works0fheart
Tike Myson
Hello everyone,
This thread goes out to all the players out there struggling to play something that just seems downright impossible. While I generally don't think shortcuts are the way to go with guitar playing at all, there are times when you just have to realize that even our idols aren't always playing to the standard (or perceived standard) that they've set with their writing.
My case in point will be this song. Whoa, surprise, it's death metal. Who could have foresaw that coming from a post I make. Stay with me here though because the take away is the same no matter what genre we're talking about. Beneath the song are two videos of people playing it. One is Diego Sanchez from the band, aka the Riff Wizard. The other is a very talented player who's covered the song. You don't really have to watch/listen to the whole song. Really the first couple of riffs are what's kind of important here. Once you're done, skip on down past the videos.
Now, what's important to note here is how hilariously fast that first power chord progression is. Those are 16th notes at 150bpm. This is pretty quick for a riff. Now, alternate picking at that tempo isn't unrealistic when it's usually on one string. That's fairly manageable. Downpicking this exclusively seems nigh impossible to me. So what this causes then is you actually have to pick the power chords with alternate picking, which may sound easy, but it's pretty difficult. This is actually a re-occurring theme within Disgorge's discography. They're probably the fastest band that still manages to sound brutal with the speed not being immediately apparent. For ease of explanation, I've also got a few pictures of sections of the tablature that show what exactly is going on here. Take this with a grain of salt because humans have been known to be wrong.
So for a while I've been learning this song on and off. The first 2 bars has always been one of the most challenging parts, but there are many throughout this song. For sake of teaching though, I'm just covering this section.
After working on this section for a bit and getting it fairly close to accurate at full speed, I still struggled to do it consistently. I could do it for about 1 or 2 takes and after that I just didn't have the endurance to keep it going. I brought this up to my guitar teacher at the time and he shared a sentiment that a lot of people have (and it's not untrue) of brutal death and saying that it's not necessarily always about the clean playing as it is the attitude and atmosphere. While I agree, I've seen Diego play this song in person and I can tell you that (to me) his playing seems tighter than a nuns butt. As we worked through it my teacher was also struggling to play it as quickly (my teacher is no slouch either) as the tab/song. He again remarked that the actual guitarist probably isn't playing it that quickly. I showed him the video of Diego, linked above, and he believes that both of us (my teacher and myself) were playing it more cleanly than what's shown in the video.
While I admittedly disagree, I think it's important to note that at a certain speed it really is hard to discern how clean something actually is, and sometimes guitar players get so used to playing something a certain way at high speeds, they may not realize that it's not as clean as what they think it might be. Confidence and muscle memory will take you pretty far with guitar though. Practice is important but the practice is there for building those neural connections with your brain and hands to remember how to play something. When you're learning a piece of music, physical feel is only half of learning something the same way that mentally grasping it is. For me, the big issue I think I was having (and I admittedly still am when I try this song) was that I was putting up a mental block for myself immediately by telling myself that it's impossible, but it was really only impossible with my current understanding of it.
Punk in it's heyday had plenty of bands playing fast as fuck, strumming power chords super quickly. I won't claim that there was much in the way of technical prowess, or even accuracy going on there, but there was certainly and undeniably physical endurance at play. I think that's where songs like this one kind of intersect with that punk-style a bit. Downpicking, fast but precise (or perceivably precise) chords, alternate picking single note lines, or tremolo picking 16th or 32nd notes. This stuff doesn't seem realistic to play it as cleanly as bands would have you think, but once you build up your endurance enough it's not completely out of reach either.
What does all this amount to? Well, my take away from this situation is that both ways of thought are true and finding a balance between them is important and healthy for growing as a musician:
- Some stuff really is more about feel than accuracy.
- Some stuff is actually genuinely precise.
Take both of those and you can build yourself a healthy way of looking at things. Try your best to play something cleanly but also be realistic with yourself that the people playing this stuff are human too and they're not above mistakes or not playing as "honest" (for lack of a better word) as they think they are.
That being said, I still think Diego's playing is immaculate and he definitely deserves the title of Riff Wizard. It's mindblowing to think that I can barely maintain the endurance to make it through the intro riff, let alone the entire song, let alone an entire set comprised of similar songs. Diego, to me, is an icon within the genre and criminally overlooked because people (understandably) write off the genre as primitive or something.
