Meshuggah Metal Riff Lesson Part 4

[@blastbeatdown]

What he says at the end is really great. I’ve been a fan for 20 years and I didn’t understand how they wrote that shit for most of that time.. but I could tell something was going on, a “method” as he puts it. The way they groove in odd phrases but then remove/add a few pulses so that the parts still line up in 4/4 is really brilliant.

[@drumkidstu]

My favorite is when they start the riff in the "middle", so that it lines up at the end of section in 4/4.

[@mistamontiel]

2:03 that lil solo from Fredrik is hilarious LMFAO

[@sjn_]

Not Fredrik, it's Mårten

[@rustyshackleford9452]

@@sjn_ ur joking right

[@davianmoua3888]

man these two metal heads, one of the best in the history

[@pr0llyn0t]

I like how he says their music comes out 'natural' for them.

[@RadamentsLair]

Love finally hearing what he said about it not being all about mathematics. Once you get comfortable with it and listen, it really does make sense. Like he said it's "like going down another road that's open to you".. most just don't go down that road because it's difficult (at first) to comprehend and dissect.

[@RonnieIsGrumpy]

This is very true, listen to this man. By the way, I love how synched their left hands are from 1:18 to 1:37, looks like they're reloading shitloads of shotgun rounds! :D

[@danielemmanuel6261]

This song was inspired by my alarm clock

[@cavasnel]

I remember my first listen of it... My mind was blown away! This was so different, so agressive yet subtle, so... "Intellectual" yet straightforward. I love it. It's amazing.

[@EUSL84]

These guys are a real genius, you may think it's easy to sound heavy with that equipment but the tempos? You know you have to have a very good rhythm to create those tempos even if you are a great musician or do you believe you're a great musician...

[@groathorror]

I just enjoy watching these

[@blickblocks]

It's pretty cool that they give these lessons to us!

[@WATCHSONICS]

Highly generous individuals, incredible riffs

[@Guitarguy234]

Woohoo Meshuggah rocks! Thank you for this interview! They are a total inspiration for me. I am a big fan of polyrhythms and these guys do it well. They're so metal!

[@bentarpey8666]

Man, they really love AcDc.

[@cavasnel]

It's brilliant! One of the greatest albums ever.

[@_unicorn_5054]

0:10 БЛЭД

[@lemonjuix]

Spuditron, I totally feel you on that. I bought obzen a year ago and it wasn't my favorite cd then, but NOW it never leaves my cd player (except for when Nothing or Catch 33 goes in)

[@holygroove2]

You know, this music doesn't "project itself in people's ears" like it's in odd time. I think that schools have screwed up the way that people hear music, so that folks can't really hear the 4/4 thing as primary. People who know nothing about music seem to get Meshuggah more than some of the trained musicians do, and that's part of why I love this band.

[@JadeIsBunny]

+holygroove2 I think most people should be able to wrap their head around the logic behind certain riffs (for example in death is death around 3:50, the one in obzen etc) after listening to it maybe... 5 times. If not there's got to be something wrong.

[@THERAMMSTEINFAN490]

+holygroove2 well yes when any given person attempts to understand music, they will make use of certain methods that they are familiar with. Unfortunately the schooling of music often overlooks the feel and actual musicality of music and focuses on different numbers and scales and whatnot. Meshuggah however has taken a step outside the box of traditional ( well historically speaking its untraditional but nvm) musicality and rythm and they have managed to create a lot of music based on either their visual or emotional interpretation of something (in or out of this world) on a much higher level - seeing as they did not confine themselves as strictly and to as much of the counting-music-writing stuff. They have expressed that the album Catch 33 is mostly a visual musical experience for them, which was where i derived some of that from. And they have said that the earlier albums were alot about expressing anger externally. Of course we are closing in on the level of musical interpretation which is exclusive to each different individual and cannot easily be measured and definitely not counted ;) Cheers man :D hope it made sense, i usually just write whatever i think, and sometimes that gets a bit messy :P

[@holygroove2]

THERAMMSTEINFAN490 you're making sense for sure. My favorite albums are Chaosphere and Nothing which are indeed "angry" but also very musical...they explore anger in a multifaceted way. Not just external anger, but internal. On Nothing, they express regret...it's hard to see the layers because their expression is very strong, and very focused, but the layers are there nonetheless. Cheers back to you!

