Check out this free lesson from Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman on 3 killer drop D guitar riffs. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with this sweet Killer Drop D Guitar Riffs guitar lesson.
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I want to show you how to play three killer drop D riffs. 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 3 Killer Drop D Guitar Riffs.
Drop D Tuning
All right so the first thing that you’re going to want to do to learn these 3 Killer Drop D Guitar Riffs is you’re going to want to tune your low E down to a D. So a really easy way to do this is just play your open E and your open D together, so the sixth and the fourth string together, and then tune the sixth string down until they’re unison and that puts you in drop D.
Everlong
All right so the first Killer Drop D Guitar Riffs we’re going to look at is Everlong by Foo Fighters. So for this one we’re going to come up here to the ninth fret of the A string with your first finger and then we’re going to put our third finger onto the 11th fret of the D string and the G string… So the technique on this one is kind of tricky… you want to hold that chord and then you’re gonna pedal the open sixth string… as soon as I hit that power chord I release the pressure with my fingers. So I’m not taking them off, I’ve just still got my fingers on the strings, I’m just not fretting it anymore so it puts a nice stop to it… So when I’m hitting that chord, I’m only playing the A and the D strings and then at the end we pick up the 11th fret of the G string too… Okay and then after that we just take your first finger and we just move it down so we’re also barring, we’re also picking up the ninth fret of the low E too… so it’s the same strum… Then we just remove that chord shape just like this and now we’re barring the E and the A strings at the fifth fret and I’m getting the seventh fret of the D and the G strings… So we come down to there and then back up to the nine and then it just starts over again so…
Damn That River
All right so the next Killer Drop D Guitar Riff we want to look at is Damn That River by Alice In Chains, this one’s fairly simple to play too, really cool riff, one of my favorite drop D riffs. So we’re gonna start off and we’re only gonna be playing just the low E and the A string. So we start off here at the third fret and we’re gonna go three, four, five and then we move up and we go five, six, seven and then six, five; so you know back down, so three, four, five, open, five, six, seven, six, five and then back down to the third fret so three, four, five, open, five, six, seven, six, five, three, five, seven, open, five, seven, eight, seven, five, and then back to the three for the stop and then you put a little rest right there before it starts over.
Heart Shaped Box
All right so the last Killer Drop D Guitar Riff we’re going to look at is a Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana. Now I’m not a real big Nirvana fan, but I really like this riff, I think this is a really cool riff and it’s fairly easy to play. So we’re going to start off by barring our first finger at the seventh fret across the E, A, D strings. So we do that here at seven and we move down to the third fret and do the same picking and then we play just the strings open; so it’s six, five, four, look on the tabs, I’m drawing this from memory, so I could have a couple of those mixed up and I don’t have the transcription that I made right here, but it’s fairly simple. Okay so the next part of it we start off with the… and then come back up to seven, three and then the open sixth string. Now we’re going to take our second finger and put it on the fourth fret of the D string and we hit that twice, hit the open A string back to that again and now we drop our first finger onto the third fret of the A string. So it’s got that diminished fifth, so it’s like really kind of a dark dissonant kind of sounding riff, but I just think it sounds really cool…
Conclusion
All right so I hope you enjoyed that and you got something out of it. If you like the lesson give me a thumbs up. If there’s something you’d like to see covered in a future lesson leave a comment down below and let me know. If you have not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so that way you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Anyhow that is all I’ve got for you today. Thanks for watching how to play three Killer Drop D Guitar Riffs and have a great day.
