Stop 1 of 8
Blues, rock and metal
Riffs, distortion, low tunings and the language of power.
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Stop 1 of 8
Riffs, distortion, low tunings and the language of power.
The tour begins. Over fourteen stages you have gathered chords, scales, modes, technique and ear; now it is time to use them on the stages where the guitar has been the star. The first stop is the loudest one: the lineage that runs from the blues to rock, from rock to hard rock and on to metal. Here the guitar stops accompanying politely and becomes the engine of the song.
Rock did not come out of nowhere. In the mid-1950s, Chicago electric blues, rhythm and blues and country blended into a faster, more danceable style with the electric guitar up front. In the sixties, British bands who had grown up on blues records turned the volume up; by the end of that decade hard rock had toughened the sound, and in the seventies metal pushed saturation, low pitch and rhythmic precision to the extreme.
Notice that almost every electric branch grows out of the blues. That is why the rock riff usually comes from the minor pentatonic, and why and bends remain at the heart of the rock solo. Metal later added other sources: European classical music, dark modes and an almost machine-like execution.
Listen to two versions of the same gesture: a full major chord and a power chord on the same root. Clean, both sound fine; now imagine which of the two would survive an amplifier pushed to its limit.
and appear when the guitar signal is pushed beyond what a circuit can reproduce cleanly: the waveform gets "clipped" and new harmonics appear. The sound gains sustain, aggression and compression. How hard you push the signal is set by the , which we will explore at the sound-and-gear stop.
That clipping has a direct musical consequence: besides harmonics, the circuit generates sums and differences between the frequencies of notes sounding together. With a perfect fifth, those new frequencies land almost exactly on notes of the chord itself, so everything fuses into one compact block. With a third, especially in a six-string chord, frequencies appear that don't fit and the chord turns muddy.
A perfect fifth has a frequency ratio close to 3:2. If the root vibrates at 2 units and the fifth at 3, the difference is 1 unit: the root an octave lower. Distortion "invents" that note, and it happens to belong to the chord, so it reinforces it. With an equal-tempered major third the ratio is not exactly 5:4, and the intermodulation products end up slightly out of tune with the chord; with several thirds and fifths at once they multiply and are heard as harshness. The chord isn't "wrong": distortion simply muddies it. At moderate gain, full classic-rock chords still sound good; at high gain, the power chord rules.
The riff is rock's backbone: a short, repeated figure that defines the song as much as its melody does. It nearly always combines three things: a low pedal note (often the open string), power chords moving over it, and rests that let it breathe.
This original riff in E Aeolian uses the palm-muted open sixth string as a pedal and power chords that climb and fall. Listen, and see how the m in the tab marks the muted notes:
In many hard rock and metal riffs everything is played with downstrokes, even fast eighth notes. Every note gets the same thick, even attack. It is more tiring than , so keep the wrist loose and the motion small. Above a certain speed players switch back to alternate picking, and knowing when to switch is part of the craft.
Lowering the sixth string a whole step, from E to D, gives the : D–A–D–G–B–E. The three low strings then form a power chord with a single finger (or open), and the lowest note drops a tone. Many alternative rock, grunge and metal bands use it; others tune the whole guitar down a half or whole step, or use drop C and seven-string guitars to go even lower.
Tune your sixth string to D by comparing it with the open fourth string (they should sound an octave apart) and play this original riff. Notice the chord at fret 1: it is the minor second above D, the Phrygian colour we will meet in a moment.
Classic rock lives in the minor pentatonic and in Mixolydian (with its major ♭7 chord). Metal looks for darker colours and finds them in two places:
String 6, Open: E2 · 1 · Root
String 6, Fret 7: B2 · 5 · Fifth
The current known as neoclassical metal drew on baroque and classical music, with harmonic-minor scales played at great speed. This original lick sums up the idea: it descends through the harmonic minor over the dominant chord (B7) and resolves to the tonic by climbing through the leading tone D♯.
In the natural minor scale, the fifth degree forms a minor chord (Bm in E minor) that doesn't "pull" towards the tonic. Raising the seventh note a half step (D → D♯) gives the harmonic minor, and with it the B7 chord, whose leading tone resolves strongly. Playing the harmonic minor from B produces Phrygian dominant: 1 ♭2 3 4 5 ♭6 ♭7. The same colour appears in flamenco, which we will visit later on the tour.
The is a signature of 1980s British heavy metal, popularised by bands such as Iron Maiden: one eighth and two sixteenths on each beat (da-daga, da-daga), usually palm-muted, like a horse's hooves. Its reversed form, two sixteenths and an eighth (daga-da), is very common too.
The most common picking for the gallop is down-down-up (the eighth and the first sixteenth down) or, at fast tempos, down-up-down per beat. Try both: the first gives a heavier attack; the second handles more speed.
A rock band usually has two jobs for the guitar. Sometimes two players cover them; sometimes one player switches roles during the song.
Rhythm guitar
Lead guitar
In the eighties and nineties many metal bands used twin guitars: two leads playing the same melody in parallel thirds or sixths. It is the electric version of an old idea, two-part harmony.
m6:0) in eighths with downstrokes for one minute at 70 BPM.Goal: Play the E riff four times in a row at 100 BPM with downstrokes, a clean palm-muted pedal and open power chords.
Goal: Play the drop D riff and the gallop at 90 BPM without the sixteenths rushing.
Play the lick over the B7 bar. Then improvise for two minutes with E harmonic minor, aiming for D♯ over B7 and for E or G over Em.
Goal: Play the lick over the Em–C–B7 backing and land on the tonic exactly on beat one.
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