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Video lesson: Play Kings Of Leon's 5 hottest riffs
Learn Sex On Fire, Use Somebody and 3 more...
Charlie Griffiths, Tue 28 Apr 2009, 12:11 pm UTC
In this video lession, we show you how to play five killer riffs taken from Kings Of Leon's three most recent albums: Aha Shake Heartbreak (2004), Because Of The Times (2007) and their latest hit Only By The Night (2008).
Caleb and Matthew Followill's guitar sound is gritty and up front with Caleb in particular relying on few frills in the effects department. This puts the onus much more on the player to create dynamics and a good tone, which is 'all in the hands'. Practise each riff carefully and slowly before you start playing up to speed.
Gear
We played an Epiphone Sheraton II on all of the riffs apart from Fans (where we used an acoustic), through a Line 6 POD using the Vox AC30 setting. The most important setting is the gain, which should be responsive to your playing. The sound should break up when you play hard, but sound clean when you play more gently.
Sex On Fire
Alternate picking is highly recommended with this riff, because it will help you stay in time and sound consistent. Start with a downstroke on the sixth string, followed by an upstroke on the fifth string. Practise this motion with a metronome until it feels relaxed and comfortable.
A key part of this riff is swapping between the sixth string (played with a downstroke) and the fifth string (played with an upstroke). For an added challenge, you can try changing between very light, quiet notes right up to very loud notes to discover your full dynamic potential!
Use Somebody
Full barre chords are used here, but you should only strum the bottom four strings. Strumming these strings accurately can be a little tricky and there's always the possibility of accidentally striking the top two strings. To prevent this from happening when you're strumming, slightly lift your first finger where it touches the first and second strings.
This should result in a muted sound, which you won't be able to hear in the context of the full chord. You need to continue muting these strings when you lift your first finger for the C/E chord too.
