In writing riffs and song parts for the music of Periphery, it’s important to me to evoke a sense of movement and fluidity. If you’re familiar with the band’s music, you’re well aware that we have a penchant for employing unusual meters that shift unexpectedly, as well as harmonically dense chord progressions and polytonal chordal allusions.
One of my favorite ways to achieve a sense of movement is to perform single-note riffs that incorporate dramatic position shifts up and down the fretboard, necessitating very specific movement that is often articulated with extended finger slides.
And keep in mind that I almost always tune my guitar to drop-D down one whole step (low to high, C G C F A D), which many players refer to as “drop-C” tuning.
There are a couple of leads on the new Periphery album, Juggernaut: Omega that I perform by sliding around through different registers of the fretboard. FIGURE 1, an excerpt from my solo in the song “The Bad Thing,” is one of those passages.
I begin on the upbeat of beat one, with a pull-off from D to C# on the G string in sixth position. The third note, F#, falls on beat two, and after picking the last note of this beat, E, I slide up to the 16th fret to sound B and then G and F# on the D string in the same position. I then slide from the F# note on the D string’s 16th fret down to ninth position.
Starting on beat four, I perform four ascending slides on the B string, the notes of which alternate with higher-pitched notes fretted on the high E string that are whole- and half-steps apart. Then, on beat four, I quickly jump from 15th to