These videos and audio files are bonus content related to the August 2014 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now or at the Guitar World Online Store.
One of the essential qualities of a great metal riff is the presence of a signature element—unusual chord voicings, a twisted melodic line—that immediately grabs your attention.
In this column, I’d like to demonstrate a few ways to achieve this and dress up your riff ideas with murky, monstrous-sounding, aggressively attacked chord figures and patterns.
FIGURE 1 is played in a rhythm of steady, hard-driving eighth notes, for which the open low E string is used as a palm-muted pedal tone throughout. In bar 1, two-note E5 power chords are accented on the downbeats of beats two and three, but at the end of the bar, I switch to upbeat accents of Bb(b5) on the upbeats of beat four and beat one of bar 2.
