Beautiful Disaster Guitar Lesson – 311

Genre:

Difficulty:
Length: 17:08

---

Wikipedia page
Artist website
Music video

• Chords
• Minor scale
• Power chords
• Rock strumming

Beautiful Disaster is a relatively unknown song to people who haven’t played Guitar Hero on their play station, but it is a very fun song to learn on guitar. This song is suitable for beginners learning lead guitar since it is not very difficult, yet gets you practicing a number of important lead guitar elements.

Our guitar lesson on Beautiful Disaster will really get you practicing a lot since we’ll cover the entire song in the lesson.

There are 7 main parts to the song (and some sub-sections as well), which repeat in a given sequence as the track progresses. The sequence of sections is actually pretty complicated to remember, so make sure you download the tabs to Beautiful Disaster after logging in, where you’ll see the exact sequence of parts to the entire song.

We’ll start out by learning the signature riff of Beautiful Disaster, which is used several times throughout the track. Afterward, we’ll learn that characteristic solo played by Nick Hexum and Tim Mahoney. The solo is played on the B minor scale and is very easy to learn. Make sure you read up on the minor scale before learning this part of the song though, as you’ll understand why you’re plucking each individual note. Also, by learning the minor scale, you'll be able to start improvising as well.

You should also know that they play the solo simultaneously on 2 separate guitars, each on a different string, so don’t expect to sound just like the original track on your own. But it’s all a better reason to get together with a guitar buddy and play it with him/her.

From the 3rd part of the song till the 6th part, you’ll be using chords and strumming them in given strumming patterns. You’ll be using chord inversions, power chords, and a couple of slash power chords as well. This all means you’ll get a chance to practice your reggae and rock strumming technique as well.

The final part of the song is another solo on the B minor scale, which is fairly simple once again.

Once you know all the parts, make sure you play along with the Beautiful Disaster jam track, or the original song itself.

The song itself is fairly straightforward, perhaps the only difficult thing about it is really, the speed. They play it pretty fast, and that should be your mid-term aim as well. Start out slow of course, but don't be shy to speed up gradually.

Beautiful Disaster song details

Beautiful Disaster was released by the band 311 in 1997, on their album Transistor. The song was also released as a single later on.

Beautiful Disaster is also a playable song in the 2008 game Guitar Hero: World Tour.

Beautiful Disaster chart rankings (1997)

Billboard 200: #4 (album)

If you want to refine the skills you learned in Beautiful Disaster, check out these lessons on songs by clicking these links:
Chords / Minor scale / Power chords / Rock strumming

Please log in and revisit this page to download this song's tabs and backing track (along with hundreds more on the site).