Jeff'sGuitar Tools

Style deep dive 2

Learn psychobilly: the rockabilly under it, what the wrecking crews did with it, and everything the Reverend plays

Psychobilly is a music with a foundation — the rockabilly of 1954 to 1958, Sun Records and the Blue Caps and the Tennessee Two — and a history of what was done to that foundation: the Cramps' horror-movie garage, the Meteors and the Klub Foot, a second wave that went to Rotterdam, Berlin and Copenhagen and doubled the tempo, a third that came out of California with echo on its minor keys, and, in Dallas, the Reverend Horton Heat, who took rockabilly to a punk-rock crowd, says the word was never his, and whose records hold a great deal more than the word: honky-tonk shuffles, Texas swing, the polka of his Corpus Christi youth, straight-eight rock and roll, slow blues, lounge ballads, a bluegrass instrumental. This page takes all of it apart the way a course would — the boom-chicka and its 6th, the pick with the fingers behind it, the slapped upright and its click, the sock rhythm and the sock chords, the oom-pah, the crosspicked roll, the power chords and gallops, the tremolo, the Bigsby, the ♭2 and the ♭5 — and puts it back together as fifteen feels with rhythm, lead and mixed parts in each, every one playable here and a link away from the Jam and Drills tabs; every scale is followed by a riff made from it, and every card carries its fingering and its troubleshooting. Because the genre is many bands rather than one player, the players are set out wave by wave, and the Reverend gets a catalog of his own, song by song, with the feel that covers each. The songs are analyzed as reference points; the lines are written from the idiom, not copied. Every claim is cited at the foot of the page.

The app already had a Psychobilly style with one feel. The fifteen feels on this page were written for this study and added to that style, so the Jam tab's Psychobilly now runs from the Sun boom-chicka to the horror minor by way of the honky-tonk and the polka; the presets are under Psychobilly in its list. The slapped upright, the wire brush on the snare, the Bigsby dip and the finger-snapped note were added to the app's engine for this page and are held by tests (see How this was made). The research behind it is written down in docs/PSYCHOBILLY-RESEARCH.md; the method in docs/COURSES.md.

Start here

The thirty-three lessons are in seven units, in order. Each lesson is a few pieces of this page — a grip, a figure, a scale and the riff made from it, an exercise to take up in tempo, a part to play along with — and ends with something of your own to play.

    1. Where it comes from

    Rockabilly, 1954–58. The foundation was laid in one room. On 5 July 1954 at Sun Studio in Memphis, Elvis Presley, Scotty Moore and Bill Black cut "That's All Right" in a break between takes. They played it live to one track with no drums, at twice the speed of Arthur Crudup's original, with the bass slapped so hard it was the drum.[20] [21]

    These players brought the rest:

    • Scotty Moore played Merle Travis and Chet Atkins on a thumbpick: an alternating bass under chord "chicks", a walking pickup line into every change, 6ths and 9ths. He played through the Ray Butts EchoSonic and its tape echo, the slapback every player on this page uses.[7] [22]
    • Carl Perkins brought finger picking, pedal-steel imitations, palm muting, 6th, 9th and 13th chords, and crosspicking.[19]
    • Cliff Gallup, with Gene Vincent in 1956, held a flatpick with fingerpicks behind it and kept his little finger on the Bigsby. He played triplet pull-offs on open strings, octaves climbing by semitones, the major 6th where a blues player would put the ♭7, and the 6/9 chord to end a solo.[8] [24]
    • Paul Burlison, with a power tube worked loose, played the first distorted guitar on a rock record.[25]
    • Luther Perkins, behind Johnny Cash, played the boom-chicka with the heel of the hand on the low strings. The country side of this music still runs on it.[11] [27]
    • Link Wray added the power chord and distortion with "Rumble" (1958). Dick Dale added tremolo picking and reverb from 1961.[28] [14]

    The word, and the Cramps. "Psychobilly" is Johnny Cash's word, from "One Piece at a Time" (1976), where a "psychobilly Cadillac" is built from stolen parts. The Cramps took it for their New York flyers the same year. They meant it as carny talk, not a description.[1] What they played, on Songs the Lord Taught Us (1979, recorded at Sam Phillips's later studio in Memphis), was rockabilly and garage covers beside originals, with two guitars and no bass: Poison Ivy's twang against Bryan Gregory's fuzz, with Link Wray, Hasil Adkins, Dick Dale and the Ventures under the horror.[30] [29] Ivy said the '50s rockabillies were psycho to begin with — a crazed, sped-up hillbilly boogie. Lux Interior called it half hillbilly and half punk.[29] [2]

    The Meteors and the Klub Foot, 1980–88. P. Paul Fenech and Nigel Lewis left a south London rockabilly band in 1980 to mix horror and science fiction with punk and rockabilly. The neo-rockabilly clubs shunned the Meteors for being too spooky, and they became the first band to call their music psychobilly. In Heaven (1981) and Wreckin' Crew (1983) are the landmark records. Their fans, the wrecking crew, invented the dance, and the band's apolitical rule became the scene's.[31] [1] [32] The scene's home was the Klub Foot, in the Clarendon Hotel in Hammersmith, from 1982 until the building came down in 1988. The Meteors, Demented Are Go, Guana Batz, Batmobile, the Sting-rays and King Kurt played there, and the six volumes of Stomping at the Klub Foot are its record.[55] [54] [3]

