Chords for Master the Snow (Hey Oh) Riff In Just 3 Steps

We're going to break it down into three parts today.
The first thing you want to do is just
get the fretting hand shapes down.
So what we're going to do is we're going to start with [Abm] this one
here. _ _ _ _ _
So if you're a member of theartofguitar.com, you're used to my terminology when I start talking
like this.
I usually don't do this for YouTube videos, but we're going to act like this is a
Art of Guitar video for today, okay?
Free lesson.
So we're going to call this a second inversion
_ _ minor triad right there. _
_ So make sure you can do this shape [Gb] first, [E] and then we're going to
quickly move on.
We're going to reach up with our pinky, _ and we're going to make this shape. _
This comes from the first form.
_ It's like a C chord, but this is going to be a root position _ _
_ _ _ triad on E, starting here.
So now we have to be able to go from here [Abm] to _ [E] here _ _ _ _ pretty swiftly, okay?
If there's a little bit of a problem there, I want you to work on that transition.
The next move of
that is actually kind of simple in theory, but to actually do it can seem kind of tough because this
shape isn't very common.
A lot of people don't use the first forms or the third forms whenever
they're doing chords.
They're used to this type of shape.
So going like this from this is a little
bit awkward.
Okay, so we're going to go from here, _ root position triad, to another root position triad,
this time starting on [B] B. _ _
_ _ _ [E] Okay, so let's do that. _
_ [B] _ _ _ _ See what I [E] mean?
Theoretically, that should be
very simple, but it's kind of tricky.
Now, if you watch Frusciante play this live, he actually does
this shape again.
He moves it back to the set of strings he was on and moves it up, [N] except he uses
these three fingers. _
[E] _ It's really hard to say [Gb] why until you actually play the full riff and see
that it helps it flow back to the beginning pretty well, but just trust me on this.
Trust him on this
one.
Let's go ahead now.
We're going to do the root position here, starting on the ninth fret,
root position triad.
_ _ So fret-wise, we have 9-8-6.
_ _ _ Okay, then we have to come back home.
So just take your first finger that's already on the correct string, slide it back, [Abm] and then come
back home.
_ _ So it creates this nice little circular pattern when you practice this first level of it.
Okay, so let's go ahead and start from the beginning here.
So we have the second inversion
triad, _ _ _ root position [E] triad, _ move it over to the fat [B] strings now.
_ _ Okay, now move to the other set
of strings that we were just on, except we're going to use our ring finger, middle finger,
and pointer finger on the ninth fret, [Gb] eighth fret, sixth fret.
_ _ Slide [Abm] that first finger back,
and we're back home.
_ So that's a good thing just to practice for a while.
[E] The right hand isn't
[Cm] immune to the difficulty of this.
There's a lot of picking you have to do.
So we're going to pick
it strictly alternate, and we're going to go down, up, down, up, and we're just going to arpeggiate
each one of these triads.
So this is the second phase.
We've made it all the way to phase two.
Starting over, we're going to start picking now.
So we're going to go down, up, down, up for each
one.
[Abm] _ _ _
_ Switch shapes, pick [E] the same way, _ _ _ [B] and _ _ _ _ _ [Gb] _
_ _ _ [Abm] come back home. _ _
[B] Keep [E] it circling.
_ _ _ [B] _ _ _
_ _ _ [Gb] _ _ _ _ _
[Abm] _ _ _ _ _ A lot of people ask, should I do this?
_ [E] Switch right away.
No, you don't have to.
The reason
why is because there's still a little lick that we have to throw in between each one,
and if we got to leave some space for it.
So I don't want you to get used to it just being
always flowing with this particular setup.
Okay, what we're going to do is we're going to add one
more thing and then we can flow.
Okay, two phases down.
We're on to the last one already.
This is
so crazy.
All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to do the same thing we started with,
but we're going to add a little flicker at the end.
I'm just going to call it that.
And there's
one really important thing you need to do because a big problem with this riff is that it's easy to
fall off the beat because it's so fast.
It's hard to really dig in and grab onto anything rhythm wise.
So I want you guys to start accenting this next part, accenting it really [Ab] strong.
So we just get
done going like this.
_ [Abm] _ What I want you to do [B] now is do the flicker, which is just a quick hammer-on
pull-off like that, _ but I want you to pick the first note of that pretty strong. _
Even if it
seems like it's too much, it's okay.
_ [Ab] Then we reach down and [E] _ [Gb] we complete the part of the riff.
[G] So it's a nice little thing to practice just going_
[B] _ _ _
_ _ Nice pentatonic feel.
Then we're going to be moving it over after we do two of those,
_ just up to the fatter strings.
So the first two times are going to be this.
_ [Abm] _
Then we move it over, [Gb] then move it up and over.
_ [B] _
_ _ _ [Gb] _ _ _ _ _
[Eb] Okay, that might seem like it's all of phase three,
but it's not.
The phase three is actually going to be putting it together with what you previously
did.
So here's how we do that. _
[Abm] _ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
All right, [Abm] _ _ _ see how hard I hit that accent?
_ If there's anything you
take from this lesson today, I want you to really understand the power of accenting when you're
practicing.
It really drives the signal to your brain and it's kind of like the robot technique
that we teach on the site where you're doing a lot of really strong movements and your brain
remembers it better that way.
It kind of sets it in for life.
All right, let's add this little
flicker part to each one and let's see what happens at a slow speed.
_ _ _ _ A little gap is [E] okay.
_ _ _ _ [B] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Gb] _ [C] Different hand position, finger [Gb] position.
_ Even though you're doing this, I don't want you to [Eb] go_
I want you to use the ring finger again.
[Bbm] _ _ Notice you end up here, [Eb] drag it back, and you're back
home.
[Abm] _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ [B] _ _ _
[Gb] A little tip right here.
When you go to the next part right here, I want you to slide into it.
_ _ _ _ _ Because the song goes like a million miles an hour when it's full speed and you're going to want to
have a little traction getting up to the next part.
You don't want to just jump to it.
Chances
are you might overshoot it or undershoot it.
So it's nice to slide up to it.
Gives you a little
bit of feeling of traction once again.
All right, a little bit [Abm] faster.
_ _ [E] _ _ _ [B] _
_ _ [Gb] _ _ [Eb] _ _ _ [E] _
Okay, see how that slide
really helps that part sound cohesive to the rest of it?
Okay, those are the three phases.
I know you
guys can handle those.
The trick is now is just to play phase three as many times as possible and
then you speed up.
All right, let's go medium speed.
Watch how the technique stays the same, as well as
my accenting.
It still might sound a little too strong, but I'm really just trying to drive the [Abm] point home.
_ [E] _ _ _ [B] _ _ [Gb] _ _ [Abm] _ _ [E] _
_ _ [B] _ _ [Gb] _ _ [Ab] _ _
_ [Abm] _ [E] _ _ _ [B] _ _ [Gbm] _
_ [Abm] _ _ [E] _ _ _ [B] _ _
[Gb] _ [Db] _ [Ab] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _