Joyride (Guitar) - The Killers - Day & Age

This is how Dave Keuning played the song during the Day & Age tour of 2008-2009.

I’ve used the same finger positions as Dave, from studying performances on YouTube.

The guitar is in standard tuning.

Along with Human, this is one of the hardest songs to record an acceptable version of, from Day & Age - so there are a few sloppy bits!
And whereas Human is an exercise in right hand muting/damping, Joyride is definitely an exercise in left hand damping.

The song is made up almost completely of dyads and triads; there are no full chords played across all the strings.

Starting with the verses, which are dyads, Dave plays the first verse in a particular way. He rests his pick on the B string and strikes through the B and E strings together with an almost instantaneous hammer on the B string. Then there’s a quick up-down-up, which is all damped, and finally two staccato down strokes, before using the same technique on the G and B strings. He later adds the variation with the linking single notes to the riff.

The studio version sounds a little different and more flowing, whereas live, the riff definitely has more of a staccato feel to it and played with a bit more (over) drive.

Then on to the chorus. There is a linking triad, which is a single down-up strum needed to get the timing right, before getting into the chorus proper, which is all triads. Here, Dave is strumming a quick, down-up-down. The last down is clipped/cut short, to give a bit of space, before an upstroke, which is also clipped and finally a down stroke, which is fully damped (and coincides with Ronnie’s drum beat).

Further dyads along with single notes are used in the (reverb) interlude and dyads in the middle 8 section of the song. These are the only parts of the song that don’t use damping.

Finally, during the outro, Dave plays some different triad shapes.

Guitar-wise, Dave mainly used his Ebony Gibson ES-335 Dot and occasionally, a Gibson Vegas Standard in natural.
I really wanted to use a Gibson Vegas Standard like Dave’s for this song. I own one in sunburst, but want one in the natural/blonde finish. If you have one, please let me know!

I’m using a 2005 Ebony Gibson ES-335 Dot.

Live, I don’t think Dave used any effects in this song, but the studio version has reverb for that interlude section. Dave did have a T-REX Room-mate reverb pedal set to plate reverb in his rack at the time, so I added some plate reverb here.

Видео Joyride (Guitar) - The Killers - Day & Age канала Tim Holden