5 Advanced Guitar Riffs: Songs to Push You Further
Free TABs Included
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5 Advanced Guitar Riffs: Songs to Push You Further · Source: Alamy Stock Photo / pixidyll.net
These advanced guitar riffs could be easier than you think. Are you ready to take your playing up a level? Check out these 5 TABs to help you win at guitar.
Advanced songs to try
Key Information about Advanced Guitar Riffs:
- Advanced guitar riffs develop your musicionship and prescision. It’s not all about speed. Working on theory skills, as well as picking techniques, co-ordination, expression and more.
- Playing riffs that push your ability accelerates your growth as a player. Sometimes you need to reach for the top to get to the top.
- Expand your musical identity. By learning new genres and skillsets, you’ll improve across the rest of your playing, taking on harder improvisation licks and ideas.
Advanced Guitar Playing
Who’s keeping score? It’s so easy to hide yourself in a corner and say that you’re a beginner guitarist, or maybe even a pro guitarist. There is no real way to tell where you’re at.
There are loads of players that could sweep pick into oblivion, but couldn’t tell you the first three notes of a major scale. Whereas, there are more grouned players that take their time to appreciate and study every aspect of guitar playing.
These advanced guitar riffs cover various aspects of music that will help with your progression. Here, we’ll be looking at alternate tunings, sophisticated rhythms, and just feel good tunes that you’ll love playing.
Take Me To The Top – Mötley Crüe
Our first advanced guitar riff comes from Mötley Crüe’s 1981 debut album, Too Fast For Love. Why are Mötley Crüe riffs hard to play? Mick Mars was the only guitarist in the band, and therefore his riffs had to be thick, fast, and loud.
Essentially, Take Me To The Top is an alternating two bar phrase. However, the feel and rhythm is particularly challenging thanks to the triplets. Gving this a swung feel.
Moreover, it also incorperates some hammer-ons, which aren’t that tricky, but at 175bpm they pose quite the challenge. The most important thing to watch with this song is that it is played in D standard tuning, which is an entire tone down from standard.
What else, other than these free TABs, do you need to master Take Me To The top? Well, a *guitar tuner wouldn’t go a miss to help with down-tuning. And while you’re at it, you may as well treat yourself to the right guitar.
Last Resort – Papa Roach
From 1980s glam rock, to a 2000s divorced Dad rock anthem. Last Resort has a siniser meaning, and some pretty emotive lyrics. However, this advanced guitar riff teaches us so many lessons.
Rhythmically, the entire riff is in semi-quavers. Otherwise known as 16th notes, these are fast little buggers. We’d count an entire bar of semi-quavers as: 1e+a, 2e+a, 3e+a, 4e+a. There’s also some palm-muting to be had too.
Overall, Last Resort offers the perfect opportinity to practice your alternate picking, allowing players to build speed with complex riffs. Furthermore, we’re in the Drop D tuning for this one. Whereby the low E string is a whole step down.
Ventura Highway – America
Moving on to something acoustic. This 1970s advanced guitar riff comes from the beutiful band that is America. This riff is so advanced that it is virtially impossible to play it correctly.
That’s not a trick! You need two guitarists to play this riff lilke the record. This is because we’re working with guitar harmonies. Whereby one guitar plays a lead line, and a second plays the same melody, just with different notes from the scale.
Guitar harmonies result in a dreamy and thick sound. The TAB below features two versions of the riff for you to try. Regarding techniques, there are some hammer-on and pull-off phrases to watch out for, along with the brisk 129bpm tempo.
Land Of The Bees – McFly
McFly? A pop band? Yes, that’s right, these guys still know how to rock! This 2023 track has flown largely under the radar for non die-hard McFly fans. However, it has a wicked classic rock feel.
Another chance to work on your alternate picking here. Working in double time, this riff feels as though it steals something from George Harrison’s Here Comes The Sun, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.
Here, I’ve just included the intro TAB. However, if you listen to the rest of the track, there are some interesting metre changes where it goes form 4/4 to 3/4, 7/8 and even 9/8! It’s giving me Rush vibes.
Run Like Hell – Pink Floyd
Conclusing our look at advanced guitar riffs, we turn to Mr. Gilmour for advice. Sure, he has some blistering guitar solos and complex compositions. However, this track from The Wall has taken the patience of many guitarists over the years.
Essentially, Run Like Hell is a series of descending inverted chords. Instead of playing regular chords in the open position, Gilmour changes things up and places them in different positions throughout the neck, which is what makes it so advanced.
Couple that with the perculiar rhythm and *delay, it’s hard to make out excatly what he’s playing. How should you practice this song? Persnally, I would memoriese the shapes first, then look at adding any effects. This way you ensure that your playing is accurate, because it’s very easy to hide your mistakes behind your pedal board.
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