    The second wave, the third, and Dallas. Demented Are Go's In Sickness & In Health (1986) opened a second wave that crossed the water: Batmobile in Rotterdam, Mad Sin in Berlin, the Nekromantix in Copenhagen with Kim Nekroman's coffin-shaped bass, and the Quakes in Buffalo, who had to move to London to find a scene.[35] [56] [57] [36] [58] The third wave, from the mid-1990s, put the music in southern California — Tiger Army out of Berkeley, HorrorPops from Copenhagen, Hellcat Records — and in Australia, where the Living End's "Prisoner of Society" was the decade's best-selling Australian single.[1] [39] [40]

    In Dallas, James C. Heath of Corpus Christi was christened Reverend Horton Heat in 1985 by the owner of the Deep Ellum club he worked at. He had seen the Cramps around 1979 expecting punk, heard rockabilly licks on a fuzzed-out Duane Eddy guitar, and decided to take rockabilly to a punk rock crowd.[44] [63] [64] [76] "Psychobilly Freakout" (1990) taught American audiences the word. Heath has said ever since that he leads a rockabilly band turned up, not a psychobilly band, because he can also play country and blues. That is why he is all over this page: his playing covers every feel in it.[15b] [63] Kimberly Kattari's decade of fieldwork (Psychobilly: Subcultural Survival, 2020) reads the scene as a response to marginalisation, and describes the music as wild energy and a fast tempo.[61]

    The Reverend's own roots. The first song he tried to learn was "Folsom Prison Blues". He thought he was learning Johnny Cash and was learning Luther Perkins.[76] [50]

    • Corpus Christi: He played in bands with Mexican-Americans and grew up on Tex-Mex and conjunto. That is why the polka is one of this page's feels.[71]
    • The blues: He was a blues kid who preferred the late-'50s Chess records — Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters — and learned from a B.B. King instructional book.[75] [96] [64]
    • Country: His father played Buck Owens. The hands he still studies are Chet Atkins and Merle Travis. Ray Price and Willie Nelson were the models for the 2009 record, and Ronnie Dawson and Carl Perkins are on the covers album.[77] [68] [78]
    • Straight eighths: He names Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. "That's kind of my thing."[71] [75]

    2. The hands: the boom-chicka, the pick and the fingers, the slapped bass, the Bigsby, the crosspick

    The boom-chicka. One hand plays the bass and the chord. The thumb — or the pick, held as a thumb — plays the root on a bass string on the beat and the 5th on the next beat, palm-muted. The fingers strike the top three strings on the swung "and". That is the boom and the chicka, the rhythm of every Sun side and of the country two-step.[4] [5]

    On E the chicka is G♯, B and E. Put the pinky on the B string's 2nd fret and it becomes E6. E, E6, E, E6 is the sound of "Blue Suede Shoes" and everything after it. A fret higher, the ♭7, is the chicka on the way to the IV.[5]

    Other hands play the same figure differently:

    • Luther Perkins muted the three low strings under the heel and killed the chord on the "and", so the boom is a thud and the chick a click. He played that on everything Cash cut.[11] [27]
    • Buck Owens chopped the chord on two and four instead — the sock — over Ray Price's walking bass.
    • The bajo sexto plays the bass note on the beat and the chord on the "and", straight.
    • Bluegrass plays the boom-chick with the bass notes ringing.

    The pick with the fingers behind it. Moore played with a thumbpick and fingers in the Travis and Atkins way. Gallup held a flatpick with metal fingerpicks on the middle and ring fingers. Setzer's rockabilly is hybrid picking, with economy picking for the arpeggios. Heath describes his own as hybrid style with a flatpick, crosspicked for fast banjo-style sixteenths, with a heavy pick on .010s.[7] [8] [24] [9b] [13] [13b] Travis picking proper alternates two bass notes with the thumb, palm-muted, while the fingers pick melody notes out of the chord shape. Travis used one finger and Atkins used three.[89]

    The fingers do two things the pick cannot:

    • They pluck a treble string while the pick holds the bass. Such a note is marked m in the tab.
    • They snap a note: the chicken-pickin' pop the country side lives on, where the middle finger pulls the string out and lets it go. It is marked pop.[90]

    Heath also uses open strings. Let one ring through a chord change and it becomes a different chord: "I'm a cheater."[48] Every card says which hand it is written for. The boom-chicka, the sock, the oom-pah and the boogie use the pick; the Travis card uses thumb and fingers; the chicken pickin', the crooner's arpeggios and the crosspick use the pick with the fingers behind it.

