DevilDriver's Pray for Villains Guitar Lesson

DevilDriver guitarists Jeff Kendrick and Mike Spreitzer show you how to play their hit ''Pray for Villains.''

DevilDriver's Pray for Villains Guitar Lesson Guitar World Presents Devil Driver How to Play Pray for Villains from their new album Pray for Villains. [Demonstration] Jeff Kendrick DevilDriver Guitar: Hi I’m Jeff. Mike Spreitzer DevilDriver Guitar: I’m Mike. Jeff: We’re from Devil Driver and we’re here to show you how to play Pray for Villains off our new record Pray for Villains you’re going to have to tune your guitar to drop C tuning which basically is C, G, C, F, A and then the highest ring is D so it’s down to full step and then the top string stop drop another full step beyond that. 1, 2, 3, 4… [Demonstration] Mike: The rhythm basically is you know I start up playing just an open power chord and then kind of go into individual string when I’m actually you know in the middle of the riff. [Demonstration] This is a chromatic progression going from 5 to 6 to 7 and then the tails of it are it’s basically just a big power chord it just goes root 5th, octave, and then a 5th and then another oactave and then we just strum it. [Demonstration] And then the 2nd half of it is you’re doing the exact same thing we’re just a double thing and you know playing down stroke 8th note. [Demonstration] So on to then the tail changes a little bit and just goes to this so just 10, 8, 6 that’s the whole intro for me. Jeff: And then my line is basically the same thing it’s like chromatic progression… [Demonstration] So basically the first part is your mimicking essentially what the rhythm guitar is doing and it’s like you’re kind of like pedaling off like fret 7 on the G string and basically you’re like playing the first part of the rift where you’re doing the hide like progression chromatically and then you come in unison with the other guitar so at the end so basically you play like the first part and then you come in with the rhythm in unison and then you do like the first part of the chord and then the descending part with a. and then it goes in to the next part that’s basically the intro. Mike: And basically the whole song is based off with this one rift. Jeff: Yeah. Mike: I mean it’s I think, I got to think the whole song except for the midsection is basically based off as riff. Jeff: Yeah. Mike: It’s a pretty straight forward song. It’s one of the easier songs to play on this record. Let’s say the only song that’s easier is Back with a Vengeance but it’s maybe the second easiest song record. Jeff: It’s like I think the key so song writing is taking an idea using at the most that you can with it before it becomes redundant. Mike: And I think it’s a very burkling thing to do with this kind of get where I think me personally I think I over do it instead of some of my song writing like if you’ve guys have heard the record I’ve been so over I mean there’s about a million risk in that song and that kind of have the tendency to over do it you know luckily this was a little bit more simple. The intro is the consistency of the main rift that the foundation of the song I guess you can say but it’s just first time it is played more open. [Demonstration] And then the second time it’s just tighten it up and do down stroking with two different tails. First tail is… [Demonstration] The second tail is. [Demonstration] And that’s it.