Rise Against: Hardcore Punk

Hi GMC!

Welcome to a new lesson covering Hardcore Punk bands. This time I will cover a newer one that has become very popular because of their fantastic songs. Rise against is an American band formed in 1999 by Tim McIlrath, Zach Blair, Joe Principe and Brandon Barnes.

Music Style:
They started as a Hardcore Punk band but they started to incorporate sounds from Alternative Rock. They usually say that their main influences are Black Flag and Minor Threat, but we can say that other bands like Bad Religion, Descendents and Dead Kennedys have inspired them. In this tune I covered their more powerful punk rock style full of powerful guitars, and octave chords melodies.

Tonality, Chord Progression & Scales:
Most of their music has a dark feeling, so their most used tonalities are of course minor. This tune is in E minor and that’s the scale used for the melodies played by the lead guitar. You will find the chord progressions used in the main video and also below the tabs. As I usually do, I analyzed many songs by them, wrote down the progressions and then took the ones that appeared more in their music, create some variations and that’s how I got the different parts for this mini-song.

Techniques:
The secret behind hardcore punk music is to be able to play riffs, strumming with palm muting at fast tempos so that’s the key to master this lesson. We will use only down strokes, palm muting, alternate picking and strumming.

Sound:
I used my POD hd500 to build a sound based on Treadplate amps and 4x12 cabinets.
I used Cubase to record audio and midi, SSD 3.5 for drums and Trillian for bass.

Click HERE to download my POD HD500 Patch.

Tuning:
Standard 440

Tempo:
100 BPM