    The slapped bass, and the kit. The upright is the sound. The player pulls the string out and lets it go, so it snaps back against the fingerboard and the note has a click on its front. Between the notes, the hand slaps the strings for a click with no pitch, where the snare lands. Rockabilly plays the single slap — a note on the beat and the slap on the "and" — and psychobilly plays double and triple slaps, at tempos that need the "drag triplet".[17] [38] Bill Black is the first name. Kim Nekroman, Geoff Kresge, Scott Owen and Jimbo Wallace are the fast ones.[38] [41] [60]

    The kit is small:[16] [21] [84]

    • The shuffle uses a swung ride, the kick on all four beats, and the snare on two and four.
    • The train beat is sixteenths on the snare with brushes.
    • The stomp is a straight backbeat at speed, with spooky tom fills for drama.
    • Bakersfield moves the shuffle to a closed hi-hat with a half-rimshot on the offbeat.
    • The bluegrass two has no kit at all.

    The Bigsby. Gallup kept his little finger on the bar while the others picked. Setzer's stabs get subtle dips on the whammy bar, since the Bigsby moves the pitch only a little. Heath's signature 6120 has one, and he asked for locking tuners because of it.[8] [9] [91] [13] In the tab, dip means the chord or note is pulled a semitone or two flat over a tenth of a second and let back. bar~ is the slow shake of a held chord.

    Crosspicking: the banjo on a flatpick. This is the hand Heath names most often. He uses it for fast banjo-style sixteenths in the Travis and Atkins way, and he gives the steps for the lick on "Revival": hold a three-note chord, hit a note with the flatpick, pull up with a finger for the middle note, come back over the middle string and hit the high string with the flatpick, pull up with the finger again, then down with the flatpick.[13b]

    Bluegrass players crosspick with the flatpick alone. It is a rolling, syncopated pattern across three strings: three pitches in a four-pulse rhythm, on the 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings, 4-3-2, 4-3-2, 4-2 to the bar, picked down-up-down-up or down-down-up for the banjo's bounce. George Shuffler invented it for the Stanley Brothers, and Doc Watson, Clarence White and Tony Rice took it up. The melody gets displaced onto the offbeats.[88] The bluegrass feel on this page is that roll over the boom-chick.

    The grips

    Most of these grips are the open chords of E, A and G with one finger moved. The rest are the swing side's jazz grips with the root on the A string, the three-note sock chords on the low strings, the boogie hand, the crooner's barre, and the Chess comp's 13th. Where the hand is not obvious — the pinky on the chicka, the ring finger's barre on the 9th, the muted A string of a sock chord, the pinky's reach for the boogie's 6th — a line under the grip says where the other fingers go.

    The changes, with the grips

    The forms each feel runs on, with the chords alone — no fills or runs — so the hand learns the changes before the lines between them.

    3. The scales: where the notes live, box by box, each with its riff

    The Sun box. Rockabilly lines are built on chords rather than scales. Moore's note choices came from the chord under his hand, and the box they come from is the major pentatonic of that chord, with the ♭3 hammered up to the 3rd and the 6th leaned on.[6] [5] Gallup favored the major 6th over the bluesier ♭7, and a half-step bend from the ♭3 was as far as he bent.[8]

    The blues scale and the surf. The stomp's riff and the psychobilly lead use the minor pentatonic with the ♭5 let through, in the box at the 12th fret or with the same notes at the nut. The surf side adds Dick Dale's tremolo, chromatic runs and dissonant intervals: the ♭2 leaned on against the root, and a descent by semitones.[12] [14] Dale's family's Arabic music shaped surf music. "Misirlou" is a folk tune from that world, and the ♭2 and the 3rd together are its color.[14]

    The swing side: Mixolydian, bebop, the 6/9. Over a 7th chord the scale is the Mixolydian. Setzer adds the major 7th between the root and the ♭7, which makes the bebop scale, so a line runs by semitones and lands its chord tones on the beat.[9b] The Strut walks a minor key down by whole steps through 7th chords — Cm, B♭7, A♭7, G7 — in swung eighths.[10] Western swing's lead is the chord's arpeggio with the 6th and the 9th in it, which is the 6/9 chord spread along the neck. The notes a semitone under the chord tones are passed through, as the twin guitars and Shamblin's solos did.[81] [80]

    The country boxes: Bakersfield and the accordion. Don Rich's notes over the open A are the major pentatonic mixed with the blues scale, with the ♭3 and the ♭5 passed through and the open strings ringing on the low end. He plays 3rds on the B and high E strings, 6ths on the G and high E, and bends the 2nd up to the 3rd inside a chord the way a pedal steel would. Buck told him to play something simple.[85] [86] The polka's tune belongs to the accordion and the trumpets, in parallel 3rds. On the guitar that is the major scale on two adjacent strings, one downstroke per pair.[87] [67]

    Berry's box, the crooner's, B.B.'s, and the roll's three strings.[92] [96] [88]

    • Rock and roll uses the minor pentatonic over the major chords in the E shape at the 8th fret, in the piano's key of C, with the major 3rd let in and Berry's 4ths on the top two strings under the index.
    • The lounge ballad uses the natural minor in the position its barre chords sit in, with the harmonic minor's 7th over the V.
    • The slow blues uses the box the B.B. King book teaches: the root on the B string under the index at the 10th fret, with the 2nd, ♭3, 4th, 5th and 6th around it.
    • The crosspick uses three open strings and the G run.

