How to Play “Heartstrings” by Frost | Guitar Lesson

In the pantheon of progressive rock, the British band Frost needs no introduction. Deservedly dubbed as a supergroup, this band’s prowess and pedigree are equally impressive. Said Brits recently dropped into Sweetwater to do a Recording Master Class and also rehearse with our award-winning, in-house drum demon Nick D’Virgilio for their performances on the sold-out Yes “Cruise to the Edge” voyage.
I went to say hello to my fellow countrymen while they were rehearsing in Sweetwater’s ginormous Studio A and happened to walk in right when they started playing “Heartstrings.” The hypnotic intensity of its speedy, cyclical, yet catchy intro riff literally stopped me in my tracks. Why? Because the fretboard hand movement of guitarist John Mitchell seemed relatively minimal compared to the furious pace and width of the riff. Sure his hand was flying pretty darned fast, but the movement was 100% vertical — no horizontal motion whatsoever. So as I state at the start of the accompanying video, I instigated this lesson for purely selfish reasons — I simply had to find out how Mr. Mitchell was doing it!
How to Play the “Tyrannosaurus Riff”
Jem Godfrey, Frost’s founder and ivory-tickler extraordinaire, calls this opening riff “Tyrannosaurus Riff.” Our guest teacher smiles. “I call it the ‘Veloci-riff-tor’ because of its speed. Like a lot of keyboard parts, the intro riff Jem came up with doesn’t really fall naturally under a guitarist’s hands. They invariably fall outside of the usual shapes, like the pentatonic! As it happens, it’s actually a fairly simple and straightforward riff, but it sounds really hard! When I was growing up, I’d sometimes hear a lick and think, ‘Wow, that’s the most insanely difficult guitar part ever.’ And then, I’d usually find out that it was actually easy to play but sounded complex and cool.”
But John admits, “That said, it’s impossible to play this particular riff unless you slightly retune the guitar.” And so, necessity being the mother of invention, that’s exactly what the guitarist did. He dropped the high and low E strings down to a D (a tuning often referred to as “Double Drop D”) and then performs the riff (fig. 1) purely on the three strings tuned to D. “This of course means that you’re continually string skipping during the riff, and that does open up the door for something to go horribly wrong!”
As you can see from figure 1, John only picks each string once every time he visits it — the remaining notes are all sounded via deft hammer-ons. “It’s also a pretty good warm-up exercise,” John concludes with a wry grin.

The Calm After the Storm
After the lightning speed of the “Veloci-riff-tor,” both John and Jem become the proverbial calm after the storm by shifting to the relatively slow yet seductive melody line shown in figure 2. But as they do, bassist Nathan King (brother of the British bass behemoth and legend Mark King) continues to pound out the “Tyrannosaurus Riff” as a furious foundation. “Playing this (fig. 2) is like going on holiday after a hard day of work,” John jests. “The song is a cowrite between Jem and myself, and I tend to come up with the easier stuff, like this melody line,” he concludes (with typical English self-effacement) about the catchy counterpoint line he created.

And there you have it, my friend. That’s how you play the guitar intro to “Heartstrings” by Frost — 333% selfish mission accomplished!

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