[@holygroove2]

Poodle ͡ ͜ ͡ Yes - being trained is important, and I the musicians in Meshuggah are trained musicians. I like the fact that people who are not trained can hear what Meshuggah is doing. People who are trained can appreciate them even more.

[@holygroove2]

The way that you learn their music is up to you, but my comment reflects what the band members say in all of their interviews. They may not be formally schooled, but they are educated. You can listen to a few of the interviews of the band to hear this. They may very well be a band of auto-didactic geniuses (if you exclude Lovgren). I'm cool with that. When I say that the music "projects itself in 4", I'm saying that I think that people somehow feel the underlying pulse. As complicated as the "micro" is, the "macro" is still dominant, which is the power of Meshuggah's music. You feel a pull towards the "1" even though you don't understand the micro. Also, since the music is usually in 4, you get an even number of measures. At the very least, you'll have a guide to help you "get back on" when you're lost in the micro. It might help some people to think of the smaller intricate aspects as though they are in a mixed meter, but asserting that Meshuggah's music is all mixed meter stuff is wrong (as you've stated). The early albums had mixed meter stuff and they feel different. The "weight" comes from the gravity attached to the 4/4 pulse - and the deceptive way that the riffs seem to pull away from that even pulse. I certainly don't mean to diminish your work as a musician by making such a broad statement about it being in 4 - there are some tunes that I still struggle with as a die-hard musically educated fan. Electric Red and some others still have me reeling in amazement. I think the riff cycles on some of the "Violent Sleep"...tunes are longer than they've done in the past, OR they've done something new that we're not aware of. They like to present something new for each album that they debut.

[@k5elevencinc0]

They finally have their own signature series, The Ibanez M8M.

[@soldierofchumbo]

thumbs up for the Saint Vitus and Celtic Frost shirts!!

[@TheAncestrica]

I love this guys!!

[@ThyArtIsMetal]

i listened to destroy erase improve while pretty high, really intense lol

[@V3xxe]

I love the riffs these guys write! Also, tuning-wise, I think it depends on whether these are their guitars for live or not. The guitars the use on stage, they have the 8th string as low F, but the other 7 strings are tuned straight A instead of A# for some reason :S Noticed it on a tuning chart for the guitar tech, on the special feature of the Alive DVD.

[@mathprodigy]

one time i listened to catch 33 high and i was laying in bed getting really tired, and i got to the end of Sum to the soft part i got so scared i had to go turn it off lol i'm telling you music sounds so different when you're high, but when it's meshuggah, i mean wow, the power, the intensity, it can almost be too much, but in a good way, kind of like a godly orgasm

[@slipknot4life86]

@rbass311 lol.. will check it out for sure...

[@MatheusMPL]

Thordendal's face be like "yeah just talk shit and I stay here playing"

[@Justinzorn907]

Tomas Does the Spoken Vocals during that song and it was hard for him to do vocals and play drums at the same time. So live they Jens does all the vocals... and goddamn it is badass!

[@slipknot4life86]

@rbass311 oh thanks man.. uve just opened up a whole new world.. any other bands that use this djent?

[@lemonjuix]

oh that whole section from 2:16 to the end is already posted in another video all by itself...cuz it's pretty important

[@reezlaw]

Dude, Hagstrom's on the left, and Thordendal on the right :)

[@Barmy85]

i love M, but i heard them after drinking, and i got scared shitless, but after weed i agree, it makes mad sense....

[@thundermorphine]

En, två, tre, fyr!

[@allmetaliswelcome]

they played dancers at the show in june where i was

[@holygroove2]

@imrhyswatson - Haake says "no one knows how I goes"... I take that to mean that the stuff on "I" doesn't really repeat like most of the other music from 2002 on. This music is complicated, but the cycles and stuff that they use actually make it doable, and I am amazed that they do it live. "I" would have been done already if it were designed like most of their other stuff.