    The horror minor. The third wave's minor keys are the natural minor with the V made a 7th, so the major 7th sounds against it: the harmonic minor's pull, with the ♭6 beside it. Nick 13 names Duane Eddy first among his influences, and the lines are Eddy's low-string twang with the echo on it.[18] The 7th, the ♭2 and the ♭5 are written as free notes.

    The shapes on the neck, and the drills

    Each figure is drawn in the key of the feel it belongs to. The ringed notes are the roots. A hollow note is a color let in beside the box, and a dimmed note is in the scale but not in the chord it is played over. Under each figure the box is played as a drill over its feel's band, then as a riff written from it note by note, so the scale is learned as music. Every note of the riff is the drill's or is marked as the one note outside it, and every riff ends on the root.

    The Sun box, and the ♭3 slid in

    The surf and stomp box at the 12th, and the surf color

    The jump side

    The bebop scale, and the Strut's walk-down

    The horror minor

    The chicken-pickin' box

    The Bakersfield box

    The swing box, and the sock chords walking

    The accordion box

    The Berry box

    The crooner's box

    The B.B. box

    The roll's three strings and the G run

    4. Exercises

    Each exercise is fixed — the same tab every time — so it can be learned note for note. Clean at the starting tempo first, then turn it up.

    5. The feels: rhythm, lead, and both at once

    Each feel below is a way of playing the sources describe, and its cards sit beside it. The rhythm card is the part the engine plays over the feel's band, with the upright snapped and slapped and the brushes or the rim click where the feel has them. The lead card is a line written against the chord it sits on. The mixed card plays the figure in the figure bars and a lead line in about half the fill bars, the way the one guitarist in a trio does both.

    The rockabilly and swing parts stay major, with the 6th, the 9th and the ♭3 passing. The wrecking, surf and rock and roll parts play the blues scale over the major chords. The stomp, the horror minor and the ballad stay in their keys with the ♭2, the ♭5 and the harmonic 7th let in.

    Boom-chicka (the Sun way)

    This is the foundation of everything on this page.[4] [5] [6] [7]

    • Rhythm: The thumb (or the pick) plays the root and the 5th on the bass strings, palm-muted, on the beats. The fingers strike the top three strings on the swung "and", with the 6th on the B string every other time, so E becomes E6 and back.
    • Lead: Moore's double stops on the G and B strings with the ♭3 hammered to the 3rd, and the walking pickup line — 5th, 6th, ♭7, 7 — into every change.
    • Band: The bass walks 1–3–5–6, snapped, with the slap on every upbeat. The kick plays all four beats, the snare plays two and four, and the ride swings. Slapback on everything.

    Jump and swing (the Blue Caps and Martini way)

    This is rockabilly's jazz side, the one Setzer and Heath both lean on.[9] [8] [46]

    • Rhythm: The rhythm is four chords to the bar on the top strings with the 6th on top, a stab on the "and" of two with the Bigsby pressed, and 9ths on the IV and the V.
    • Lead: Cliff Gallup's language: open-string triplet pull-offs, octaves climbing by semitones, the major 6th where a blues player would put the ♭7, and a half-step bend at most.
    • Band: The band is a walking bass in quarters and a swung ride.

    Stray descent (the Strut way)

    This is the revival's slow one: a minor key walking down by whole steps through 7th chords to the V, in swung eighths at a strut's pace.[10] [9] [9b]

    • Rhythm: The chords are stabbed on two and four, with the Bigsby pressed on the way into the change.
    • Lead: Bebop over rockabilly, which is what the sources hear in Setzer's lines: the Mixolydian with the major 7th passing, chromatic approaches, pull-offs on two strings, economy-picked arpeggios.
    • Band: The bass plays a two-feel with the slap on the backbeat.

    Train two-step (the Cash and country way)

    This is the country in the Reverend's "country-fed punkabilly". "Bales of Cocaine" is the record's own two-step, at 148 bpm.[11] [16] [13b] [70b]

    • Rhythm: The rhythm is Luther Perkins's figure: the bass note on the beat with the heel of the hand on the strings, the muted chord on the "and", and the 5th on the next beat.
    • Lead: The lead is chicken pickin': notes snapped by the fingers, 6ths on the D and B strings, and the 2nd bent to the 3rd the way a steel would.
    • Band: The band plays the train beat: brushes in sixteenths on the snare with the backbeat struck, the kick on one and three, and the bass in two with the slap on two and four.

    Honky-tonk shuffle (the Cowboy Love way)

    This is the country in the Reverend's country. Ray Price moved the country beat from 2/4 to 4/4 with a walking bass ("Crazy Arms", 1956), and Buck Owens built the Bakersfield band on it, with the shuffle on a closed hi-hat and a half-rimshot on the offbeat. "Cowboy Love", "Honky Tonk Girl", "Someone in Heaven" and the Ernest Tubb cover are the Reverend's. The feel is written in A at the nut, where the open strings give the Bakersfield hand its 3rds and its bend.[83] [84] [86] [85] [70h]

    • Rhythm: Buck's: the root on one, the chord chopped short on two and four with the heel on it (the sock), the 5th on three, and a bass run into every change.
    • Lead: The lead is Don Rich's Telecaster: 3rds on the B and high E strings, 6ths on the G and high E, and the 2nd bent up to the 3rd under a held note the way a pedal steel would. His rule was to play something simple.

