Today we tackle a super-easy Green Day riff. Sure, this may seem like a bit of a low-hanging fruit – that’s probably why I didn’t think of this riff right away when I started making these. But when I mapped it out, I quickly saw why this was a good pick. When beat One becomes the “and” of Four, the simple becomes much more complex. I give you: The easiest riff in Green Day’s catalog…backwards.
The displacement is really what makes this track for me. Everything sounds all nice and normal, like nothing’s weird at all… until the drums kick in. For guitar nerds: I accidentally left my pickup switch at the middle position. Knowing that Billie Joe Armstrong typically used a Stratocaster at the time they recorded this song, I decided to keep it anyway. Enjoy, let me know what you think, and I’ll see you next time.
Ed Makes Things 