How can I get better at playing vkei music on guitar?? I play on a 6 string electric guitar and I know the basics on playing guitar (I think). I need help on ways to improve how I play idk how to explain it, but the bands I try playing/ I’m interested in playing guitar like is: Mejibray, XaaXaa, Kebyo, The GazettE, Memento Mori, Kuroyuri to Kage, Kaneto Juusei, Gozenreiji, Mamireta, Lyrica, Litchi Hikari Club, and maybe more I cant think rn lol. but yeah I try to use tabs but there’s like so much I cant do, I use songsterr for my tabs. I think that’s it, can someone help please?
Just get better in general, patience and practice because VK isn’t exactly known for its musicianship.
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how can I get better in general do u have any recommendations?
Lord as someone who has played both guitar and bass and drums and ended up giving up after six months no not really. We have several musicians here who might be able to help you stick with it lol
oh thank you, hopefully i met someone thenn
Guitarist here:
Songsterr is a GREAT start! I also HIGHLY recommend watching live performances. Pay attention to the chords/tricks the guitarists do. You can emulate it yourself while learning said songs or even better, use them for your own compositions.
There’s also a lot of Guitar covers on Youtube. This guy is covering ALL of DIR EN GREY’s stuff so I recommend checking the channel out. You’ll find a lot of near accurate 6 and 7 string covers.
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ohh okay thank you so much, also should I try listening to dir en grey??
This thread may be of use:
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Yo thanks for this. Didn’t know it existed!
woahh that’s cool, thank youu
Imho learn some buck-tick - even if you’re not going note by note on songsterr, just listen to some old albums and play rhythm parts w/ similar rhythms to them. Not that they’re the only band to use extended chords on upstrokes, but i think they’re the most clear distilled origin point of this particular sound that makes vkei what it is - extended chords on upstrokes.
If you enjoy that and want to keep along it, Nightmare/Naitomea’s guitar parts are well documented on songsterr and Sakito’s parts are some of the most complex (imho) in vkei. Not shreddy, just rhythmically and melodically dense. Lots going on, but all super vkei things going on.
Granted neither of those are in the list of who you say you enjoy, but IF you’re looking to be real methodical about it and really study, imho these are two great bands to learn from for a sound that’s super specifically vkei. And then likely you’ll be listening to Meji or Kebyou and hear how their guitar work is just more modern evolutions and pulling in different styles into this core sound.
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Practice some standard riff progressions. There’s like 5 variations on classic riffs you want to get used to playing:
- The “G/Unknown Despair” riff
- The Rosier Riff
- “The Nagoya Shuffle (Laputa’s Maigo no Maigo, emmureé’s Jesusica)
- The Monster/1-2-0-1-2-0 (any vk band does this type of riff)
- Jangle Those Keys (think…cali≠gari’s School Zone, Plastic Tree’s Ruisen Kairo)
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Just keep practicing really, Buck-Tick and some Dir en grey aren’t too complicated to learn, Sekai To Owari by Girugamesh is pretty simple.
Also probably get thicker strings if you’re going to downtune, it’ll be easier and more stable.
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I second Songsterr and Ultimate Guitar, although a lot of the time the tabs on there can be inaccurate or unfinished, and I see this a lot with Vkei tabs. In those cases, it’s good to find decent playthroughs of whatever songs you want to play.
This channel has some pretty good guitar playthroughs of various Vkei songs.
We also have this.
I write a lot of guitar tabs for my personal projects, and I wrote a few tabs for some Mejibray, Deviloof, and Arlequin songs a while ago, just for fun. I might start doing that again, upload them to Ultimate Guitar, and maybe post them here for anyone who’s interested, and also maybe to get a list of songs that haven’t really been tabbed out yet. I still haven’t found proper tabs for Anata no Tame no Koni Inochi by The GazettE yet, so that might be my next project.
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woahhh okay, I do like Nightmare so I’ll def try to keep trying to play their songs and I’ll def try to play buck-tick
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Guitarist who plays in 2 bands here!
- Practice, practice, practice
- Make sure you’re learning and playing songs you usually also like and listen to. This helps with motivation and the joy of playing and progressing.
- I personally learned most through Songsterr and live dvds
- Uruha from gazette taught me almost everything I know today
- At the start, tabs felt so overwhelming because, as you yourself said, you can’t really follow the more complex parts.
- Solution to that is to stick with what you can and slowly build up. You don’t need to know every lead-part of a song, focus on rhythm to begin with
- You got this!
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I desperately need tabs for 貴方ノ為ノ此ノ命
It’s been driving me nuts for years but I can’t seem to figure it out by ear
Them and the GazettE. I learned a lot of interesting metal and “VK chords” from them.
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THIS. Luke & I learned A LOT from *just* the GazettE alone. Loads of hours going over inverted chords, tri-tone panic chords, and guitar cabs/heads/effects/tones.
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idk how I missed this
Honestly, pick a band whose guitar work you REALLY love (for me, JDA, the GazettE, girugamesh), and start working toward some of your favorite songs.
PRACTICE.
I’ve fallen out of practice because I’ve been busy with life and projects, but I cant stress this enough. Expect to suck for a while. Try to learn songs whole, not just the riffs or solos.
I recommend JustinGuitar to solidify the basics and learn some music theory. You’ll need a slight baseline of workable theory to start with vkei and JRock. (mostly scales and triads. You can build knowledge of the fretboard with those alone.) Once you listen to more music, you’ll start noticing patterns, chords and scale usage across songs.
For example, the Royal Road Progression is EVERYWHERE in Japanese music. IV - V - iii - i. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6aezSL_GvZA Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. There’s a lot of jazz chords and progressions off in there too, like 7th chords. But, there’s a lot of easy songs that just use the Pentatonic/Blues scale, too.
Build a compendium of songs and make it the bulk your practice session. Don’t be afraid to switch out a song if it’s too hard. I’ve had songs I was absolutely stale hot dog water at for a month. I go and practice another song that’s difficult in a different way, and suddenly that original song is easy!
If you ever need suggestions, there are some honestly cool and knowledgeable people on this forum (myself included) that’d love to help.
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