Reapers Guitar Lesson – Muse
This Reapers guitar lesson has got a lot of cool stuff to learn. Appearing on Muse's Drones album, it has quickly become a fan favorite.
First off, you will need to get your guitar into dropped "D" tuning D A D G B E. After that, you can follow along with the video lesson and play along with the original recording.
Speaking of the original recording, there is a ton a whammy pedal work going on throughout a lot of the song. The second tapping section uses the whammy pedal, and the solo uses it almost the entire time. I don't have access to a whammy pedal so I have decided to skip teaching the solo for that reason.
The opening tapping riff is an absolute blast to play. There is a consistent pattern to it so it shouldn't take too long to get up to speed. However, the left hand stretches can be troublesome for some players. If that is the case, make sure you pay close attention to your thumb's position behind the neck. You will probably need to lower it in order to let your fingers spread out more easily to reach the notes.
From there we have some simple triads being played during the verse. There is a very exact rhythm these triads are played in and I will cover that as well.
After that, we have a really cool groove based riff that happens multiple times throughout the song. Matthew Bellamy uses all downstrokes to play this riff so I suggest that you do the same to give it a consistent sound.
The chorus riff also has a nice groove to it and is definitely the easiest part of the song to play.
As all of these parts repeat you will find there is another ending to the tapping section played later in the song, and the chorus riff is altered as well. I will cover these in the order they appear.
There is also a long outro section that includes a cool chromatic riff and another octave based riff. Once again, there are lots of whammy bar moments to be found.
Hope you guys enjoy learning this modern rocker from the brilliant Matthew Bellamy and Muse!
Carl...
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