“Play With Me” Extreme

While Extreme is best known for their acoustic ballad “More Than Words,” we guitarists know that the song is an anomaly—especially since it fails to showcase Nuno Bettencourt’s prodigious shredding talents! “Play With Me,” however, does showcase these abilities: ridiculous vibrato bar dives and swoops, flurries of tapped notes, lightning fast arpeggios, and melodies inspired by classical music. Included on their eponymous debut, the song also appeared during a mall chase scene in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, with Beethoven (who Bill and Ted kidnapped with their time-travelling phone booth) playing all of Nuno’s shredding guitar lines on a set of mall organs and keyboards. If the maestro could pull that off, he surely was a genious!

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THE TUNING
Don’t forget to tune down a half step (E♭–A♭–D♭– G♭–B♭–E♭) before trying to tackle this monster!

THE INTRO, VERSES, AND CHORUSES
This song is not for the faint of heart; Nuno Bettencourt packs so many fireworks into this fleet-fingered gem of a song that we could devote the whole magazine to it! Instead, we’ll walk through each section and touch on a few of the more maniacal passages. Bettencourt starts the song at a blazing clip of 209 bpm (beats per minute), quoting the famous opening of Mozart’s Rondo alla Turca (from the third movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, k331). Check out how the backing three guitars weave together to create a “chordal” backup that “gallops.” You can approximate this sound on one guitar by combining those three guitars into one part (see Fig. 1). As you can see, the first 1 1/2 measures are identical to the transcription, but the adapted F7 chord shape in the second measure is much easier to grab than what’s played in the transcription. The next measure adapts things again by leaving out the high notes on the downbeats (from Gtr. 2). However, if you listen to the recording, you’ll notice that—even though those high notes are there—the prominent sound you get from this backup is similar to galloping feel in Fig. 1.

In the final measure of the Intro, Nuno cranks out a harmonic at about fret 2.3, yanking his vibrato bar down for a soaring dive. If you haven’t played harmonics between frets before, explore between your 2nd and 3rd frets to find where this is. Harmonics get closer together as you approach the nut of the guitar, so make sure you’re closer to the 2nd fret (there are three harmonics between the 2nd and 3rd frets, the others are closer to the 3rd fret). At the Verse, barre your index finger across the 3rd and 4th strings so that your ring and pinky fingers are free to grab the 6th (F#) and ♭7th (G) degrees later in the measure à la Chuck Berry. If you have smaller hands, you may find the stretch in the fourth-to-last measure of the Verse a bit difficult. If that’s the case, try the alternate fingering shown in Fig. 2, and make sure to barre at the 3rd fret with your index finger to access both the C and B% notes at that position.

There are plenty of cool licks throughout the Verse and Chorus, but check out the absolutely smoking passage Nuno plays at the end of the Chorus (just before Verse 3). Start the lick by playing the bend and hammer-on/pull-off move with your fretting hand, then—while leaving your ring finger on the 4th fret—tap the 12the fret with the middle finger of your picking hand. Bend the string with your fretting hand, then—after a bend, release, and another bend—pull off the tapped note to sound the 4th fret below before releasing the bend again. It’s not as difficult as it looks (or sounds), and it’s a mighty cool trick! After a few similar bend-and-tap moves, Nuno maneuvers down the neck via a scorching set of hammer-ons and pull-offs, keeping things fluid by using his fretting hand to hammer notes “from nowhere” (the notes with 1/2 slurs coming down onto them) when switching strings.

In Verse 4, you’ll see several inadvertently played harmonics—but they’re still cool! At the top of page 151, those 7th-fret harmonics are likely a result of muting the strings with the fret hand while simultaneously plucking. The harmonics three measures later likely occur due to Nuno muting the 3rd string with his middle finger while getting his index and ring fingers into position for the following B5 chord.

In the 12th bar of Chorus 2, those funky lines that look like check marks are there to notate vibrato bar dips. For these dips, push down slightly on the bar before plucking the string, then quickly release the bar.

THE GUITAR SOLO
The Guitar Solo starts with a manic line that alternates the open E string with notes from the A harmonic minor scale (A–B–C–D–E– F–G#). At the key change (top of page 155), you’ll need to start with your pinky—not your ring finger—to play this line smoothly up to speed. Lining your pinky up on the 9th fret and using your middle and index fingers for the 7th and 6th frets, respectively, should get you through the first two beats. But once you slide with your index finger down to the 5th fret, you’ll need to use either your middle or ring finger on the final note of the measure (the 7th fret) to get back up in position for the next measure. The last two measures on this page feature some bent pinch harmonics that are pulled off to a quick slide. If you’re only looking at the tablature, make sure to notice that the bend is released to a grace note. This note is so quick that it sounds almost instantaneously with the slide—don’t park on that 9th fret for too long!

Want more? Check out these cool links at guitaredge.com

•    Get more Extreme guitar tabs at guitarinstructor.com
•    Get the Pornograffitti guitar tab book at musicdispatch.com
•    Download “Play With Me” from iTunes
•    Check out Extreme online at extreme-band.com
•    Check out Nuno Bettencourt’s Washburn N4 Vintage guitar at washburn.com

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