“My suggestion is to pick really hard and dig in”: Mike Stringer gives us an “unapologetically heavy” lesson in how to combine power chords with hammer-ons and pull-offs

In crafting the primary riffs for Spiritbox songs, I’ll often combine aggressively strummed, atonal power chords with fast single-note phrases and some hammer-ons and pull-offs. A good example of this approach is heard in Angel Eyes, from our 2023 EP The Fear of Fear.

I play this song on a seven-string guitar in the tuning I use most often, which is drop-A transposed down a minor 3rd, commonly referred to as “drop F#” (low to high: F#, C#, F#, B, E, G#, C#).