lordphobos

Phantom Racer (Verse)

Added 2020-03-05 16:09:27 +0000 UTC

In celebration of being on tour with The Protomen, here's more of Phantom Racer!

This verse is a joy to play. I'd say it's intermediate in terms of difficulty. There's lots of different parts here and not a ton of repetition, so the best approach is to break it apart measure by measure, and then slowly put it all together.

Pro Tips:

- There's an 8th note palm mute feel throughout. What's key is the various accents which play different 2 note chords, either power chords or chords on the higher strings.

- There's lots of position hopping throughout. It starts off in the 3rd position, and at the end of measure 4 slide up to the 7th fret with your 3rd finger, bringing you into 5th position. This is halfway up to the 7th position used in measures 5 to 8. Pop down to the open position for measures 9-12, and hop back up to position 7 for measures 13-16.

- I like to hold the pick closer to the tip here to create more of a choked feel. Sometimes when you do this you can achieve pinch harmonics, which are an iconic squealing sound.

Theory Talk:

The chords here are:

C major (x4) - E minor (x4) - G major (x2) - A major (x2) - E major (x4)

The scale/mode keeps changing throughout the riff. From measures 1-11, it's in E minor (E - F# - G - A - B - C - D)

In measure 12, with the A major chord comes a switch to E dorian (same as the above minor scale, but with a raised 6th - C#).

In measure 13, the mode changes again when the E major chord hits, resolving to a more upbeat E mixolydian scale (E - F# - G# - A - B - C# - D).

This is sometimes called Modal Interchange. All you theory-heads should give that a quick google search!

TAB is attached as a PDF and Guitar Pro file.