I'm not a guitar player, just an observer. So I would like to know what do you think is Mami's hardest riff to play so far?

Because some riffs may sound complex but actually not that hard, so it's good to hear opinions especially from those who play guitar, but if you don't you're welcome to share as well.

Edit: It can be any part of the riff or solo...

From the sound of it, Love Survive or Shunkan Sentimental can be pretty complicated. Although I'd say Queens are Trumps are the hardest, as far as I can remember.

I'm not the lead guitar type of guy, I'm more of a rhythm guitar guy, so I don't really know if those are actually hard.

Riff or solo? Both Haruna and Mami play riffs and some of Haruna's are actually harder, but Mami obviously does the solos herself.

Actually the hardest thing of theirs of any kind that I've played is Bitter Chocolate - if you do it the way they do it on the album. Live they change it a little, they make it easier by converting most of it to bar chords (I've only seen them play it once, maybe this is why). But I have the band score and on the album they do a few advanced and really unintuitive chord progressions very quickly during the bridge and chorus. They're not just bar chords. Every guitarist has certain things they have trouble with and maybe that chord progression is just hard for me, but I can't play it cleanly. It's now become part of my practice regimen.

Also that one part of Bitter Chocolate where they have the little breakdown and do the quick-slide down the neck, that's *really* hard for me. They didn't even do that at all when I saw them play it live - they just had it on tape.

There are a couple solos of Mami's that I have trouble with too. One is "Rock and Roll Widow", when she's sliding up and down the neck really fast. That's hard to do with precision, hitting the right spot every time, and she also has trouble doing it live consistently. The other is stupid, but it's literally the last note of the solo in "Taiyou Scandalous", because she jumps a string. Half the time I hit the one in between. That's just me not practicing string skipping enough.

@spacecadet... That's insightful.
Ahh, I c..., I think I meant her guitar solo cause that's the most noticeable part.

I also notice that they simplify their live performance a lot. The most noticeable part is "Queens are Trumps" where Haruna doesn't even play. I wonder if that song is hard?

The hardest part in QaT is played by a guest guitar, Yoshio Nomura. That's why, only Mami plays during this song

spacecadet wrote:
Also that one part of Bitter Chocolate where they have the little breakdown and do the quick-slide down the neck, that's *really* hard for me. They didn't even do that at all when I saw them play it live - they just had it on tape.

Yeah I have trouble with this one too.

What I find most challenging is the solo in Roppongi Suicide, the one that starts at 2:44. I can't play it fast enough and if I do, I screw it up.

I also find Mami's rapid octave riffs hard to do (ie. like the riff on Love Survive and the solo from SCANDAL Baby). If I had to play those live, I'd probably just cheat and use a pitch shifter or a harmonizer.

And the last bit of the riff on Playboy pt.2, can't do this one smoothly either. Feels a bit, unnatural.

Edit: Good topic btw, thanks for bringing this up.

babaloued wrote:The hardest part in QaT is played by a guest guitar, Yoshio Nomura. That's why, only Mami plays during this song

ahh another revelation...this makes me wonder for a while, but it make sense now, thx...

I would say Scandal Baby's and Love Survive.
Had tons of trouble with them when learning. >_>

The most trouble I've had with any thing that Mami plays is actually Hoshi no Furu Yoru ni.
I could never get the chain of bends at the beginning of the song right.

However, Shunkan is easy compared to the others, since your hand is almost in the same position all throughout the entire intro. The solo is a little tougher, but nowhere near as hard as Scandal Baby or Love Survive.

Medios wrote:From the sound of it, Love Survive or Shunkan Sentimental can be pretty complicated. Although I'd say Queens are Trumps are the hardest, as far as I can remember.

I'm not the lead guitar type of guy, I'm more of a rhythm guitar guy, so I don't really know if those are actually hard.

Shunkan solo and riff is very easy...

baymon wrote:

babaloued wrote:The hardest part in QaT is played by a guest guitar, Yoshio Nomura. That's why, only Mami plays during this song

ahh another revelation...this makes me wonder for a while, but it make sense now, thx...

Yeah he's credited on the CD as a guest guitarist, and the style of the guitar work on the song makes it easy to tell that most of the little fills and things like that that you hear are him. Haruna may or may not play at all on the song on the album (I haven't checked the score but she might just duplicate what Mami's doing in the intro and chorus), but she doesn't have to play live because there's really no separate rhythm part. On most of their songs Haruna and Mami are actually playing totally different things, but on this one there's only one guitar part (if I remember right) and on the album Mami mostly plays the riff while Nomura just kind of goes wild and improvises over it. So live, Mami seems to just duplicate what she did on the album while Haruna wanders off and just sings.

