Riff Playbooks: Adam Rafowitz of Arch Echo

Adam Rafowitz
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Introduction

Riff Playbooks column is designed to make you a better player. By gleaning some insight into the technique, composition, and execution of these fine riffs by fine SH artists, you are bound to make headway in your own playing. We cordially invite you to steal a page from our books in order to expand your own diabolical playbook of musical wizardry (not literally though, the books are expensive to create).

We were fortunate enough to run into Adam in his hometown of Minneapolis at the wonderful "Varsity Theater" earlier this year.
Okay, fine...it was planned.  After saying our "hellos", he wasted no time lugging a bunch of his tasty gear all the way down to the green room (which feels like it's a mile underground) before promptly melting our faces off.

Adam chose to show us an excerpt from "Earthshine", which is the first song from Arch Echo's astounding debut self-titled record.  It's pretty incredible to watch Adam fit all these quick but tasteful notes into such a short window of the song.  (If you want to follow along in your copy of "The Complete Guitar Transcription", we are looking at Bars 104-112, starting on page 13.)



Adam was kind enough to slow things down a touch so we could identify exactly what was happening in those flurries of quick notes...




We wanted to find out a bit more about Adam and what inspires him.  It's certainly not surprising to learn that he has been finding inspiration in Greg Howe and Guthrie Govan's playing for years.  You can definitely hear it in his approach to writing!



Check out "The Complete Guitar Transcription" for Arch Echo's debut album HERE.  


Want to learn more Arch Echo material for free?  You can grab an instant download link to a FREE PDF song sheet HERE.  This one is for "Hip Dipper", which is another bangin' tune from their album. We have even included the Guitar Pro files to expedite your learning experience!


To listen to the song "Earthshine" it its entirety, head to one of the links below:

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