CHILDREN OF BODOM Guitarists Issue 'Blooddrunk' Guitar Lesson Video Footage Online

CHILDREN OF BODOM guitarists Alexi Laiho and Roope Latvala have issued a video lesson on how to play the title tracks from their latest album, Blooddrunk, via GuitarWorld.com. The introduction the lesson is below (originally published in Guitar World, February 2009):

"Children of Bodom guitarist Roope Latvala has a method for enduring almost four minutes of relentless, palm-muted, machine-gun 16th-note triplets without his arm cramping up. “I drink a lot of water,” he explains. “It makes up for the electrolytes I lose when I sweat—and when I play like that, I sweat a lot. I’m a sweaty pig,” he says with a laugh, clarifying the point.

Latvala and Alexi Laiho, his coguitarist and Children of Bodom’s frontman, are visiting Guitar World’s New York office, fresh from a trans-Atlantic red-eye, to break down the musical concepts behind “Blooddrunk,” the title track from the Finnish metal group’s latest full-length release.

After establishing the song’s tuning, drop D down one whole step (low to high, C G C F A D), Laiho and Latvala demonstrate the song’s first theme, a rapid, fluid, fourbar triplet-based keyboard melody doubled by Laiho (as shown in bars 5-8 in the transcription, page 130 [Click HERE to purchase the February 2009 issue.]), with muscular rhythm backing provided by Latvala. The trick to mastering Laiho’s part is not so much in nailing the notes cleanly but in making good use of fretboard positions. Indeed, the riff becomes much easier to play once you think of it as a series of two-beat patterns played in specific positions."

Go to this location to check out the video lesson.