Hysteria Guitar Lesson – Muse

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Length: 19:00

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• Alternate picking
• Fast plucking
• Octaves

Hysteria, also known as I Want It Now, is a really cool, fast-paced song by Muse, an English rock band. It’s not the most complicated song in the world, but perfecting it will take a considerable amount of practice. But it’s all for the greater good, as you’ll not only be learning an awesome song (which is great to play in a band situation as well), you’ll be fine-tuning a barrage of lead guitar skills as well.

Before we go any further, I want to mention that the song is played pretty fast, but you shouldn’t try playing it fast in the beginning. At first, you’ll just want to work on your alternate plucking, getting those notes dead on, and with time, you’ll be able to speed up.

You should also know that Hysteria is played in the key of A minor, both natural minor and harmonic minor, so you might want to brush up on your minor scales as well, it’ll make remembering the fingerings and notes much easier.

This is a mega lesson, where we'll be learning to play all of the parts to the song, including the intro, pre-chorus, chorus, and 2 solo sections. You'll be advancing a barrage of lead guitar techniques, including string bending, octaves, muting, and most of all, alternate plucking.

Alternate plucking is a very important skill you'll have to master if you want to become a good guitarist, and this song has it. Lots of it!

Ok, so we’ll start off our guitar lesson on Hysteria by learning to play the intro. This part of the song is actually played on the bass guitar originally, but it sounds great on the normal guitar as well. Learning the intro to Hysteria will give you a great chance to practice alternate plucking of adjacent strings, a skill which you must perfect if you want to become a good electric guitarist.

After the intro, we’ll learn the perverse, which involves the strumming of octaves, and a couple of string bends. If you aren’t familiar with octaves yet, don’t worry, I’ll explain what they are in the lesson.

Once you got the perverse down, we’ll learn 2 solo sections. The first one is similar in nature to the intro, as it involves playing notes from the harmonic minor scale in A. The second solo is your more typical solo, with lots and lots of string bending. The second solo is based on playing arpeggios.

So to sum it all up, if you’re into the electric guitar, this song is a must for you, no question about it. Make sure you download the tabs, I've included the Guitar Pro 6 file to Hysteria as well. You’ll want to play along with that varying the tempo while practicing the separate sections.

And of course, once you got it all down, rock along with the backing track, and drive your neighbors crazy 🙂

Hysteria song details

Hysteria was released by the alternative rock band Muse in 2003 on the album Absolution. The song was used frequently by the media in TV shows and sporting events. It is also a playable song in the game Rock Band.

Hysteria peaked at #17 in the UK singles chart and #9 on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart.

The bass guitar intro was voted the “Best bass line of all time” in a MusicRadar poll.

If you want to refine the skills you learned in Hysteria, check out these lessons on songs by clicking these links:
Alternate picking / Fast plucking / Octaves

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