Continuing to distract myself from the nightmare that is 2025 in America, I’ve transcribed the guitar parts from one of my favorite recordings of Michael Schenker, UFO’s “On with the Action” from their album No Heavy Petting. To me this is second only to “Rock Bottom” (also enjoy a classic live version) as prototypical Schenker.
Just go have at the transcription if you like. Below I’ll try to lay out what I like about the piece, intended for someone fairly freshly getting into guitar music. (Basically, the sort of material I really appreciated way back when.)
Song structure
The song is in D minor, and there are two basic progressions that get used throughout:
- Dm x 2 – Bb (or Gm) – Am
- Dm x 2 – Bb – C
Now you won’t find exactly those chords being strummed by a guitar at any point, but that is the overall implied harmony in the respective sections of the piece. Here’s what I mean:
Progression (2) above is used in the verses of the song, but if you look at measure 18-21, say, where it first comes in, you’ll see that the guitar is just playing power chords: D5 x 2 – Bb5 – C5, no major/minor thirds included in the chords. And that is the case throughout the verses; but when you take into account the vocal melody and such, the band ends up outlining the fuller chords (major/minor triads) of progression (2). If you play these triads along with the song, you’ll find it all fits.
Similarly, progression (1) appears in the choruses, as well as the intro and outro. But in those spots you won’t find a guitar playing any chord at all. Instead, the rhythm guitar plays a linear riff (and in the intro/outro a lead guitar plays slow, sustained bits). Again, the chords indicated for progression (1) are the overall harmony I hear from the band as a unit.
Schenker’s lead work
The entire song is in the key of D minor, and the lead parts completely reflect this. The heart of Schenker’s soloing is D minor pentatonic (D F G A C, or 1 b3 4 5 b7), shown here placed around anchor D minor triad voicings on the top G-B-E strings (and shown around the 10-10-10 triad voicing twice, reflecting how you might play around it when you are in position to bar that chord voicing with your index finger in the one case, or say your ring finger in the other):
Schenker sticks almost entirely to minor pentatonic passages when he starts to pick up the pace in Solo 2, and through to its spectacular finish (measures 75-99, the only exception being a bit of additional aeolian flavor in measure 94, for more on which see below). Check out that section for some blazing fast sequential runs (measure 98), and repeated rhythmically-displaced passages that amp up the energy and perceived speed too (measures 84-86, 92-93, 95-96).
In the slower portions of the Intro, Outro and Solos 1 and 2, Schenker does not limit himself to minor pentatonic, and switches freely between playing D natural minor (D E F G A Bb C, or 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7) and D harmonic minor (same as natural minor, but with a C# in place of C, so a major seventh leading tone to D).
The easiest way to think of how he approaches things is, he first adds the E and Bb notes (red below) to the minor pentatonic to have the full D natural minor (aeolian) scale:
This gives him access to sounds like this (from measures 42-44, reprised in measures 116-118, shown here in multiple positions):
Or this from measure 94, again shown in various positions:
To additionally access the D harmonic minor sound, you don’t need to think about completely different scale shapes for it, but just playing the C# (purple below) a half-step below any root instead of the C (triangles below) when playing out of D minor:
In the piece you can hear this distinct sound in places like the end of the Intro solo (measures 16-17, first phrase below) and the end of Solo 1 (measures 49-50, second phrase below). Note how in the second one, Schenker hits the C# at first, and then the C as he wraps up the phrase, freely going between the harmonic minor sound and the aeolian sound.
Try playing those phrases in different positions too. But mostly just enjoy Schenker’s playing in this song as a whole, and of course remember that despots and bigots have no place in a civilized society.