Super Metroid Ridley's Theme - Tabs, Backing Track, and MIDI! (Patreon)

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Hey guys! We've been doing some pretty chilled out arrangements recently but now it's time to go the complete other direction with some SUPER challenging rhythm guitar playing! If you're a newer skill level guitarist though then don't worry as our lead guitars are significantly more chilled out. Everything is a blast to play so let's dive into it!

Rhythms:

Style - articulate picking, odd timing, 9th chords

Difficulty - 5/5

Our rhythms are definitely super challenging here. I honestly was struggling to get these as clean as I wanted haha. Luckily I love this theme so I had a blast doing it without getting frustrated. But yeah this is some tricky stuff!

The challenge isn't in the complexity of the riff but just the raw speed of it. We're clocking in some non stop 8th notes at 223 bpm while jumping between 2 strings in a 5/4 timing. But don't let this discourage you if you're a newer skill level on guitar, just take this slow maybe even like half speed! These kinds of riffs are essential for developing a solid metal playing technique.

Our main riff is like what I described earlier where we're doing solid 8th notes playing that motif between the 2 low strings. 

Our verse melody gives us a break on the rhythms and we play some spaced out 9th chords that are a bit hand-stretchy but at least the picking hand can take a break for like 2 seconds haha.

After that we play the main riff transposed up to the key of Eb which honestly is even a tad harder haha. Luckily it doesn't last for a while otherwise our hands would probably explode.

Our chorus is the easiest part of the rhythms where one rhythm is strumming some minor chords while the other rhythm is simply playing the power chords. Super chill stuff here which is much needed!

Finally we have our breakdown which is the reward for all of our hard work so far! This part is so insanely fun and not hard to play at all. The djenty section that shortly follows before the solo is some of the most fun guitar playing I've gotten to do ever!

Leads:

Style - rhythmic, odd notes

Difficulty - 3/5

Our leads are way more chilled out than our rhythms but it's still in 5/4 so it's not exactly Mary Had a Little Lamb yet haha. The 5/4 is probably the biggest challenging factor but the parts are great for newer players to get shredding on!

A lot of this lead arrangement is harmonizing on top of the main rhythm riff which is the tricky part. It's the same element as the rhythm guitar riff being very quick and having some interesting picking dynamics. I feel like it's a bit easier being on the higher strings though and a lot of it is just pedaling 1 string which makes it wayy easier.

Our verse melody is pretty weird and the way I play it might be a bit hard if you guys don't have super long fingers like I do but the notes themselves aren't insanely fast so I'd recommend experimenting to find the best way to play this part using my tabs here as a reference. That being said I feel like most of you guys can play it the way I wrote it (hopefully haha.) It just sounds the coolest when you do it my way because the strings can ring out into each other.

Our chorus melody is the final main melody and it's probably the easiest one to play. It's very expressive and you can get some cool vibrato going here. And the alternate picking at the end is some amazing picking practice for anyone who wants to strengthen their up and down strokes!

I set out to make my solo insanely weird being in 5/4 timing so we'll break it down into 3 sections. The first section is some legato style descending that goes down to the Low C then we build it back up with some finger tapping resolving in a higher C. The next part is insanely fun as we jump down from that C to the 13th fret on the same string so it's a huge jump here that sounds super cool but it's very challenging to land it. Then we end the solo on a picked sweep style arpeggio that flows diretly into our verse melody. This solo is so wonky and took me a bunch of tries to nail being in the 5/4 timing and that jump from the 19th(?) to 13th fret is so nutty haha.

I hope you guys enjoy this arrangement and I know I said a ton of things about this being challenging but I honestly I had so much fun playing these riffs and leads and I'm sure you guys will love it even if some newer skill levels have to start it off slow. I hope you guys have fun and jam on!!

Let me know if you have any questions by DMing me on here or my Discord server!

~ Jack / ToxicxEternity