Cheers!
This thread goes out to all the players out there struggling to play something that just seems downright impossible. While I generally don't think shortcuts are the way to go with guitar playing at all, there are times when you just have to realize that even our idols aren't always playing to the standard (or perceived standard) that they've set with their writing.
My case in point will be this song. Whoa, surprise, it's death metal. Who could have foresaw that coming from a post I make. Stay with me here though because the take away is the same no matter what genre we're talking about. Beneath the song are two videos of people playing it. One is Diego Sanchez from the band, aka the Riff Wizard. The other is a very talented player who's covered the song. You don't really have to watch/listen to the whole song. Really the first couple of riffs are what's kind of important here. Once you're done, skip on down past the videos.
Now, what's important to note here is how hilariously fast that first power chord progression is. Those are 16th notes at 150bpm. This is pretty quick for a riff. Now, alternate picking at that tempo isn't unrealistic when it's usually on one string. That's fairly manageable. Downpicking this exclusively seems nigh impossible to me. So what this causes then is you actually have to pick the power chords with alternate picking, which may sound easy, but it's pretty difficult. This is actually a re-occurring theme within Disgorge's discography. They're probably the fastest band that still manages to sound brutal with the speed not being immediately apparent. For ease of explanation, I've also got a few pictures of sections of the tablature that show what exactly is going on here. Take this with a grain of salt because humans have been known to be wrong.
So for a while I've been learning this song on and off. The first 2 bars has always been one of the most challenging parts, but there are many throughout this song. For sake of teaching though, I'm just covering this section.
After working on this section for a bit and getting it fairly close to accurate at full speed, I still struggled to do it consistently. I could do it for about 1 or 2 takes and after that I just didn't have the endurance to keep it going. I brought this up to my guitar teacher at the time and he shared a sentiment that a lot of people have (and it's not untrue) of brutal death and saying that it's not necessarily always about the clean playing as it is the attitude and atmosphere. While I agree, I've seen Diego play this song in person and I can tell you that (to me) his playing seems tighter than a nuns butt. As we worked through it my teacher was also struggling to play it as quickly (my teacher is no slouch either) as the tab/song. He again remarked that the actual guitarist probably isn't playing it that quickly. I showed him the video of Diego, linked above, and he believes that both of us (my teacher and myself) were playing it more cleanly than what's shown in the video.
While I admittedly disagree, I think it's important to note that at a certain speed it really is hard to discern how clean something actually is, and sometimes guitar players get so used to playing something a certain way at high speeds, they may not realize that it's not as clean as what they think it might be. Confidence and muscle memory will take you pretty far with guitar though. Practice is important but the practice is there for building those neural connections with your brain and hands to remember how to play something. When you're learning a piece of music, physical feel is only half of learning something the same way that mentally grasping it is. For me, the big issue I think I was having (and I admittedly still am when I try this song) was that I was putting up a mental block for myself immediately by telling myself that it's impossible, but it was really only impossible with my current understanding of it.
Punk in it's heyday had plenty of bands playing fast as fuck, strumming power chords super quickly. I won't claim that there was much in the way of technical prowess, or even accuracy going on there, but there was certainly and undeniably physical endurance at play. I think that's where songs like this one kind of intersect with that punk-style a bit. Downpicking, fast but precise (or perceivably precise) chords, alternate picking single note lines, or tremolo picking 16th or 32nd notes. This stuff doesn't seem realistic to play it as cleanly as bands would have you think, but once you build up your endurance enough it's not completely out of reach either.
What does all this amount to? Well, my take away from this situation is that both ways of thought are true and finding a balance between them is important and healthy for growing as a musician:
- Some stuff really is more about feel than accuracy.
- Some stuff is actually genuinely precise.
Take both of those and you can build yourself a healthy way of looking at things. Try your best to play something cleanly but also be realistic with yourself that the people playing this stuff are human too and they're not above mistakes or not playing as "honest" (for lack of a better word) as they think they are.
That being said, I still think Diego's playing is immaculate and he definitely deserves the title of Riff Wizard. It's mindblowing to think that I can barely maintain the endurance to make it through the intro riff, let alone the entire song, let alone an entire set comprised of similar songs. Diego, to me, is an icon within the genre and criminally overlooked because people (understandably) write off the genre as primitive or something.
Cheers!
