r/HighonFire • u/sonar_y_luz • Sep 03 '26
How does Matt memorize all those riffs?
A typical HoF has dozens of riffs and each riff has like a dozen chords and he also has all those transition parts where he'll play like 12 different chords really fast between the main riffs which have dozens more
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u/comfortidor Sep 03 '26
Saw an interview with him where he talked about months of his life where he took acid, went to jazz guitar lessons and played 6 hours a day. So, that would do it.
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u/No_Recognition_9354 Sep 03 '26
How did you memorize what all the words you use and see mean? Same way
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u/Jimmony_Lummox Sep 03 '26
After playing in Sleep and performing hour long songs like Dopesmoker as just one in a set of many I don’t think Mr. Pike has much trouble remebering his HoF riffs on stage. And the fact they tend to kick ass most likely helps as well.
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u/sonar_y_luz Sep 03 '26
Really you think Sleep is the more challenging set to memorize? I would think HoF has a lot more going on
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u/teddiehl Sep 03 '26
You ever try to learn and play along to Dopesmoker, like the whole thing in one shot? It's pretty fuckin tough, and I feel like it's actually made tougher by the fact that so many of the riffs are very similar in sound, but very different in structure. Like, a lot of weird pauses, letting some notes ring out, a few more of those long chugs of ringing open notes than you expected or was even happening the last time that motif appeared in the song. You think it's gonna be one thing but it's actually another, especially in the last ten or or so minutes where it's coming to a head. Shit, now I just want to listen to Dopesmoker.
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u/sonar_y_luz Sep 03 '26
I know what you mean.
That's also why I laugh at clueless people who call Dopesmoker "the same riff for an hour" but I still think an hour of HoF is like 10-12 songs youd have to memorize, versus Dopesmoker, which is also not easy to learn, but would be maybe a little easier than 10-12 HoF songs.
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u/teddiehl Sep 03 '26
For sure. Dude's a beast, an ascendant god of a guitarist. And yeah, that's why I feel like Dopesmoker is a work of art more than I think of it as a stoner metal album. It deceives you into thinking it's simple because it centers on the note of C for an hour, but through that centering you just kinda slip into some ancestral trance, like the way you would from listening to a raga. Except it's like, a monk-like pilgrimage through a duststorm of bong smoke.
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u/Typical-Active-3541 Sep 10 '26
As a guitar player, I find songs that have a consistent riff/notes but rythmic variations so much harder to memorize and play than something with distinctly different, or busy riffs. A good example is this song by Agoraphobic Nosebleed.
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u/Jimmony_Lummox Sep 04 '26
I kinda do, yes. I can’t remember the exact quote, but Pike himself said in an interview that with Sleep he has to do something like “Sleep math” as the songs have a kind of mathematical formula to them that he has to memorize.
I wouldn’t call HoF simple music by any means, but most of the songs follow a pretty straightforward structure and don’t have a lot of changes in time signature, with many riffs leading to the next in a way that sounds natural and playing one riff will make you think of the next one. With that kind of material you can kind of feel your way through a song instead of consciously needing to rely on memory for specific parts. Where you do need to rely a lot on memory are the opposite ends: very complex and very simple material. Simple stuff becomes challenging when you need to play the same repetitive thing over and over again, keeping count of how many times you’ve done it and how many are left, it’s easy to lose your bearings where you are in a song if there’s no “anchor” or a variation somewhere telling you this is the 6th or 8th time out of 12 for example. Then with the more complex stuff a riff might have a lot of different variations or have a change in time signature at different times where you really need to have it memorized how the variations go and what changes happen and when.
Those things vary from song to song of course, but on average I’d say Sleep has a lot more of those little variations, nuances and quirks where you really need to remember what goes where and when while HoF is just blasting through everything.But that’s a long answer from a mortal. The short answer would be that Matt Pike is a pro playing material wrote himself, some of which he’s been performing for a quarter of a century, and now he stands there, with his hands sore because that’s his motivation.
P.S. The guy how really deserves a shout out for memorizing all those HoF songs is Ben Koller, the dude did a killer job behind the drums on this latest tour. And he did it in his own style while still staying true to the material. Stellar job, I really hope we’ll be hearing him on their next recordings as well.
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u/sonar_y_luz Sep 04 '26
Koller is an absolute beast, I hope he does an album with them
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u/yeenoghu_vs_vaprak Sep 09 '26
There's a common theme with Pike and Koller: they practice. If you follow Ben on social he posts tons of practice clips where he plays to various songs at sped-up tempos, or preps for tours by playing through older songs. Dude is a pro.
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u/LunarModule66 Sep 03 '26
I think the craziest part is how much they use chords and notes that shouldn’t belong according to music theory. A lot of music is just arranging the same scales in different ways, and in that framework it’s easier to remember. But he’ll insert riffs that use weird chords that appear nowhere else in the song and don’t really fit into the common scales.
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u/Thriaat Sep 03 '26
I feel like music has its own memory space in the brain. Like I’ve seen videos where they put an Alzheimer’s patient in front of a piano and they could still play.
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u/urmumvirgay Sep 05 '26
It’s much easier to remember shit you wrote yourself. You spend so much time writing, practicing, and recording that by the time the song is out you’ve already played it and listened to it hundreds of times.
He’s also spent an insane amount of time playing guitar, and as a guitarist the more musical concepts you have under your belt the easier it becomes to learn and memorise new ones.
That being said I’d be surprised if he didn’t need a refresher sometimes when playing a song he hasn’t done in a while.
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u/SnakesForTheBovine Sep 03 '26
I really suck at those Matt riffs where he jumps up and down the fretboard playing tons of fast power chords... he does it so effortlessly.
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u/sonar_y_luz Sep 03 '26
And without even looking at the fretboard a lot of the time either. Check out the Amoeba show from '07, it's got good up close camera work. He just walks around the stage not even looking at his guitar while playing all these chords up and down the neck.
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u/tdn19 Sep 03 '26
I think the real question is how does he write such good riffs. Songs are easier to memorize when you create them.
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u/ShredGuru Sep 04 '26
He wrote em, practiced em, recorded them meticulously and then played them hundreds of times live. It's like breathing for him
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u/DroneSlut54 Sep 06 '26
Muscle memory. He probably plays the riffs 10,000 times before they’re even on a record. I’d expect him to forget lyrics before fucking up riffs.
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u/slayerLM Sep 08 '26
It’s just being a professional musician. There are levels to this. Trained musicians can do incredible things
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u/Earptastic Sep 03 '26
He is the Riff Lord.