Yngwie's "Island In The Sun" Solo Transcription

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#1

This is what I’ve been up to today! Now I’ve just got to learn to play it :sweat_smile:

Pretty confident with this one, watched some live footage of Yngwie from back in the day to check I got the correct areas on the fretboard and all the picking makes sense within his picking approach but I notated all the pickstrokes just in case to avoid any confusion.

Gonna have to admit that the all the bends sound pretty horrendous, most of the time Yngwie bends very quickly up a whole step but the software doesn’t allow you to change bend speed (as far as I know). Instead the bend slowly creeps up midway through the note and theres not option to adjust how wide the vibrato is (and it’s really wide for a lot of them).

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#2

Good work mate, bends are always hard to tab, we need a curve editor!

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#3

Oh and a big thanks to @BlackInMind for his work figuring out Yngwie’s “Alcatrazz Fours”, having seen his post previously really helped!

@Twangsta Thanks dude!

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#4

Yeah nice work @Jacklr So glad someone else is tackling some of the Alcatrazz stuff too! I am STILL working on the same fragment of the Too Drunk to Live to Young to Die solo - arghhhh so hard! Playing it at Yngwie speed with no errors. I can’t even contemplate a whole solo!

When I slow my recorded takes down - they sound sloppy compared to Yngwie’s.

Anyway, the transcription looks great!

The only thing I am still not sure about on the Alcatrazz circular fours in general is I am pretty sure he (in some cases) picks the last 2 notes of the high E turnaround.

E ----12-14-16-14-12-14-12

When I slow down the audio I definitely hear pick attack on those two notes (—14-12). I have come up against the same challenge on the Too Drunk solo. I found it impossible to apply the Yngwie rules to it and get it to sound right - so I have ended up picking everything. But others I think disagree.

Awesome work!

Keep us posted on progress!

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#5

Thanks dude :smiley:

I’ve seen people argue it both ways and they both make good points! I’ve only learnt his modern descending fours approach at the moment so it’s gonna be weird going back to his “Proto-Fours” idea!

Just finished working on General Hospital today:

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#6

Just did the whole of Too Young to Die, Too Drunk to Live if you’re interested :slight_smile:

The sweep into the descending run in the 18th measure took me SO long to work out due to the doubled note weirdness but I’m pretty sure it’s right. Definitely gonna incorporate that idea into my playing :smiley:

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#7

Awesome Jacklr! Yes there is all kinds of amazing stuff in here with unusual phrasing.

The section I have been working on is in your transcription measures 23-25. You have done a great job on the timing - there are little variations in there that you have got just right.

To my ear in this section there are two ghost notes - and I can actually only hear one - and so I play that one in my version but leave the other one out. Here are the two notes in brackets.

E -------------------17–19–21–19-(17)---------19–17---------------------17------------
B --17–19–21------------------------------21----------------21–19–21-----------21–19–17
G -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

E----------------17–19–21–19–17--------19–17--------------------17------------------------
B --19–21-------------------------------21-------------(21)—19–21----------21–19–17-----
G -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The second one I don’t play.

I also pick all the notes. I just haven’t been able to find a way to get the Yngwie rules to work in this section. It is played very fast and very cleanly and also you have to find a way to make it sound like Yngwie from a phrasing point of view. I’m getting closer to a version I am happy with and will post when it is good enough.

One of my challenges has been that Yngwie’s top speed is much faster than mine - so in this run I am stretched to my absolute limits to reach the speed - but he can go faster yet.

Thanks for the transcriptions!

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#8

@Jacklr dude these tabs rule! I’m glad my analysis helped :smile:

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#9

Thanks man! As soon as you pointed it out in your original post the lick started to jump out at me all the time :smiley:

#10

I always loved this solo, it is one of my favourites out of all the Alcatrazz solos. To me, the coolest Yngwie solos are the ones where plays over a chord progression with more than 2 chords. In these solos, you can really hear Yngwie’s sense of melody as he tries to land on chord tones. Furthermore, this solo has some ‘question-answer’-esque phrases like in blues improv. This solo always reminded me of early 80’s Uli Jon Roth’s work in Electric Sun. If I recall correctly, Yngwie wrote the solo (as opposed to improvising it on the spot) as he wanted the solo in the music video of Island In The Sun to correspond with the real solo.