Lauren Bateman teaches how to play the iconic intro lick to Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman." She breaks the lick into a five-note partial riff (played twice) and then adds three notes to complete the phrase. The lesson emphasizes using the first and third fingers, the specific frets/strings (open high E, 4th fret high E, 2nd fret on the A string, open D), and a precise picking pattern; Bateman also highlights that the lick's speed makes it tricky and shows close-up shots of finger placement and picking technique.
Questions this video answers
April 21, 2020.
Open high E, open high E, 4th fret high E (3rd finger), 2nd fret on the A string (1st finger), open D (sequence: open, open, 4, 2, open).
Down, up, down, down, down, up, down, up (first fragment: down, up, down, down, down; then add up/down sequence to finish).
Chapters
Hey, everybody, welcome back. Lauren Bateman here. And we're gonna do a really cool intro lick by Roy Orbison for Pretty Woman. Kind of a really, really cool lick. I don't know why this one sometimes is like a tongue twister for me. I do things kind of backwards and upside down. I think it's just the lick in itself. But anywho. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through how to play this lick. I'll show you some close ups as well so that you can see what I'm playing. But. But overall it's mostly using our first finger and our third finger. So let's get into how to play this lick before we get into the actual tutorial. Don't forget to like the video. Leave me a nice comment. And if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet, go right ahead and do that. So what we're going to do is we're first going to go over the first part of the lick, which is kind of an intro, and it's half of the full lick. It's basically five notes. So let's talk about that first. And then we're going to go into playing the floor thing. So the main riff starts off, open, E string. And we're going to play open, open, and then fourth fret on the top string with our third finger. So this entire lick is going to be played with the first and third fingers. Very, very popular thing to do. So we got open, open four on the top string and we're picking that down, up, down. So down, up, down, open, open four, Open, open four. Okay, so down, up, down. Now we're going to move down to the next string with a down pick. And our first finger is going to play the second fret on the fifth string. So now we've got open, open four, two. And then we're going to pick down one more time to the D string. We have an open D. Our entire intro lick, it's those five notes. So it's open, open, four, two, open.
One more time, down, up, down, down, down. So if we get the timing of it, it is.
It's kind of how fast it's played.
And I think that's what adds to kind of the trickiness of, of this lick is the speed at which it's played. Because when you play it slowly, it's actually relatively easy. When you pick up the speed, your fingers sometimes get tripped up. So let me just go in for a close up on that first part so that you can see exactly what I'm doing. And then we'll come out and we'll finish the rest of the lick. Alright, here I am, just so you can see what I'm doing. So we've got open, open on the picking hand.
Then four with the third finger open, open four, and then two with our first finger and then open D string. So it's.
So you do that twice and then after that we're going to add another three notes to the end of that lick to finish it up. So you play that kind of partial lick twice and then you finish it up here as you get into the song. And then into Pretty Woman. So here we go. We started off, we're going to start off the same way. Open, open, four, two, open what we just did. And now we're going to stay on the D string. So we've just played the open D string. We're. We're gonna hit the fourth fret, the second fret and then open. So it's third finger, first finger, open, four, two, open. So if I play the whole thing through, it's gonna be open, open, four, two, open four, two, open.
Down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, up. That's the picking. All right, so we got down, up, down, down, down, up, down, up, up. So that's our picking. Let me go in one more time on a close up for you guys so that you can see the whole thing and then I'll play through it at the end. Okay, so here we go. We're going to show you up close one more time. Open, open, four to open, four to open. Am I picking him? We've got down up, down, down, down, up, down, up.
And there you have it. That is the intro lick for Roy Oberson's Pretty Woman. If you like this lesson, make sure to give me a thumbs up. Leave a comment. Also you, you can go to laurenbateman.com donate I always appreciate donations you guys give me for my time for making these videos. Or if you're interested in improving your picking skills and getting more dexterity in your hands, you can always go to laurenbateman.com subscriptions and you can actually enroll in my full guitar course there where I help you build finger dexterity to be able to play licks and stuff like this a little bit easier. So go check that stuff out and I'll see you guys in the next lesson video.
