verse and the first exercise were the psychobilly course's power-chord part realized by the engine from a seed, and the last lesson's improvising cards were the engine's too; now nothing on the page is the engine's invention.
• The solos were redone on 19 September 2026: the first fell through the box in four whole bars and two tails, the second walked the scale down and up in seven bars, and in both the runs went and three figures that stay put took their place — the threes, the stab and the chuck — with the song's own marks kept where they were: the bend, the shaken root, the bright turn, the slide home, the dip into the ending. The bar-by-bar record of what changed is in docs/POMADE-RESEARCH.md §3.
• The singer's line is written the same way, one note to a syllable of each verse's words (each line's count kept on the words, the other verses fitted to their own counts by the shared rule, sing in js/dive-realize.js), in a baritone's range, C3 to A4. The engine's voice sings it — a tone with no words — on a bus of its own, and the appendix draws it as tab.
• The data has no DOM in it (js/pomade-guide-data.js), so node tools/dive-check.js pomade --print realizes every card as the page does. Every card was read that way against the research: every note inside its window and within a hand, every stroke of the riff down and muted, every note of the licks ringing, the three figures where the solos have them, the solos in their box with the lead alone, and the hundred bars in order, stitched from the section cards.
• A test loads the page in a frame and holds all of it, and the course's shape. It was broken on purpose once and seen to fail.

The sound is the app's own recorded guitar and synthesized band. Tempos are the song's; the record was measured at 139 bpm.