{"id":1174,"date":"2021-11-12T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-12T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/?p=1174"},"modified":"2021-11-11T19:23:52","modified_gmt":"2021-11-12T03:23:52","slug":"simplify-iconic-riffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/simplify-iconic-riffs\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Simplify Iconic Riffs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Download the tabs here)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you first picked up the guitar, was there a specific riff that inspired you? If there was, then you\u2019re like just about every other guitar player out there. The problem is that most of the time these iconic riffs are incredibly hard to pull off. And playing that legendary lick note-for-note could take years of practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what if we told you that you can actually simplify many complicated guitar parts so that even a beginner can play them? In this lesson, Ayla takes five of the most famous guitar riffs ever and makes them completely beginner-friendly. These simplified riffs are a great way to break away from monotonous exercises and actually start having fun playing something your family and friends will recognize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing that makes this riff particularly hard is the ghost notes and the fills. So we\u2019ve gone ahead and taken those away so that it\u2019s mostly just chords. Give it a try and as you get comfortable with it you can start adding back some of the nuances of the original.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s nothing like a good grunge riff! The thing that beginner guitarists struggle with here is the extended power chord shapes and the muted strums. If we remove the octave from the power chords so they only contain two notes each and leave out the muted strums, this riff becomes pretty easy to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s another lick that sounds pretty easy but actually poses quite the challenge. This lead line uses something called double stops. These double stops are two notes played at the same time in harmony. To simplify this one, we\u2019ll remove a few of these secondary notes and focus on the melody. As you improve, you can add some notes back until you\u2019re playing the real thing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sultans Of Swing – Dire Straits<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nailing all of the nuances in Mark Knopfler\u2019s original riff from Sultans Of Swing takes some pretty advanced technique. We\u2019ll scale this one down a lot by removing the fancy fingerpicking and the bar chords. Instead, we\u2019ll focus on playing open chords and playing the foundational pieces of the riff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Dog – Led Zeppelin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last riff of this lesson, we\u2019ll strip away Jimi Page\u2019s bends and trills so that the riff focuses purely on the melody. We\u2019ll keep the little bit of chromaticism and pentatonic shapes so it\u2019ll still sound familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s it! You may want to play the riff just like the recording from the get-go, and that\u2019s totally okay. This lesson is more for those of you that are happy to play something recognizable and work towards playing the real thing over time. Happy playing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this lesson, Ayla takes five of the most famous guitar riffs ever and makes them completely beginner-friendly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":1177,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9,11,294,87,28,112,141,296,292,293,56,297,295],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1180,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions\/1180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitareo.com\/riff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}