This lesson is going to focus on the middle breakdown riff of the song “Comatose” by Threat Signal. This riff is also supposed to be played in a percussive manner, just like the “Fallen Disciples” riff. The percussiveness comes from the upstrokes. You really need to dig in, and pick those hard.
The timing of this riff is a bit weird. It’s three bars of 4/4 followed by a bar of 5/4. The bar of 5/4 has a tag thrown in on at end, so that’s what makes this riff kind of hard to follow. I’ll break it down to how I think about it.
This riff is based on a small pattern that repeats. If you count from the beginning of the riff, it’s six 16th notes followed by two 8th notes. This pattern repeats six times, then has the tag on the end of eight 16th notes.