    Texas swing (the Eat Steak way)

    This is the Texas swing under the Reverend's country ditties and his swing side: "Eat Steak" and "Drinkin' and Smokin' Cigarettes".[81] [80] [82] [72] [70a] [67]

    • Rhythm: Western swing as Eldon Shamblin played it for Bob Wills: four to the bar in brisk downstrokes with two and four a little heavier, three-note chords on the low strings with the A string muted, the chord slid in from a fret below, and runs in the rhythm chords to keep up with the bassist.
    • Form: The I–VI–II–V the standards run on, with 7ths all the way round so the three-note grip stays one shape.
    • Lead: The 6/9 arpeggio, the major 6th where a blues player would put the ♭7, chromatic approaches, and 6ths on two strings the way the twin guitars harmonized.
    • Band: The band is a walking bass in four and a swung ride.

    Tex-Mex polka (the Saguaro way)

    This is the Corpus Christi in the Reverend: the conjunto polka the bands of his youth played. The button accordion takes the melody, the bajo sexto plays bass notes and chord chops, and it is a bright 2/4 with the oom-pah bass on I, IV and V. PopMatters hears it under the Nashville country mood of "Ain't No Saguaro in Texas". The feel is the Saguaro way of playing; its notes are its own.[87] [71] [67] [68]

    • Rhythm: The bajo sexto's: the root on the beat, the 5th on the next, the chord chopped on every "and" as a short upstroke, straight, and the country bass run into each change.
    • Lead: The lead is the accordion's and the trumpets': the major scale in parallel 3rds on two adjacent strings, a triplet pickup, and the chop between phrases.
    • Band: The kick plays every beat, and the snare and the slap play every "and".

    Bluegrass crosspick (the Show Pony way)

    This is the bluegrass instrumental on a Reverend Horton Heat record — the fleet-fingered "Show Pony", the country-pickin' closer in Chet Atkins's way — and the hand behind it in his own words, the crosspick.[70g] [67] [13b] [88]

    • Rhythm: The boom-chick: the root on one ringing, the chord on two, the 5th on three, the chord on four, and the G run into the changes: root, 2nd, ♭3, 3rd, 5th, octave.
    • Lead: The roll itself, on three strings of the chord side by side: D, G and B over the G; G, B and high E over the C and the D7. It is picked 4-3-2, 4-3-2, 4-2 in eighths, so the melody falls off the beat. The exercise is to take the tempo up in steps.
    • Band: There are no drums: the upright plays in two and the brush plays the chop.

    Straight-eight rock and roll (the Jerry Lee way)

    "Straight 8ths like Jerry Lee Lewis. That's kind of my thing." This is the rock and roll of 1955, when R&B players sped up the boogie-woogie shuffle into a relentless chuck-chuck-chuck of eighths — Little Richard's right hand, Chuck Berry's guitar. The Reverend's records keep going back to it: the Jerry Lee boogie of "Whole New Life", "Big D Boogie Woogie", the Professor Longhair lifts of "Tchoupitoulas Street", Jimmy Preston's "Rock the Joint".[75] [92] [70j] [70f] [79]

    • Rhythm: The guitar plays the piano's left hand — root and 5th, root and 6th, root and ♭7 in straight eighths on the low strings with the heel on them — or its right hand, the triad pumped on every eighth.
    • Lead: Berry's double stops on the top two strings with the lower note bent.
    • Band: The bass walks the boogie in snapped eighths. The kick plays one and three, the snare cracks two and four, and the comp plays the offbeats where the piano would be.

    Slow blues in 12/8 (the Gin and Tonic way)

    Heath was a blues kid who preferred the late-'50s Chess records, and he puts a blues at the end of a side: "Gin and Tonic Blues" with its tape trick, "Bath-Water Blues", the minor-key "Loaded Gun". This is the slow twelve in 12/8 with the quick change, the way a Chicago trio plays it. The feel is written in A; the records' keys are not in the sources.[75] [96] [64] [70b] [94]

    • Rhythm: The 13th and 9th grips slide in from a fret below on one and are struck again short on three, with the bass walked into every change on the last beat's triplet. Or the two-string shuffle of the Chess rhythm guitars: root and 5th, root and 6th on adjacent strings in triplets, muted.
    • Lead: The lead plays the B.B. box at the 10th fret: the root on the B string shaken with a fast, narrow vibrato, the ♭3 curled toward the 3rd, the 4th bent to the 5th, the 6th and the 2nd let in as the sweet notes, and one note struck three times.
    • Band: The kick on one and three, the ride in triplets, the bass in two with the walk.