[@ImmortalDestructor]

Awesome shirt, Saint Vitus is the shit!

[@the1khronohs40]

Most of these riffs I got the hang of fairly quick, but the out-riff on Soul Burn, WTF? I wish they did that one...

[@FISHFACEmatt]

OH. MY. FREAKY. BALLS. THAT. TONE.

[@baconpoptarts]

Not a bad explanation for a sweed! Meshuggah is rad!

[@AdamDallas]

Strange, I loved ObZen as soon as i heard it, when i bought catch 33 though i wasn't that fussed, it was my first meshuggah album though, probably not a good starter. I love it now though

[@Kinglevel]

@NoaOno Did you hear the song "i"?

[@underscoreisnotvalid]

hey i agree, i wasnt really a fan of obzen at first, i bought that a year ago or so but now its really growing on me

[@Virus940]

I like how he rubs his beard at the end like a cynical mastermind.

[@GoatMaster66]

@godsizedhole when i was tripping every day i would only have Catch 33 playing in my car, really helped me understand the album as a whole, lyrically and musically, at least i THINK i understand it lyrically

[@SocialGore]

@MrDrMegna Thanks, that's sweet.

[@jmaguerra]

Those are fixed, not floating. They use locking bridges to improve tuning stability, considering the low tunings they use.

[@LanceSaunders]

I saw it live, I got a video of it :)

[@WinglessRaven]

I loved this series of videos. First time seeing it and being a semi Meshuggah fan. I almost feel as if their technical guitar playing goes to waste as Marten said in the 2nd part I believe. lol. I knew Meshuggah was bad ass, but they explained a lot of things I didn't know aswell. Great videos though. Thanks for posting!

[@djentrifried]

@sharpenedbullshit I saw the play it live earlier this year, was epic.

[@deargod5r6]

DRI -Acid Rain was first) It is not the same but it could possibly influnce Illwill and Meshuggah

[@t3hgir]

"AC/DC is mathematical..." brilliant.

[@44eelz]

i thought that when i first heard them, i thought there were some kind of weird geometrical formulas to their rhythm

[@MrDrMegna]

@immortalx50 you just described last night for me

[@New_Millennium_Cyanide_Christ]

I agree

[@gilmeaguitar]

1:21 .... my eyes bled :D ....love it!

[@stbreal]

an 8 string iceman badass!!!!!!!

[@tasasaki]

How does Fredrik play that siren-like sound of FBM?

[@mooferoo]

6 years late! But it looks like a pinched harmonic.

[@SuffyANX]

I believe it's actually just playing a minor second (Or a half-step interval) dyad on the 13th and 17th frets of the highest and second highest strings, respectively, before moving up a half step to the 14th and 18th.

[@paulthebassguy]

lol where are their viking horn hats and clubs?

[@chhppx]

@godsizedhole i know bro they came to my city and i saw the entire set high on mary jane best trip ever

[@pepekong]

This is the first time I ever hear Fredrik saying anything.

[@defbizkit]

Around The Fur and a bottle of whiskey..... life is bodacious

[@allmetaliswelcome]

i wonder why all of a sudden started playing it live though, when they said it was impossible

[@VictorZamanian]

Yes, yes, I know. The point I was trying to make was that it wasn't very well formulated. I mean, come on now, you know what I meant. -_________-

[@ztende]

@4chansthebest it's a 8 stringed guitar ^^

[@benbernard9279]

FOR SOME HEAVY DROP E RIFFS CHECK OUT (MINDWORKS SHOCKWAVE)!!!!

[@MercilessShred]

Saint Vitus t shirt. fucking legit.

[@divinegrinder]

@NoaOno Why do we deserve hearing it live? Meshuggah has put out enough music that they will never play a disappointing show. That album was an experiment. Sure they care about what their fans think to a certain extent but like most great bands that write music for themselves first. "I" is what it is and if you know anything about playing this type of music live you know that playing that front to back with consistent intensity would be damn near impossible.

[@slipknot4life86]

how are they getting that future breed machine sound?.. are they using some effect? or just a method of playing?

