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Here is an interesting and fairly challenging 'rhtyhm riff', for lack of a better term. It's not your usual strummed rhythm part, and it's not a lead part ... it's sort of in between, and it's played with the fingers.
I would class this as an
intermediate lesson, so don't be discouraged if you're a beginner trying to figure it out.
First things first: its structure is that of of a 12 bar blues in the key of E, so lets first have a look at chord progression.
| E - - - | - - - - | - - - - | - - - - | A - - - | - - - - |
| E - - - | - - - - | B - - - | A - - - | E - - - | E - B - |
12 bars in the pretty standard arrangement of:
| I - - - | - - - - | - - - - | - - - - | IV - - - | - - - - |
| I - - - | - - - - | V - - - | IV - - - | I - - - | I - V - |
That's the basic chord structure, however there is some detail to add to it which we'll get to in a second.
The riff is a 2 bar figure made up of several elements. This 2 bar pattern keeps repeating throughout the 12 bars (so, 6 times) and does so over all the chords.
Each riff starts with a chord (a 4 string grab of the bass strings) then the treble note of the chord (all alone), followed by a little double stop figure.
Here is the tablature in detail for the riff over the E chord:
The green box shows where you use the chord ... first the 4 bass strings, then the lone note from the treble string of the chord. You can see that the double stops that follow are really little chord fragments ... first the A fragment, then the E7 fragment. The A is easy enough to recognize, it comes from the open A shape; the E7 is a little more obscure, but it comes from the D7 shaped E chord at the 4th fret.
So now we know that it's not just sitting on an E chord ... there's a momentary lift to the A, then back to E, but a 7th flavor E. The second time through, the double stop line drops back to the A. Adding it to the end of the riff just takes it away from pure repetition, adding interest and leading the listener's ear back to the beginning.
Before I explain the red crosses, have a look at the slo-mo movie of the riff:
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The movies in the paid downloadable versions come in Windows Media Video format with all the Start-Stop-Pause-RW-FF buttons. Click on the movie to find out what you'll get when you buy this lesson. |
If you look closely, you'll see that I'm muting off strings that are not being played. This is something that has spilled over from playing
slide, where muting is essential, to my normal playing, and I highly recommend that you look into it. It keeps everything nice and clean and crisp.
You'll see that my thumb lays itself across the bass strings when I'm not playing them and my finger rests on the treble string when it's not being played. The red crosses on the tab above indicate that. You don't have to do that, of course, you may decide to use a flatpick, but it's something that comes in very handy and, believe it or not, simply becomes second nature after a while of doing it. Your hand just knows ...
OK, now ... the riff repeats itself up the neck over the A barre chord and the B barre chord in exactly the same way ... except that you now have to barre those chords. In other words, the way the double stop positions relate to the chord shape is identical, and the way it sounds is identical.
This will be a good lesson to practice making quick, positive barre chord changes. The 5th and 7th frets are well known landmarks when playing 12 bar blues, you're probably already familiar with those jumps up the neck if you've been playing for a while. Open, 5th fret and 7th fret equate to I, IV and V.
I whack the strings on the 4th beat of the odd numbered bars in this ... a percussive decoration that stops the ringing dead. There's no need to, of course. I also apply a good deal of vibrato to the double stop that rings on.
Feel ... here comes that word again. This kind of multi-component riff, assembled from several elements, really needs to be
felt to play properly. You have to learn all the moves so well that you can switch off that part of the brain and just
feel it. That's when it becomes music, when it starts to breathe and become a dynamic, living guitar part. You don't need to be absolutely precise and clinically perfect to achieve this, in fact that often hinders ... that's what midi files do ... it's the small variations in volume, attack and tempo that bring a piece of music to life.
Below is the tab for the whole thing. You will see that apart from the last bar where I do a quick 'turnaround' using the B7 chord, it's strictly a repeating pattern. You can also hear how the riff repeats itself musically, changing only in pitch. It's pure blues in nature, breaking all the rules of the key and related chords. The basic structure of the I-IV-V chords is 'correct', but the detail goes against rules. Our western ears have become so accustomed to this kind of sound, this abundance of 7th chords in the one piece of music, that we hear it as 'right'.
Full speed midi | Half speed midi | GuitarPro file | Mp3
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