lordphobos

On This Rock (Outro)

Here's a serious brooding moment, in what I believe to be one the darkest TWRP songs!

There's a menancing, long winded chord progression that the synths play. The guitar plays the root notes of these chords. These root notes keep moving down chromatically, all the way through 9 chords in total! Here's the full progression for any theory heads in the room:

Cm/Bb - Am7b5 - Abdim7 - Eb/G - Gbdim7 - Fmin6 - C/E - Eb - Dm7 - Fmin/Ab - C/G - Fmin

In the studio I double t...

Planet Bass (Fusion Fill)

Hey everyone! Thought I'd post this one today - it's a fun and quick moment that only happens once in a super goofy song.

This is a great one to work on some rhythmic soloing ideas, as well as picking. Strict alternate picking is key, down up down up down up all the way through! Every phrase starts on a downstroke except for the first one which starts on an upstroke (because it's beginning on the 'a' of 1)

The first chunk of this is in F dorian. It more or less falls under the fol...

Comin Atcha (Verse)

Hey funk freaks... today we're getting really lively with a triplety doodle. Read on if you'd like learn, nerds!

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This part is all triads on the top 3 strings. If you know these you know these, and if you don't, well you probably should. Basically for major chords you have 3 main shapes for each inversion. For this example I'll use G major:

---3---7---10---
---3---8---12---
---4---7---12---

Transpose these to the correct spots and you have the shapes requi...

Planet Bass (Solo)

Who would have thought - planet BASS being discussed on the GUITAR page!

It was very fun to relearn this solo and make the video lesson for you all. The explanations are all in the vid courtesy of my highly intelligible robot voice.

TAB is attached, enjoy!

The Eve of War (Slidey Guitar Lead)

Remember this fun cover we dropped a few months ago?

Some of the guitar parts in this one are unique to our version, and others are taken straight from the original. Other ones are slightly rearranged - for example there's a few synth leads we moved to the guitar.

This particular lead begins at 1:41. There's mainly 2 arpeggios that are laid out across 2 strings. The second to third note has a big slide to spice things up. At the end, a fun harmonized lick transitions into the next...

Black Swan (Outro)

Here's an easy and fun one to give you a lil' weekend boost! 

This rockin' power chord progression provides a solid foundation for some seriously beautiful vocal harmonies via Dan Avidan.

There's a few teachable moments in here:

- ATTN BEGINNERS: I'm using 3 note power chords. In these, you put the octave of the root note on a higher string. If you've only played 2 note power chords before, note that this is a great way to thicken things up a little bit, especially for ...

Black Swan (Guitar Lead 1)

Time to let it rip! Here's a 2 part harmony (aka guitarmony). This moment happens at 1:47 in the song. Like I mentioned before, it's hard to label this part as a verse or post chorus or whatever, since it's really just a part of a long musical journey through space and time.

In this vid I play both the lower and upper parts back to back. If you're playing just one part, choose whichever one you perceive as the melody (this is kind of subjective). For me personally, it's the lower line.<...

Black Swan (Heavy Riff)

Here's a personal favourite! A chonky riff with some cool rhythmic ideas happening.

It happens around 1:38 in the song - I'm not sure if it has a proper function as far as verses and choruses etc are concerned. It's just another of many many sections in this long tune!

The riff happens in the key of D minor and consists of 4 phrases each taking up 2 measures. Practice each of these individually before putting all the pieces together.

Not a whole lot to say with this one in...

Need Each Other (Bridge)

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday time.

Here's potentially one of smoothest parts we've got. It's kind of like 2 in one. The first part being the low palm muted single notes, the second being the jazzy chords on top. In the studio I tracked either part on different takes/guitars to make the mix sound more interesting, but for a performance I think it sounds great playing both parts together.

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Let's look at the low riff to begin. It's basically this bl...

Champion Zone (Heavy Riff)

Hello my lil' champions. This is a hot and heavy metal riff. I'm pretty sure if you play this correctly and with the right tuffness, a gold trophy might just show up at your door!

How do you make this sound tuff? Start by using downstrokes for every note. That's the Metallica approach. (A fun fact is that the working title of this song was Metallica, even though it doesn't sound much like Metallica!)

This riff is in the key of C minor. Most of it is in a minor blues pentatonic sca...

Red and Gold (A Section - Second Half)

Okay let's go! If you're feeling good with the first half (posted last week), it's time to take this one for a whirl.

I think this part is fairly intermediate in difficulty. On the one hand it is high on the neck at points, and moves around positions a fair bit. But also it's not super fast or anything. The point of the part is to be melodic and catchy, so it's not about melting faces or anything like that.

Pay attention to the phrasing. Stuff like when to slide and applying the r...

Red and Gold (A Section - First Half)

Continuing through Phobos IV in chronological order - here's the first melody from this banger smash hit. Amazing that it was #1 on all the world charts for so many years!

