"Perfect the Shred"
How To Make It Metal!
For this lesson I'm going to show you an example of
how to turn other styles of music
into useful licks and riffs for shredding. The example I'm going to use is from
an alternative
band from Britain called Muse. Now you may be thinking, "I don't wanna learn
alternative stuff,
I just wanna shred!" Well, by doing things like this, you can take songs your
friends play that
are into other forms of music, and totally impress them by making the tunes way
cooler.
Anyway, this song uses repeating tune in the background played on some sort of
keyboard
or synth, and then later the same notes are used to form a riff on piano. That
doesn't matter
however, all that matters is the notes used. In this case the riff is a set of
3 arpeggios.
The notes are: "C Eb G" "Bb, D , F"
and "F, Ab, C"
These form the chords C minor, Bb major and F minor. Now, the riff in the muse
song
goes as follows:
|-11-------11-------11----|-10-------10-------10----|
|----13-------13-------13-|----11-------11-------11-|
|-------12-------12-------|-------10-------10-------|
|-------------------------|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|-------------------------|
|-13-------13-------13-------|
|----13-------13-------13----|
|-------13-------13----------|
|----------------------------|
|----------------------------|
|----------------------------|
(listen here)
A nice slow piano riff, but hardly exciting
is it. Well here's where a little technique called
'sweep picking' comes in. See more on the site for how to do the sweep picking,
I'm going
to do a full video lesson on it soon. Anyway, by playing arpeggios by sweep
picking of the
chords mentioned above, you get this:
||-----------------11-15-11-------------|---------------10-13-10-------------|
||o-------------13----------13----------|------------11----------11----------|
||-----------12----------------12-------|---------10----------------10-------|
||--------13----------------------13----|------12----------------------12----|
||o-10-15----------------------------15-|-8-13----------------------------13-|
||--------------------------------------|------------------------------------|
|--------------8-13-8------------|--------------8-13-8----------------||
|------------9--------9----------|------------9--------9-------------o||
|---------10------------10-------|---------10------------10-----------||
|------10------------------10----|------10------------------10--------||
|-8-11------------------------11-|-8-11------------------------11----o||
|--------------------------------|------------------------------------||
(listen here)
Try look for more arpeggios in
other songs and adapt them to shred.
Enjoy....
© Richard Baines 2005