A fun and popular technique is to use octaves in your riffs. They sound really good mixed in with power chords and give it a unique sound. Today Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman, aka Uncle D, is going to teach you three fun and easy octave riffs that sound great! Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with the video instruction and you will get this technique under your belt in record time.
Introduction
How’s it going everybody this is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I’ve got three fun and easy riffs for you that are made up of octaves. So these are cool riffs, they’re fun to play and they’re also really a great exercise for developing this technique.
So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.
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.
Octave Technique
All right, so the first thing is just to go over what I’m referring to here. So an octave is just when you’re playing the same note after you’ve already gone through the scale, it’s on the next set up. So we’re doing this for a riff any note you play, and this works across all the strings except one thing that I’ll explain when we get there. So here if I go to the fifth fret on the low E string and now if I skip a fret and skip a string so that’s going to put me on the seventh fret of the D string, it’s the same note, so that shape and skip a fret and skip a string is the same no matter what frets you’re on. So if I do it between the A and the and the G string it’s the same thing, but now if I go up to the D and the B string there’s two Frets in between now because the B string is a half step lower than the rest of the strings. But for these riffs that we’re going to be doing here they’re just going to be on the A and the G string and that’s where you’re going to find where a lot of these kinds of riffs are. So when you’re playing this the trick is that I just want to get this D here and here, but I don’t want to hear all those other open strings, I just want… So what I’m doing is I’m fretting the note on the A string with my first finger and then I’m actually using the tip of my finger, close to the nail, as a way to keep the low E string muted. And then the pad of my finger is touching the D string and keeping it muted and my third finger is picking up the seventh fret of the G string my and first finger is also muting the B and the high E strings so when I strum I just get those two sounds and then you also get that that kind of percussive sound in there too; it just sounds really cool and some neat things can be done with it.
Octave Riffs-1 – Fire – Jimi Hendrix
So the first one to look at is the riff from Fire by Jimi Hendrix. So this we’re going to start off on the 11th fret of the A string and the 13th fret of the G string. So again low E string is muted, the D string is muted, you’re getting the G string and the high E and B strings are muted… We hit this on the downbeat of one and it’s a quarter note and then on the downbeat of two we’re just going to move it down a half step so now I’m on the 10th fret of the A string and the 12th fret of the G string and then we slide out of that… and then we rest on beat two… Okay, so that’s the first measure and then the second measure we’re going to start off on the eighth fret of the A string and tenth fret of the G string and we’re going to hit this on the downbeat of one and then on the and of one we’re gonna slide it up a whole step. So one and, and then on the downbeat of two we’re gonna take the shape now we’re gonna move it down a set of strings. So we’re going to stay here on the 10th and 12th fret but we’re going to move our fingers down so now my first finger is on the 10th fret of the low E string and my third finger is on the 12th fret of the D string and we hit that on the downbeat of two. And then on the end of two we hit it again and slide out of it, but it’s a dotted quarter note, so it takes care of all the way through beat three and then we rest on beat four and then it starts over… So something you need to kind of do there for fun that I I’ll do where those rests are is I’ll put some mute strums or something in there just to kind of make it a little more interesting when I’m playing it by myself…
Octave Riffs-2 – Black & Blue – Van Halen
Alright so, the next we’re going to look at is the riff from Black and Blue by Van Halen. So this one isn’t just only octaves, it has some other stuff in it that I’m gonna add in here as well just to make it so it has some resolve when you play it. So we’re going to start off on the second fret of the A string and we skip string and skip a fret so that’s going to put us onto the fourth fret of the G string. We rest on beats one, two and three and then this starts on beat four. So it’s eighth notes, so we’ve got four and on the and of four we just slide it up a whole step so now we’re at the fourth and sixth frets and that’s the first measure. And then on the second measure we’re going to move this up a half step again, so now we’re on the fifth fret of the A string and we’re on the seventh fret of the D string and we hit that on the downbeat of one, but then on the and of one we rest and then we hit it again on the downbeat of two and then on the and of two we rest. Then on the down beat of three and then rest and the down beat of four and on the and of four we rest… So for beats one and two we’ve got one and, two and, and then we’re gonna move it down a half step, three and, four and. So then for measure three we’re going to be back here to two and four and we’re going to hit this on the downbeat of one and then on the and of one we hit the open low E string. And then on the downbeat of two we’re going to pick the third fret so I can just stay in this position and we’re going to just do a little quarter step bend and pull-off to the open string and we do that twice, two and, three and. All right, then on beat four we’re right back here again; so beat four is like beat four of the first measure. So we’ve got four and, and now on the fourth measure here we’re going to scoot up a half step again and instead of just doing the octave we’re going to do a D5 power chord. So another thing that’s good about this is It’s kind of giving you a way to practice making the transition between the two ideas of just doing a octave or doing a power chord because they’re they go together really well and it’s a common thing to kind of mix them up. So we’re going to hit that one and, two and, and on the downbeat of three we’re going to go to an A5 and then before the open low E string and on the and of four E5. So this E5 we’re doing it up here on the seventh fret of the A string and then the ninth fret of the D and G string and the low E string open…
Octave Riffs-3 – Machinehead – Bush
All right and then the last one to look at is the riff from Machine Head by Bush. So this one again is the just that same octave shape and is only on the A and the G string. All right, so we start off we’re on the fourth fret of the A string first finger and sixth fret of the G string third finger and again that same idea that we want to mute that D string, technically want to mute all the those strings we aren’t using, we just want to hear those two notes. So we hit this one and, and then we’re going to move it up a half step so now we’re at the fifth and seventh fret. So now we’ve got two E and it’s three 16th notes, two e and uh. So on the and of two we’re gonna move it up to seven and then on the downbeat of three we do seven again and then we’re gonna move it up a whole step so we’re at the ninth and the 11th fret and this is for beat four… And then we’re going to go back down to seven and then down a half step to six and eight… So this one’s probably a little bit tougher than the first two just simply based on the speed, but don’t worry about the speed, just worry about getting the the clarity and the timing and everything down and the speed will come with time.
Conclusion
All right, so there you have it, three cool guitar riffs that are based in octaves that aren’t too terribly difficult to play and also make really great exercises for working on the technique. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