[@WillPower911]

@Victor Zamanian You woke me up. Your reply sent a notification to my iPhone whe I was sleeping. -________________________-

[@TheSpuditron]

You know sometimes when you buy a new cd, it sometimes takes you a while for the songs to grow on you (it hapens to me anyway.. :P). It didn't happen with Meshuggah. I loved them straight away. Dancers To A Dischordant System. THE. BEST. SONG. EVER.

[@EyeAmMyOwn777]

Their genius and talent lies in their understanding of pulse. You could learn anything from Meshuggah through sheer persistence as long as you fundamentally understand pulse: partitioning your mind to hear pulse and play whatever you like over it, even if the bars extend well beyond a 4/4 measure.

[@KreatorOfDeath1985]

@NoaOno Azgaroth's hardest riff is the one in 4/4 DUH

[@4chansthebest]

how many strings are on that guitar

[@LunarLionheart]

@Battlescar2 Couldnt agree more.

[@DvirPeri1]

1:20 my god thats the heaviest thing ive heard

[@krokoll]

j'adore !! une 8 cordes pour jouer avec 1 doigts sur 2 cordes :p

[@AlexDysphoria]

I totally agree with you, dear Sir!

[@HaoleJames]

@NoaOno Marten and Tomaas said Bleed was the hardest to play

[@Hydrajenah]

The Djent misconception is real

[@LeandroHorus]

Locoooooooooo!!!

[@GeeFunk84]

This is so heavy that I seriously got a headache after watching all parts.

[@BlackSailPass_GuitarCovers]

3:14 the man speaks the truth :) write another solo album!!

[@Maxpound]

Their tone sounds like someone just got killed. I love it.

[@AnishRamaswamy]

It's scary looking at their hand synchronization 1:21 onwards.

[@MetalSword106]

@CORNP00 Pinch Armonic :)

[@SocialGore]

@GoatMaster66 Yeah it's about the stock market being controlled by the phases of the moon, and the ghost of Bob Barker, even though he's not dead.

[@baconpoptarts]

For a couple of Sweeds is what I should have said. Thier hands are perfect as h3ll if you watch that.

[@JadeIsBunny]

When you think about it - the tabs of a very, very complex and technical song are comparatively easier to memorize than a random string of 1's and 2's (in this manner, for example: 1122122212111121212221121121122). It is less technical, but more complex. You're also missing points of reference which increases the difficulty.

[@Zeta9966]

this song is my favorite from Chaosphere.... but it's not nearly as cool when it's this slow and without drums/textural lead guitars.

[@ZiltoidRiffs]

@dopefiend138 impossible. their style is completely different to kirk's, also it's not my intention to offend metallica but it'll be very dissapointing for many meshuggah fans including me to see them covering a song of a band like that, maybe will be better to see kirk trying to play a meshuggah song. dont you think?

[@VictorZamanian]

2:22 and onward... Uh, what? ._.

[@mathprodigy]

yep but once you do it's more rewarding than anything you've ever heard. Meshuggah makes even more sense and sounds even greater when you're high. try listening to the entirety of Catch 33 after smoking marijuana. unless you've already done it, you've never heard anything like this. especially songs like In Death is Life and Shed, you hear things like you've never heard them before. oh God Meshuggah is amazing

[@AlexXxtestify]

ac/dc's mathematical as well

[@Foodpermaculture]

i'm pretty shure thordendal is on right side :)

[@WillPower911]

It was very clear to me. -__-

[@Solar-Winds]

1:20 looks cool as shit with their hand motion in sync.

[@Evjazzman]

haha doesen't seem like it when you comment every clip

[@jmaguerra]

Those are "just" custom shop Ibanez guitars.

[@mrbullseye]

@dopefiend138 I love how NOONE picked up on your sarcasm, and your post was practically dripping of it. "In the same league as these guys" Hah =) He doesn't even qualify to tune their guitars.. If he could.

[@nipulkradmsinatagras8293]

*F (super damn low)* *A# (low)* *D# (low)* *G#* *C#* *F#* *A#* *D# (high)*

[@SiriusAl]

'one two tree three' xD