Here is a cool pentatonic riff for you to practice. As you see, I posted it in the “low tuned” category of this guitar blog, so don’t forget to tune your guitar in C instead of the standard E tuning – it’s in the case if you want it to sound exactly as at the video, but you may also try to play it in the standard E tuning – I am sure it will sound with the same energy!

Pentatonic riffs are my favorite ones – I like the way they sound and from my own experience they are very easy to play and to compose – at least for me. For example the riff I propose you to learn I composed in 5 minutes and it took me another 10 minutes to record the video. As you observed I have a big practice in hard rock pentatonic riffs. Yes, maybe some of you will say that you recognize it, that it’s like the riff from the song of a known band… and so on… what I can tell you – in the 80′s there were hundreds of hard rock bands and thousands of pentatonic guitar riffs. Believe me, I composed it by myself and for me it’s not a problem if it sounds like a famous one!

Now a little advice on how to play it. After watching attentively the video, you will find the moments when I use something like a bend (fifth fret on the 4th string / third fret on the 6th string) – it’s very important if you want the riff to sound not so concrete, and these are not a half or one tone bends, these are something like I may say 1/4 bends. It’s one of the secrets on how you can add more life to the riff you play. You can also use this technique in a solo – but in both cases you just have to know the right moment when to use the 1/4 bends.

Hard Rock Pentatonic Riff