Defector Guitar Lesson – Muse


In this quick little video guitar lesson I will show you how to play all the riffs to "Defector" by Muse as played by Matthew Bellamy.

You will need to get your guitar into dropped "D" tuning, so starting from the 6th string that will be D A D G B E. As soon as you have that, you will be ready to rock!

The main riff in this Defector guitar lesson requires some quick slides down the 6th string alternating with a few open strings. The concept is pretty simple and it is a very repetitive riff, but grabbing the octave note quickly and accurately before you slide down can be a little bit tricky. Play this riff slowly at first so you can develop a feel of where the D octave at the 12th fret is. Use the time during the open string picking to shift back up to the 12th fret with the fret hand so you can be ready to play it immediately.

As the full band enters this riff is expanded using power chords, muted strums, triads and a quick little bass line riff that ends the riff.

This riff if a lot of fun to play once you get it down. It has a really cool groove about it and has a lot of very unique features about it as well, typical of a Muse guitar riff.

I will also cover the muted picking parts found in the 2nd verse. The picking pattern is a simple repetitive 16th note pattern played with some light palm muting. All you will need to do is get that picking pattern down then memorize the two note chord shapes played in the fretting hand. Everything should come together pretty quickly after that.

I am not gonna cover the solo at this time since it contains liberal use of a whammy/pitch shifting pedal which I don't have available to me at this time. It really is impossible to accurately recreate this solo without that pedal, so for now let's just concentrate on the main riffs. Perhaps I will get a hold of one of those pedals soon and can take a crack at the solo for you. 🙂

Have fun playing this crazy fun Muse song!

Carl...

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Defector Guitar Lesson - Muse

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