Final Post

Hello readers. This will be my final post. I have a new riff from another Periphery song. The song is called Alpha. It is the title track to the first part of their double concept album Juggernaut: Alpha and Juggernaut: Omega.

On a side note, these two albums not only show the extent of Periphery's musical talent, they show how talented their singer is at creating an engaging story with great lyrics. So if you enjoy metal, and a well crafted story, albeit a dark and gruesome one, I recommend you check it out.

After all, we all like Game of Thrones. So why not indulge in a story about an assassin raised by a religious cult that seems to be on to something?

Anyways, here is the clip.

I thought I'd end this blog on a good note. So I chose a relatively easy, but still fun-to-play riff.

I did make a mistake several seconds in. I accidentally hit a stray note, but otherwise the clip is pretty clean.

Unfortunately, I never got the point where I could comfortably tackle the challenging riff I mentioned in my very first post. So I apologize for leaving you guys hanging there. Maybe when I get my chops back, I'll come back and make another post.

Until then, thanks to everyone who checked out this blog.

Full Speed Attempt at Mile Zero Riff

Hello readers. I apologize for being a little late with this post; but I did manage to a get a decent take of the riff from Thursday's post. So I hope you enjoy.

I managed to play it at just about full speed. It's hard to tell without a metronome, or the song playing in the background.

As you might've noticed, I couldn't quite keep up the pace at the end. If you look at about the nine second mark, there is a quick and sizable jump that leads into a pretty complicated set of notes across multiple strings. This is what threw my rhythm off.

Keep in mind that this is the best of about 10 or 15 takes, so I obviously still need to practice more. I can definitely feel how my fingers aren't as relaxed—especially for faster material—as they used to be a few years ago.

But once again, with proper practice and enough play time, this will eventually sort itself out.

That's all for now. Thanks for checking in.

My Guitar Heroes

Hi guys. I'm back with a riff from one of Metallica's new songs.

Before we get into the clip, I just wanted to talk about some of the metal bands that shaped my musical preferences.

The first band I ever listened to on my own accord was Linkin Park. Although they are not quite a metal band, at the time they were pretty hard. I listened to them almost exclusively for quite sometime before I expanded my horizons.

Eventually in high school, after being exposed to Guitar Hero the video game, my interest in music began to truly take shape. That was when I discovered Avenged Sevenfold's album City of Evil, which I still hold in very high regards. It showed me a whole new level of technicality and progression that I wasn't previously aware could exist in music.

After that, I started to explore a great many of metal bands. I soon decided that I should put Metallica's discography on my iPod. When I became familiar with their work, and realized that they were writing quality metal as early as the '80s, I was amazed. I'm sure some of you are familiar with their song Fade To Black. It was released in 1984 with their critically acclaimed, genre redefining album Ride the Lightning.

So with the release of their new album Hardwired... to Self-Destruct, I thought I would show them some respect by covering a riff from their new song Moth Into Flame.

This was a fairly easy riff to learn. It only took me about 15 minutes. Although its not played perfectly, I think it's pretty close.

My picking hand still needs a little more exercise to be able to play something like this more smoothly. Another part that caused me some trouble, believe it or not, was the two power chords at the top of the neck. Switching between the two-finger chord and one-finger chord was somewhat uncomfortable because of the position on the neck. Fortunately, the discomfort mostly went away after the 15 minutes of practice I put into it.

That's all for tonight. I hope you guys enjoyed.

Another Mile Zero Riff

Hi guys. Today's post will involve another riff from the song Mile Zero by Periphery. It is a very fun and flowy riff.

I played it at slower pace than the original version, but I will work on it over the next few days, and hopefully have a faster play through for you on Saturday.

This riff, similarly to one of the riffs in my previous post, has a fair amount of string skipping, and is very scaly. This makes it a little tricky to play, but when you get it right it is very satisfying and fun.

I did make a few rhythmic mistakes, so I will also try and improve upon that in Saturday's clip.

On a side note, since this has been a metal-centric blog, I thought I would pay some homage to one of the most influential metal bands out there. Metallica has just recently released their new album Hardwired... to Self-Destruct, so I figured it would be a fitting time to play one of their riffs for you guys.

I'll have that uploaded for you tomorrow night.

Thanks for checking in.
Nick

Time for Something Fast

Hi readers. It's been a while but I do have some clips to go over in today's post.

While I still haven't been able to practice a whole lot, I am definitely starting to make some progress. The scale exercises I wrote about last week have definitely been helping my right and left hand dexterity.