    Lounge ballad in a minor key (the Wildest Dreams way)

    These are the gentle ballads beside the rockers — the lounge territory the reviews keep finding, the suave entertainer of the swing-side record — as a guitar plays them in a trio. "In Your Wildest Dreams" is Cm to G with the A♭ in the chorus, with a swaying rhythm and a picked intro.[71] [69] [94] [13]

    • Rhythm: The rhythm is in a minor key in a slow 12/8. The chord is rolled as an arpeggio in triplets, with the pick on the bass strings and the fingers on the rest, the 6th and the 9th let in for the crooner's colors, and the whole chord struck and held under the Bigsby's slow shake.
    • Lead: A melody with slides into its notes, 6ths on two strings, and wide vibrato.
    • Band: The brushes keep the triplets, the bass plays in two with long notes, and jazz grips are comped quietly. Slapback on everything, and room.

    Psychobilly stomp (the Meteors way)

    This is the first wave's own rhythm: rockabilly's eighths straightened out and doubled in weight, in a minor key, at a pace the Sun players never went.[1] [12] [17] [31]

    • Rhythm: Power chords palm-muted on the low strings, with the riff underneath in the minor pentatonic, the ♭5 let through and the ♭2 leaned on for menace. A stop-time bar hits the one and leaves the guitar alone with the crowd.
    • Lead: The lead is tremolo-picked and chromatic.
    • Band: The kick on every beat, the snare hard on two and four, and the bass snapped on the beat with two slaps on the sixteenths after it: the psychobilly double slap.

    Wrecking pace (the second wave)

    This is punk's tempo with rockabilly's changes: the twelve bars at over 200 bpm. The Reverend's "Wiggle Stick", "Death Metal Guys", "Smell of Gasoline" and "Slow" (a rockabilly tune with a speed metal engine) are this side of him.[12] [17] [2] [3] [69] [67]

    • Rhythm: Every chord is a downstroke, and the palm-muted eighths break into gallops of sixteenth, sixteenth, eighth.
    • Lead: The blues scale in sixteenths across the strings, a bent double stop, and a dip to end.
    • Band: The kick plays one and three, the snare plays two and four at full weight, and the bass plays root and 5th with two slaps after every note: the drag triplet the slap-bass columns say the genre needs.

    Surf-billy (the Freakout way)

    This is the surf in psychobilly and in the Reverend's instrumentals: "Big Sky", "Victory Lap", "Zombie Dumb", and the Dick Dale-isms of "Duel at the Two O'Clock Bell".[14] [15] [15b] [74] [70g]

    • Rhythm: The rhythm is the picking hand working as a drum — sixteenth-note tremolo on the low strings, Dick Dale's "pulsation" — with the twelve bars' changes under it.
    • Lead: The lead is a dive on the bar at the end of a phrase, a rake into the high root, and the descent by semitones surf players use for drama.
    • Band: The surf beat — kick on one, the "and" of two, and three — with the tom roll standing in for the drum break on the last bar. The bass plays snapped eighths.

    Horror-minor twang (the third wave)

    This is the third wave's minor key, built on Duane Eddy's twang, which Nick 13 names first among his influences and Heath heard fuzzed-out in the Cramps.[18] [18b] [63]

    • Rhythm: Arpeggiated chords in eighths under the voice, on the minor key's own chords with the V as a 7th so the harmonic minor's major 7th sounds against it. The Bigsby dips at the end of a line.
    • Lead: The lead is a melody played clean on the low strings with the slapback on it.
    • Band: The band is a trio, driving straight: kick on one and three, snare on two and four, the bass in snapped eighths with a slap here and there, and no comp.

    6. The players, wave by wave

    This is a genre rather than a player, so the roster matters. The table says who played, where, what they played, and which records show it: the foundation, the country, swing and blues players behind the Reverend, the precursors and the revival, and the three waves. The Reverend has a row of his own. His side of the story is in section 1, his gear in section 2, and his records in the songs and the catalog.

    7. The songs, as reference points — and the Reverend's catalog by style

    The table says what happens in each record, with its key and feel where the sources give them, its form, and the devices to listen for. The parts on this page draw on the way of playing in each record and copy none of its lines. Tempos from the tempo sites are read as half- or double-time where a fast two is obviously meant. Chord progressions are common stock, so the forms are given as they are, under Psychobilly in the Jam tab's presets. The Reverend's records are grouped by the side of him they show.

    The catalog by style

    The catalog lists every song of the Reverend Horton Heat's that a source describes, album by album, with the style the source gives it and the feel of this course that covers that way of playing. A song no source describes is not here: the tools that made this page cannot listen, so a style is only claimed where it was read. The sources describe fifteen ways of playing on these records: the eight the first version of this course had, and seven added for the styles the catalog turned up — the honky-tonk shuffle, Texas swing, the Tex-Mex polka, straight-eight rock and roll, the lounge ballad, the slow blues, and the bluegrass crosspick. Three things are named and not covered: a piano rag, an exotica number, and a pedal-steel piece. The "jungle beat" of "Marijuana" waits on a kit with toms.[70] [69] [67] [72] [94]

    8. Studies

    The studies are whole forms to play through: the presets from the Jam tab's Psychobilly list, with a part from the library realized over each, its fills and lead lines rolled once and fixed. They are not the songs; they are the app's own writing over the forms the music runs on. The last lesson leaves their fill bars to you.