This one is a long melody that evolves over many chords. I'll put them down below for you. I always think of chords as musical moods basically, so a long string of them like this makes things feel like a big adventure. At least that was the idea when making the part.

There's a lot you can focus on here. Maybe it...

Introduction (Second Half)

Continuing this discussion of the track, of which the first half was covered last week. These two lessons are peas in a pod. So go check that one out first if you haven't already. Otherwise, open the attached TAB and read on!

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One of the fun parts here is the picking. You're constantly changing strings with the right hand, and there's not too repetitive of a pattern either. Could be a really
great way to get your right hand in shape. 

Try to have notes ring as...

Introduction (First Half)

This is probably one of the weirder parts I've ever written. It's a total vibe! It doesn't follow conventional ideas or chord shapes super well, and it utilizes a lot of open strings. This makes it quite difficult to conceptualize things and fit it into a familiar pattern. I was purposely trying to do something different with this.

It was recorded on an acoustic guitar, but a clean electric works too (as you can hear in this vid). There's also a mellotron harpischord sound which doubles...

Galactic Chase (Second Section)

Here is the second section of this fun tune!

This section started off with the synth trumpets up high. I wanted to put a low guitar riff beneath this to compliment the synths, and came up with this. It can be a great riff for working on hammer ons as well as palm muting. 

The first 4 measures are all in E minor pentatonic (m2-5 in the tab). The phrase then changes key to G minor. I chose to do this because I thought it sounded evil and could represent the villain in this wild...

Galactic Chase (Outro)

Continuing onwards with Phobos I! Here's another one of my fav riffs from Galactic Chase - the outro section.

My intention here was to make a real cool tuff guy riff. The kind of riff that makes you rip your sleeves off and immediately tattoo a big skull and crossbones onto your shoulder.

The guitar is very repetitive to make the section catchy, but the bassline and chords underneath descend to add some movement so that it doesn't feel repetitive. In addition, the drums are playin...

Galactic Chase (Intro)

Hey all! Going to focus on some Phobos solo material over the next little while. This is the intro for one of my fav Phobos songs. I also just posted a lesson for the solo in this one for the SHRED LORD tier, go check that out!

This is a part that I actually wrote probably around 18 years ago, no joke. Just never really had a place for it until this EP was in the works, when it snuck back out of my subconscious robot mind.

It's based around a neoclassical idea called pedal-point. ...

Feels Pretty Good (B Section)

Hey folks! Here's the B Section to Feels Pretty Good. The A Section was posted way back when, so it feels like this one is long overdue!

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This one actually starts with a cool transition during measures 1 & 2 (m1-2). The picking during this transition gives the chords a textural contrast with all the other strummy bits. The left hand plays a G minor barre chord, but every 2 beats the root note on the 4th string moves down chromatically. This chord movement is a super po...

Maximum Thrust (Verse)

Alrighty folks, it's time to mix things up. Typically most of these guitar parts are in either the funk realm or the meedly-meedly shred zone. This one on the other hand is in the textural ambient floating in the clouds realm. So turn on the reverb and let's dig in!

This part wasn't written to show off or anything, but is moreso about creating a nice lil' soundscape on top of the other more rhythmic instruments.

The main idea here is that the guitar plays cluster-y sounding chor...

Head Up High (A Section)

This week let's do a fun single note spanky part!

I'm often trying to pay homage to cool things when writing a guitar part, and this one was inspired by David William's guitar playing on early MJ records. Don't Stop Til You Get Enough is a good example of this single note style.

The other big inspo for this song is Overture off of George Duke's incredible album Guardians of the Light.

The part itself is basically the same thing twice, but the second time the rhythm is just a...

Ladyworld (Verse)

Here's a continuation of last week's lesson, as we continue to dig into the ultra fun song of Ladyworld. While in the same song, the part itself is very different from the chorus part we learned last time. So turn off that distortion, get your cleanest sparkliest sound ready, and let's go!

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It's funny how many things come from a simple place conceptually. You've maybe seen this A minor pentatonic scale shape pop up on this page before, and here it is again. This is the source...

Ladyworld (Chorus)

This is one of my fav parts of all time (no exaggeration!). It takes a simple motif and transforms it a lil' bit with each chord change. The motif in its most basic form is this:

E--3-5-5-3-5-5-3--
B--3-5-5-3-5-5-3--

But you can add slides to it and make it fun, like this:

E--3/5--5/3/5--5/3--
B--3/5--5/3/5--5/3--

You then move it up 5 frets and play it here:

E--8/10--10/8/10--10/8--  
B--8/10--10/8/10--10/8--

The next motif is a little...

Somewhere Out There (Chorus)

...Somewhere out there? How right here, this beautiful guitar lesson you're able to check out?

This song is probably #1 for the most different guitar approaches in one song. There's some rock n roll guitars, some shredding, some vibey slide guitar, and some funky strumming. It's the funky strumming that we'll be looking at today.

Basically, you'll be taking these 2 rhythms and applying them to a long progression of chords:

1   e   &&n...