Although the exercises and general playing have helped my stamina, it is still hard to play well for more than a half hour or so.

Anyways, let's move on to the first clip. This one is a retry of the first riffs I showed you guys. I think it's definitely an improvement rhythmically, although it isn't perfect. There is also a mistake on the very last part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyFe312PmmE

The next clip was a tough one. It's a fast riff, from a song called Make Total Destroy by Periphery, that utilizes fret tapping as well as regular picking. There is a part that requires some fast string skipping, which is when you skip over strings rather than progress through them linearly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic-gSvERP0Y

In this clip, I played through the riff twice. Both were far from perfect, but the second one was a bit more accurate with the exception of the lick at about 0:34. I played it almost perfectly the first time at about 0:17.

The string skipping I was referring to was at about 0:04 and 0:24. Its definitely a fun part to play, but it's easy to pick the wrong string or miss altogether if you're not focused/well-practiced. With that said, I have had quite a bit of practice on this riff. It's just been a long time since I've played it.

As for the tapping parts, I definitely need to work on cleaning those up and being more consistent with my speed. Once I do that, I will just have to work on speeding up the rest of the parts a bit.

I will probably have another go at this riff in a week or two, so we can see if I'm able to make the improvements I mentioned above.

Thanks for checking in. See you next time.

Not a Right Hand Man... yet

http://www.unfinishedman.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/man-playing-guitar.jpg

Hello readers,

It's been a busy week, so unfortunately I haven't had enough practice to record any improved clips. However, I will talk about some of the current issues with my playing and the steps I am taking to improve.

My picking hand seems to be causing more issues than my other hand. The problems I'm having are keeping rhythm, controlling the strength of each pluck of a string, and syncing my picking with my left hand (which is a left and right hand issue).

I also can't pick nearly as fast as I used to be able to, but that will come with time.

The main problem affecting my rhythm is mostly endurance-related, so it should also improve without too much effort as I play more.

I notice that I start off playing more rhythmically precise, and it gets harder and harder to maintain as my hand gets tired. This is a problem for obvious reasons.

Controlling the strength of each pluck is more or less caused by the same problem. The reason this is an issue is because it hinders my ability to play riffs with the correct amount of punchiness and feel.

The problem with syncing my two hands causes me to pick too early or too late in relativity to my left hand's finger positioning. This throws off the whole flow of a riff and can cause more mistakes. In order to fix this I have spent some time just playing up and down scales. I do this slowly to start, and then faster as I get more comfortable.

If I just spend 10-15 minutes a day doing that, within a week or two I should see a great improvement in that area as well with my left hand accuracy and speed.

So I'll keep at that, and try to play more this week all together so we can have some clips in the next post.

Thanks for checking in. Talk to you again next week.

Fresh Strings and Fresh Starts

Hello readers. Today marks my first day playing guitar in over a year, and surprisingly it wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting. My fingers are a little raw after only about an hour of practicing, however, so I will definitely need some time to work my calluses back up.

For starters, I put new strings on my guitar for the occasion, which is always a slightly frustrating process. I did almost ruin my low E string (which is the thickest, lowest string for those who don't know) by not leaving enough slack for it to curl properly around the tuning knob.

But regardless, I got the job done and spent about 10 minutes tuning the new strings with an app on my Iphone. I used dropped C tuning for today's clip, and that is the tuning I will likely use in most of my videos.

So without further ado, here is the clip for this week. You'll notice my rhythm is definitely off but it was the only one I could get where I didn't blatantly mess up.

These are the first two riffs in a song called Mile Zero by Periphery. I used to jam this all of the time because its a fairly easy song for the type of music I like to play. It's very fun to play because it has a variety of chords and requires a lot of sliding up and down the neck of the guitar.

It took me about an hour of practicing to be able to play the riffs again. I did notice that once I got going it was easy to rely on muscle memory for most of the chords. The licks, on the other hand, I had to focus quite a bit to play at all.

I found myself trying to rely on muscle memory for the licks and consequently missing the fret I was aiming for or even missing the string all together. I could tell it was because I lack the dexterity and finger strength that I used to have.

On the bright side, I think this could be a positive in the long run. As I work on my finger strength and accuracy, I can try to improve my technique and possibly override some bad habits that may have been built into my muscle memory.

Okay, that's it for this week's post. Next week I will revisit this riff and hopefully have a much cleaner and more rhythmically stable clip to talk about. Depending on my progress throughout the week, I may throw another riff in with it.

Thanks for reading, see you sometime next week.