    9. For teachers

    Every fingering on this page says whether the sources describe it or it is the usual way (the tag under each grip), and every claim about the records is cited. The author never heard the playing itself (see How this was made), so treat the tab as an account of the idiom, not a transcription.

    Common faults, and how to hear them

    DeviceWhat goes wrongWhat to listen for
    The boom-chickaThe boom rings instead of thudding; the chicka comes early, on the beat, or lands as a full strum of six strings.Play a short bass note under the heel, then three strings only, late, and quieter than the boom.
    The 6thThe pinky lands late, so the chicka comes out twice; or it stays down, so every chicka is E6.Play E, E6, E, E6 with the pinky moving with the stroke, so the plain E is audible in between.
    The thumb and the fingersThe thumb stops when the fingers move; the fingers pluck a string the thumb is on.Keep root, 5th, root, 5th unbroken for a whole bar with the fingers playing above them.
    The walking pickup lineThe line starts on the wrong beat and arrives early or late; the 7 is played as the ♭7.5th, 6th, ♭7, 7 in the last two beats, the new root exactly on the One.
    The Bigsby dipThe bar goes too far (a tone or more) or comes back late, so the next beat is flat.A semitone down and back within the beat; the next chord in tune.
    The 9th and the 6/9The ring-finger bar leaves the top string dead; the 6/9 is played as a plain 6th.Keep three strings under the bar all sounding, with the 9th on top of the 6/9 heard against the root.
    Luther's muteThe heel is too far from the bridge, so the bass strings die instead of thudding; the chick rings.A thud with pitch, a chick with none.
    Chicken pickin'The popped notes are quieter than the picked ones, or the snap comes with a scrape.Make the popped note louder and brighter than the picked one beside it, and the same length.
    The sockThe chop on two and four rings on, or the heel lands after the pick; the shuffle straightens out.A chop that is dead by the "and", on the number, over a walking bass that swings.
    The steel bendThe 2nd is bent short of the 3rd, or the held note above it dies under the bending finger.Fret the target first, then bend to it, with the open E ringing above the bend all the way.
    The sock chordsThe 5th string rings under the three-note grip; the pick sweeps the top strings too; the change gaps.Play three strings and no more, with the A string dead under the root's finger, and move the hand whole on one.
    The polka chopThe chop on the "and" rings, or the oom-pah swings.A click on every "and", straight, the bass note under the heel on every beat.
    The crosspick rollThe pick loses its pattern when the chord changes; the eighths are uneven; the melody note is lost in the roll.4-3-2, 4-3-2, 4-2 without a change, the melody a hair louder wherever it falls.
    The boogie pinkyThe 6th arrives late from the side; the eighths swing; the pair sounds one string.The index holding the root, the pinky dropping from above on time, straight eighths that do not bounce.
    The crooner's arpeggioThe plucked notes are louder than the picked; the barre buzzes; the bar pulls the chord out of tune.Every note the same weight, the chord clean under the shake, a quarter tone of bar at most.
    The B.B. stingThe vibrato is a slow wobble, or starts before the note has arrived; the bend is flat.Hold the note dead still, then tremble the wrist fast and narrow; every bend is at its target before the shake.
    The muted eighths and the gallopUpstrokes creep in; the gallop's two sixteenths are uneven; the mute lifts as the tempo rises.Play every stroke down with the sixteenths equal, and keep the heel on the strings at 200 bpm.
    Tremolo pickingPlayed from the elbow, so it tires and slows; the pick too deep, so it catches.Play an even pulse from the wrist for a bar with the pick shallow and the volume steady.
    The ♭2 and the ♭5Landed on and held, so they sound like mistakes rather than menace.Leaned on and left: the ♭2 against the root for a beat, the ♭5 slid through.
    Playing with the slapThe chord lands on the click instead of the note; the guitar drags behind the drag triplet.The downstroke on the bass note, the clicks after it, the guitar ahead of the beat if anything.

