May 16, 2015

Greatest Riffs of All Time (Seventh Edition)

          Many different lists have been compiled of the "best guitar songs" to learn, but I thought I'd put in my 2 cents on this everlasting debate by putting out my personal list of best guitar riffs.

          This list is now in its seventh iteration and while is still subjective of course, has added some more riffs to make it more encompassing and cover more types of music, and many of the songs are hyperlinked to the most accurate tabs on Ultimate Guitar.  You're welcome.

Awesomeness after the break.



          I chose to focus on not necessarily entire songs, but the riffs from the songs.  This is because generally the riffs are the focus of the song and what you will want to learn anyway.  Also, classifying entire songs by difficulty is inaccurate because easy songs can have hard solos, and vice versa.

          If it's solos you're looking for, most of these songs have awesome ones as well, they just may not necessarily fit the category the riff is under.  It should be no problem - if you know good music, you'll recognize a lot of these tunes anyway :)


          The songs are in a rough chronological order, based on my memory of what decade each song probably belongs to.  The majority of the songs are from between the 1960s and 1990s because frankly that's where the majority of good guitar riffs came from.  I wouldn't mind some help getting correct chronological order sorted out though.

          Music genres range from classical to heavy metal, with a personal tendency towards hard rock and classic metal.  If you have any song suggestions, please comment with them.  I will gladly add worthy riffs to this great list ;)



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Notes:   Only song names are listed.  Bands/artists should be easy enough to find, if you don't already know who they are.  

Songs in drop D tuning are marked with an *   
Songs with all strings detuned a 1/2 step are marked with **
Songs with other tunings are marked with ^
Songs that have acoustic (or can substitute acoustic) parts are marked with @

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          Without any further ado, here are the easiest riffs.  It would be naive to rank skill level by the number of years spent playing, but most of the following should not take long at all to learn, even for a beginner.


Easy


          Next are some moderately difficult riffs that should be manageable to even fairly new players.  These are generally faster and longer than easy riffs but are still easy to pick up in under an hour.  Plus there's a lot of awesome songs here.


Medium


          Here we have some fairly difficult riffs that will require a bit of experience or some determination to tackle.  These are generally faster, longer, and/or more technically involved than the previous lists.  And more impressive ;)


Hard

          And just to cap off the list I have some riffs that are just beyond the range of a three tier system.  Now, most are well beyond a simple riff, more like extended solos, but I just couldn't let them go unmentioned.  Good luck to all you good peoples.


Pro



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          I hope you enjoyed the list and more importantly, the music :)

          If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions, please leave them below!


 Rock on, and peace out.


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