Learn Guitar Riff Ethereal Rock 1a
In this video, we're learning the first riff in the Ethereal Rock 1 series of guitar riffs! The goal here is to improve not only our guitar soloing chops, but also our improvisation as we add new guitar licks into our arsenal using the pentatonic scale! Be sure to download the guitar TAB and the Ethereal Rock backing track above to help push your playing further!
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Transcription
Okay, let's jump into it! I'm going to show you how to play that riff I was just playing that I call the Ethereal Rock 1a Riff. And the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to play it without that backing track. To just give you an idea of my setup, I'm plugged directly into an interface into GarageBand. Nothing fancy. And I'm just using the British Combo settings, pretty much on default, I’m pretty sure. With it is just a bit of reverb on the spring and then I'm using two pedals. The High Drive treble boost, which I’m pretty sure is on default and the Tie-Dye delay, which is also just on default. So I'm not really doing anything fancy here. So now let's get to the riff itself where we’re going to break it down beat for beat. So taking a closer look at this first beat, using all sixteenths, we're going 1 e + a And we're doing a couple of hammer-ons, 10 to 12 and 10 to 12 So it's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. Jumping to the guitar here, we're going to go index, ring, index, ring. Go from the E string to the A string, 10, 12, 10, 12 Doing a hammer-on for each, only hitting each string once. Moving on to the second beat, again all sixteenths 2 e + a if we're counting it. We're going to start with a slide with the ring finger from the 12 to the 14 at the end of the first beat. Then do another 12 to 14 hammer-on, and then we're ending on 12 So jumping to the guitar here, when we're finishing the first beat, 1 e + a we're not going to hit the A string again to go 12, 14 That's going to be one motion. So it's going to be 12, 14, 12, 14, slide. We're only hitting that A string one time. Then we're moving down 12, 14 hammer-on again with our index to ring, and then 12 on the G string. So if I do those two beats together, it’s 1 e + a 2 e + a Again, that’s 1 e + a 2 e + a Now the third beat's going to have another hammer-on, slide, like at the end of the first beat, 12, 14, and 16 Again, I'll only hit into G string once. So we'll take another closer look at that. So we're ending the second beat on the 12 and we're going to hammer-on to the 14 for 3 And we're going to slide to the 16 for e with our ring finger, and then the end a is going to be silent. So if I'm starting from the end of the second beat, the a on the 12, with our index finger. It's going to go 12, 14, 16 Again, only hitting the G string once, 12, hammer-on, slide 3 e and then we're going to hold that 16 for + a Then to wrap up the first measure, the fourth beat is just going to be the 15 with our middle finger, and that'd be for e + a 4 e + a So again, if I start from the end of the second beat, the a, where our index finger is on the 12. It’s going to go… A little faster… So now I'll play the entire first measure slowly while counting so that you can see how it works a little bit slower but in rhythm. Now we're going to piece together the rest of it, which goes. If we take a look at it on the TAB, it looks like this. So counting the second and the third measure is pretty simple. All quarter notes for the second measure, 1 2 3 4 Then a half note, 1 2 followed by a half rest, 3 4 for that third measure. And we're going to start by bending the E string at the 17 for a whole step with our ring finger. So I'm going to move my three fingers down to the E string onto the 15, 16, 17, to help with the bend. I'm going to bend it a whole step so it sounds like the 19 And I'm going to do that for 1 And I'm going to bring it back down to 17 for 2 That second beat. So it's going to be 1, 2, 1, 2 Then we're going to wrap it up with 15, 17, 15 with our index finger, middle finger, index finger, and end with a vibrato. So that would be 3 4 1 2 3 4 Again, giving a bit of vibrato to that first beat of the third measure. So that second and third beat together, it’s 1 2 3 4 So now I'm going to play the whole riff slowly, while counting the rhythm out loud. 1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a And now I’ll play it just a little faster. 1 e + a 2 e + a 3 e + a 4 e + a Like always, I hope you had fun learning the riff! If you enjoyed the video, please give it a like! If you want to learn more guitar, subscribe! Just make sure you're having fun and happy practicing!