    When it is learned

    • The boom-chicka holds steady at 120 bpm for eight bars on E, A and B7 without looking, then at 176 bpm with the band.
    • The 6th and the ♭7 land in the chicka on cue, E–E6–E7–E6, with the pinky moving with the stroke.
    • The thumb alternates root and 5th unbroken while the fingers play a melody above it, in two keys.
    • The walking pickup line leads into every change of a twelve-bar at 176 bpm, with the new root on the beat.
    • Four to the bar holds with the 6/9 and the stab dipped on the "and of 2", at 152 bpm, swung.
    • Gallup's triplet pull-offs are even at 152 bpm, and a run of octaves climbs by semitones.
    • The strut's walk-down holds with the stabs on two and four and the bar on the way into each change.
    • Luther's figure runs under the brushes at 168 bpm, with the boom a thud and the chick dead.
    • Chicken-pickin' pops are louder than the picked notes beside them, and the 2nd bends to the 3rd in pitch under a held note.
    • The sock on two and four is dead by the "and" at 132 bpm on A, D and E7 over the walking bass, and the country run leads into every change.
    • The sock chords go four to the bar round the circle at 184 bpm, three strings each, two and four heavier, with the runs in the last two beats.
    • The oom-pah runs straight at 176 bpm with a click on every "and", and the accordion's 3rds are in tune in one stroke each.
    • The roll (4-3-2, 4-3-2, 4-2) holds without a change at 150 bpm through G, C and D7, and the G run leads into every change.
    • The boogie in straight eighths holds at 176 bpm on C, F and G7 with the pinky reaching the 6th on time, and Berry's bent 4th arrives in pitch.
    • The slow twelve is comped with the 13th and the 9ths slid in and the bass walked into every change, at 62 bpm in 12/8.
    • The crooner's arpeggio is even in slow triplets with pick and fingers, and the held chord shakes under the bar without going out of tune.
    • Muted downstroke eighths are even at 192 bpm, then the gallops are even at 212 bpm, with the heel never lifting.
    • A bar of tremolo picking holds at 164 bpm as a pulse, then the riff falls to the ♭3.
    • The twang line goes clean into the echo, with the 5th shaken and the 7th over the V, in E minor and in A minor.
    • Any study on this page plays through twice at its tempo with the band, with the fill bars left to you.

    10. How this was made

    What was done, and what was not. Claude (an AI model, in Claude Code) wrote this page, the fifteen feels in the app's Psychobilly style, its presets, the grips tagged in the Chord finder and the engine's new sounds at the owner's request in September 2026 — first as eight feels and eight lessons, then rebuilt to the method of docs/COURSES.md and widened to every style the Reverend Horton Heat's records are described as playing (docs/PSYCHOBILLY-RESEARCH.md).

    The research was reading. The sources below were fetched and read as text: the Wikipedia articles on the genre, the players, the bands, the records, western swing, the conjunto and crosspicking; the A.V. Club's guide and HTF's history; the guitar lessons (Premier Guitar, TrueFire, Guitar Wiz, Riffhard, Jon MacLennan, Acoustic Guitar, Guitar World); Keith Wyatt on Cliff Gallup; Guitar World and Vintage Guitar on Setzer, Buck Owens and Heath, read through a reader proxy; Dr. D's slap-bass columns; the rockabilly drumming pages; Jim Heath's interviews from 2002 to 2019; the album reviews at AllMusic, Trouser Press, PopMatters, Sputnikmusic, Glide and The Fire Note, which are where the catalog's styles come from; P. Paul Fenech's and Nick 13's interviews; the tab and tempo sites; and the publisher's description of Kimberly Kattari's book.

    No recordings were listened to and no videos were watched. The video lessons the course links, including Jim Heath's own four-part guitar.com lesson, are named by their titles and not relied on. Where a fact came only from a search engine's summary, the source list says so. The rest is the model's own knowledge of the music, checked against the sources where they overlap.

    The parts were written the way every part in this app is written (docs/STYLES.md): from the idiom — where the weight falls, which strings, which notes, how a phrase ends — never from a transcription, and with no signature riff reproduced. The boom-chicka, the walking pickup line, the twelve-bar, the walk-down by whole steps, the sock, the oom-pah, the 5–6 boogie, the crosspick roll, the B.B. box and the gallop are the common property of the music.

    • Each part is a figure with variants, fills that know whether the next bar changes, lead lines, and a beginner's version, written in the interval notation the engine realizes onto the neck.
    • The engine gained what these parts needed: the 6th kept as a 6th in the chicka in every reading, the Bigsby dip, the finger-snapped note, and in the band the snapped bass note, the slap between the notes and the wire brush on the snare. A test holds each, and each test was broken on purpose and seen to fail.
    • This page, the Hendrix page and the Stevie Ray Vaughan page run on one module (js/deep-dive.js). The data has no DOM in it (js/psychobilly-guide-data.js), so node tools/dive-check.js psychobilly --print realizes every card as the page does. The rebuild read every card that way and found six faults: the swing feel's I was a 6th chord spread over two skipped strings; the swing lead was an octave low; the polka's top 3rds needed a fret the nut window has not got; a steel bend was placed on the open B string and so dropped; the rock and roll lead's double stops folded onto the bass strings; and a walk-up needed a reach. All were fixed before the page was drawn.
    • The tabs are realizations rolled from a fixed seed, so the page reads the same each time. The changes, the exercises and the studies are fixed outright. The sound is the app's own recorded guitar and synthesized band. Tempos are approximate and keys are as fingered.

    "The Saguaro way" or "the Eat Steak way" means the way of playing on that record, not its notes. The prose is written to docs/WRITING.md.

    11. Sources

    Numbered as cited above; the first sixty-six are the first version's, 67 on were read for the rebuild. "Read" means the page was fetched and read as text; "summary" means only a search engine's summary could be read; "through a reader proxy" means the page was read through a text-extraction service.