Check out this free Three Easy Killer Van Halen Riffs from Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. Be sure to click the link for the free tabs that go along with this Easy Killer Van Halen Riffs lesson.
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson. Today I want to show you some of my favorite Eddie Van Halen riffs. Now these aren’t going to be anything that’s all spectacular with a bunch of tapping and stuff. This is the stuff that I really dug about Eddie Van Halen, just the real raw rhythm stuff that he did, stuff that I thought was really cool. So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at these Easy Killer Van Halen Riffs.
EVH Riff -1 Mean Street
All right so for the first EVH riff let’s take a look at the riff for Mean Street. This is just the one riff from the song and this is one that I really like. It’s really simple, but it’s just so raw and captures that whole essence that was EVH to me. So starting off this EVH riff we’re just going to be barring the fifth fret of the D and G string with my first finger and then we’re going to follow that with our third finger going to the seventh fret of the D string… Now we’ve got a rest in between those two, so it’s like… and then a rest and then we come back and we go five on the D string to five on the G string. So after we do that five then we come back and do seven, seven on the on the D string. So if you look at your transcription you can see where the rests are in there; that’s kind of really important on this… and then after we do the two sevens on the D string. Then we go and we do one seven on the A string and then we come back to the fifth fret on the D string and we do a pick and hammer-on to seven and pull-off to five… and then it goes back to the… and then we go back to the… just like at the beginning. And then we’ve got this… we’re just hitting the D and the G strings open… like a G5 power chord but it’s just inverted. So that’s the first the first two measures, it’s basically the whole riff… So lets move on and check out the next EVH riff.
EVH Riff -2 Oh Pretty Woman
So for the next Killer Van Halen Riff we’re going to look at Oh Pretty Woman and I realize that this was a cover song by Roy Orbison, but Eddie really put his signature on this and I just think it’s just a really cool sounding riff. So to start off we just have A suspended two (Asus2). So the A string is open and I’m on the second fret of the D string with my second finger and the second fret of the G string with my third finger. So we go five, four, two, three, referring to strings. Now we’ve got A suspended two over F sharp (Asus2/F#); so we’re going to keep that chord and we’re just going to put our first finger up onto the second fret of the low E so the first two measures and then it just repeats. Okay so on the fourth measure the second time through we’re on that Asus2/F# we go; six, four, two, three and then we just come to the tenth fret and we just slide out of that… So that’s where we go into this main riff here. So this is the low E open twice palm muted and then we go four, seven and then five of the A string with your second finger… Now if you’ve got a whammy bar you’ve gottta know that Eddie was all about the whammy bar. So you got that… and then you’re gonna hit a harmonic on the seventh fret of the D and the G strings together; so it’s like… and then we go back and do that… Then the A string open with a dive and then he slides out of the 14th fret from there, so that would be the third measure of that main riff which is measure seven and then that leads us into the next part of it. Okay so after you do that dive bomb it does a slide from nowhere from the 14th fret down and then the riff is all palm muted; so open four and seven on the low E to the fifth fret of the A string with your second finger to the fourth fret of the D string with your first finger and then to the seventh fret of the A with your fourth finger and then to the fifth fret with your second finger… So that’s all just with eighth notes and then on the downbeat of the next measure we just hit one hand and it’s just the high E & B strings open… so that basically replaces the second measure from there on out, it’s just the first measure where it has the two open strings. I just really like that riff, I just think it’s really cool. Now lets check out the final EVH riff.
EVH Riff -3 DOA
All right then that finally leaves us with the last of the Killer Van Halen Riffs I’m going to show you and this is probably right now anyway my favorite EVH riff. This is from the song DOA, Dead or Alive. If I met somebody that had never heard Van Halen this is the song I would show them first; it’s just so raw and such a cool riff. So we start off just with an with an A and then we come up to the twelfth fret and do a slide out from there. So that right there is my favorite part. I just think this is just such a cool riff. So we’ve got that A and then we go to the second fret of the low E and fret it and then we just release it so we’re just touching the string so we kind of get that that natural harmonic sound… So it has that intro and then he does the slide up and slide back down and then here it goes into the part that’s really cool. So we’ve got that A and then we’re gonna go to the fourth fret on the G string and we do a bend and what you really want to try to do if you can is get a pinch harmonic in there and if you don’t get one every time or it doesn’t sound the same every time that’s even more authentic; it’s just kind of the way he sounded on this. So you’ve got that A and then you do the A… so it’s like one two three, one two two three and four and… So that little part you just repeat it as many times as you want. When I sit and just play this song myself I end up playing that part for a long time because I just think this EVH riff really sounds good.
Conclusion
So I hope you enjoyed Three Easy Killer Van Halen Riffs and got something out of it. If you like this EVH riff lesson be sure to give it a thumbs up and leave a comment if there is something you have a question on. If you haven’t already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss out any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I’ve got for you today. Thanks for watching Three Easy Killer Van Halen Riffs and have a great day.
