Guitar - Tab

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The Unforgiven

Not only is this a good sounding riff/figure by itself – it's also great for building your fingerpicking chops. You are strenghtening your technique with a real piece of music, not just some exercise, making it more fun.

First thing to do...

Throw away your picks for this 2 measure intro figure excerpt.

The picking hand

I'd suggest you use the 4 finger approach.

	the thumb is responsible for the A string
	the index finger covers the D string
	the middle finger plucks the G string and
	the ring finger stays on the B string

This might feel weird initially if you haven't spent some time fingerpicking before.

Don't let that discourage you though. Concentrate on keeping the rhythm even - don't rush and with enough focused practice this will become second nature.

Lucky fingering hand

The fingering hand has hit the jackpot.

You simply need to move one finger, switching between a standard open position Am chord and an Am sus2 chord.

Easy enough, eh?

Am sus2 - Am

Rhythmic displacement

Here's the really cool part....

We mostly play 16^th notes. Take a look at the rhythmic displacement taking place by playing a melodic group of 3s in a rhythmic group of 4s.

This way the natural melodic accents shift with each beat, which makes the pattern less predictable and sound more interesting.

To heighten this effect clever Metallica additionally change the top line by pushing the Am sus2 to Am chord change forward by one group of 3s in measure 2.

Take a look...

click to enlarge

Really effective from a songwriting and arranging perspective is the great contrast between this intro figure and the heavy riff that enters with the vocals.

But that's another story...

I hope we don't end up unforgiven for telling that story some other time. ;-)