“WILL OF THE PEOPLE”
Muse
MUSE MASTERMIND Matt Bellamy used both his go-to Manson guitar and early Eighties Fender Telecaster to track this popular new song’s simple but highly effective and super catchy six-string parts. Also employing fuzz distortion and octave doubling effects (both an octave above and below), the crafty guitarist achieves a huge, Godzilla-like tone that fills out the sonic spectrum in an exciting way and carries the song, which is essentially built around two very basic and repetitive bass-line-type single-note riffs.
Before playing any notes, Bellamy establishes the song’s infectious triplet-based shuffle groove in the intro by strumming his bottom three-short--short” — while using fret-hand muting to prevent any notes from sounding, resulting in a pitchless, percussive attack. Indicated by stacks of X’s in the tablature, these scratchy “chik-a chik-a” rhythms are performed by lightly laying all four fret-hand fingers across the strings at an arbitrary point — it doesn’t matter where specifically the hand is positioned, as no notes are sounded — while strumming down-up-down-up, with the previously described rhythmic feel.
