Pulling Teeth

[guitarrock24]

I am attempting to learn Pulling Teeth by Metallica. I have a few questions. First of all, what are triplets. It has them in the tabs and I have no idea what they are. Also, what does Cliff do at the end of the song. I've read he does something with his fingernails or something. Please help.

[guitarrock24]

Anyone have ant tips or helpers on learning this song.

[mjolnir]

Do you have a background in music theory at all? Do you know what quarter notes and eighth notes are and all that? If not, I'll explain, I'm just trying to figure out where I need to start.

[guitarrock24]

Right now I'm not too worried about theory. I'm working with some scales right now but thats about it. I'm just printing out tabs for songs I like and learning them.

[mjolnir]

That's the thing, it's much easier to understand the triplet thing if you have a bit of theory under your belt. ...I'll give you a quick crash course:

Every song has a time signature, and Pulling Teeth's is 4/4. That means there's four notes in a measure, a measure being sort of a phrase in the music, and the other four means those four notes are quarter notes. A triplet would be (in the context of these quarter notes) three quarter notes played in the same space of time that two of the quarter notes would normally be played.

[mrkode]

It's been a very very long time since I played this and saw the chart but from what I can recall, Cliff scrapes his fingernails on the strings and at the very end he taps the D and G string against the poles of the pickup.

[Akeris]

Err. I'm all for learning music theory.

But, you don't need to have a concept of triplets if you have the song. You can just listen to it and mimic whatever you hear. I mean you have the tab. Right?


But learn theory anyway.

[guitarrock24]

THx