Here’s a part-by-part breakdown of “I’ll Overcome” by my band Inner Urge.
I’ll be showing you a series of videos for this where I play the part(s) at tempo, then slower so you can easily see what’s going on. The beauty of this piece is that it’s actually quite simple, but it is an up tempo, so it just takes a little practice to get up to speed. I wrote the lyrics for this song about overcoming anything life throws at us.
This, along with all the other songs on “Consume and Waste” is in E standard tuning. The BPM for “I’ll Overcome” is 187 and the song is in 4/4 time.
One note before we proceed: I’ve provided enough material for you to play through the song, however, I am not providing tabs or every guitar part in this lesson.
Without further ado:
Intro
Note the open E string when playing the 4th (C#) and 5th (D) fret of the A string.
There’s also a little slide at 0:08 from the 5th (D) fret to the 7th (E) fret on the A string.
Unless you can – which many can, and many can’t – then don’t try to play this at full speed without getting it comfortably under your fingers first. For extra power, you can see that I am down-picking the “chunky” parts of this riff and then I switch to alternate picking for the single notes. This isn’t mandatory, however, it helps to achieve the same strength in your performance of the riff.
Main Melody
You’ll likely notice that, when I’m playing single note lines or phrases such as this, I usually alternate pick. If you haven’t spent much time doing this, I highly recommend you take the time to even just practice running chromatic scales up and down your fretboard playing every other note with a downstroke and an upstroke like this: 1 (down) – 2 (up) – 3 (down) – 4 (up) and so on and so on.
I palm mute the the last four notes before moving to the next part of the phrase to add a little more chunk and power to the overall sound of the melody. This, when coupled with the rest of the band playing the same unison, is a very useful way to strengthen the sound of a given phrase/melody/section in a piece of music (especially metal). It shouldn’t be used every second of every piece, mind you, but it is definitely a great way to tighten up your band’s sections and performances when you are all working together.
Verse
This riff is fairly similar to the intro. *That’s something you can do that helps tie pieces together and allows you to write more material off of stuff you’ve already made.*
Again, you should take notice of when where down picking or alternate picking is employed. This helps with phrasing in all aspects of guitar playing and isn’t just limited to metal.
Make sure you have that little slide at 0:06. It helps add a little authenticity to the riff.
Prechorus
Often (but not always) when you’re using a pedal tone (in this case, C and then E) you’ll only play notes that are higher than the pedal tone. When you’re playing the riff pedalling E you’ll notice that you need to jump down to the 5th fret to hit note D. This just requires, as always, taking a little bit of time to practice it slowly and then building it up to speed.
You’ll notice that the B power chord (B, F#) strumming (0:22) builds up to another type of powerchord you can use where, instead of just using the root (B) and 5th (F#), you use the 3rd (D#) and the root (B) to help build tension and use that leading tone (D#) that demands to go back home to E.
Chorus
This is a pretty straight forward strumming chorus. It does a good job of laying the foundation for the vocals to ride on top of. This is quite commonly done in choruses in all genres; just a simple strumming progression to highlight the vocals.
Bridge
This section is probably my personal favourite of the song. It’s a heavy riff based on the E minor pentatonic blues scale (E G A Bb B D E) that includes some chunking, some sliding, and a little bit of dexterity.
Make sure to include all of those slides when you’re playing this riff to replicate the same sound as the recording.
You’ll notice that the only time I’m not down picking in this riff is in the 3rd bar of each phrase. I chose to do this because of the nature of the low E pedal tone throughout the other sections of the riff. Another little plus for the alternate picked section is that it gives your wrist a little break from the down picking.
Solo
This is probably the least complex solo from “Consume and Waste” as it’s just a repeating phrase followed by a slow diminished line upwards. You’ll probably notice this one doesn’t include a slowed version. I figured you could figure it out by this point after spending the time working on the other material.
This section is the only part of the song that uses triplets. You can either alternate pick the beginning phrase (like I do) or sweep it (like I also sometimes do), it doesn’t drastically alter the articulation of the phrase, I just chose to alternate pick it on this run because it’s what I did in the recording.
Parting words
Thank you so much for taking the time to go through this material. I hope it has been informative and useful for you.
If you’re interested in learning the other parts to this song or anything else music related that I can deliver then please consider contacting me to book a lesson.
As always, thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing any comments you may have about this song.
All the best and let’s keep practicing!
– Matt
PS: Here’s the full song on YouTube. Take care!