They used to do a similar thing when they played Koshi Tan-Tan live. Mami was the only guitarist and both Tomomi and Haruna would go out and wander around. There was not even any bass. I would have thought that would be very difficult for Mami (especially at that time, when they weren't as good as musicians), but I think she might have used a power chord tuning that let her play power chords with one finger.

I don't think Mami's solo are hard to play. Unlike bands who shred and play really fast, Mami's solo are not really complicated in my opinion. You just have to practice then it will be easy to play it in a little bit of time but if I have to choose one, I will choose "Hoshi no furu yoru ni". Maybe because i'm really bad bending

spacecadet wrote:They used to do a similar thing when they played Koshi Tan-Tan live. Mami was the only guitarist and both Tomomi and Haruna would go out and wander around. There was not even any bass. I would have thought that would be very difficult for Mami (especially at that time, when they weren't as good as musicians), but I think she might have used a power chord tuning that let her play power chords with one finger.

Just for reference, actually there's another video where Haruna and Tomomi played their instruments on Koshi Tantan, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkrmT7aSLhM

@topic
For me, all of Mami's parts is easy.. ..........easier said than done
Well, I'm not a good guitarist but I think Roppongi Shinjuu and Hello! Hello! is quite hard. Hello! Hello! tempo is quite fast, I love Haru's palm mute technique on this song which require good wrist. Mami can catch up with her guitar part while singing backing vocals and that's awesome!

Appletachi Dengon is one of my favorite too and I love Mami's part on it, her wild fill-in with simple&short melody. And for me it's quite hard to put up a simple & short riffs in the right place on a song, so I consider Appletachi Dengon is one of the hardest ones..

As far as riffs are concerned I think the main riff that Mami plays on Koshi Tan Tan is a bit tricky. Once you get it down it's not as hard, but the way too play it can be some tricky little slick transitions. For the hardest solo I tend too lean towards Hoshi no Furu Yoru ni. It's short, but a lot is going on with it, and getting the right tone becomes difficult if you don't bend each string just the right way. I haven't tried playing it in a while though, so I am not sure if I remember how too play it. >_<

jigoku79 wrote:

spacecadet wrote:They used to do a similar thing when they played Koshi Tan-Tan live. Mami was the only guitarist and both Tomomi and Haruna would go out and wander around. There was not even any bass. I would have thought that would be very difficult for Mami (especially at that time, when they weren't as good as musicians), but I think she might have used a power chord tuning that let her play power chords with one finger.

Just for reference, actually there's another video where Haruna and Tomomi played their instruments on Koshi Tantan, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkrmT7aSLhM

That one looks a year earlier than the one I was thinking of, which was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPM-cXUnko4

Probably they kept Haruna and Tomomi playing in support originally, but the following year Mami may have been confident enough to do it all herself.

She's either using an alternate tuning there, or more likely something like a harmonizer pedal (that's what it sounds like on the studio recording, actually).

I think it's "Hoshi no Furu yoru ni" and "LOVE SURVIVE" :3 for me mami's every solo parts are hard XD

macdyne73 wrote:I also find Mami's rapid octave riffs hard to do (ie. like the riff on Love Survive and the solo from SCANDAL Baby).

Agreed! But only if it involves the 2nd and 4th strings. Hahahaha. My pinky's absolutely crap, and I cheat by playing the 3rd and 5th strings (the pre-verse riff to Awanai Tsumori no comes to mind) - so it sounds a tad muddy as opposed to how MAMI plays it/as per tab on the June issue of GIGS (interestingly the July ish of Go!Go! Guitar has this riff as how I play it... goes to show other people 'cheat' as well).

Nodivingjeff wrote:As far as riffs are concerned I think the main riff that Mami plays on Koshi Tan Tan is a bit tricky. Once you get it down it's not as hard, but the way too play it can be some tricky little slick transitions.

For KTT, I 'cheat' by playing it the way MAMI did on the ANIMAX gig. I saw a (now deleted, thanks to Sony Music) cover video of the recorded studio version of KTT by an SH member named jibba once and again my pinky failed me to play it the way he did!

As long as it sounds right, that's fine by me.

How about the guitar solo on CUTE!? Or it just seems hard to me since I don't know how to play a guitar. :D

Say it isn't so, Joe!

Discovering now that Mami does not play those ripping leads in "Queens Are Trumps" is as disappointing for me as when I found out years ago my favorite Ace Frehley solo of all time was not played by Ace Frehley ("Sweet Pain" on the DESTROYER album).  I was also to bummed to learn Mike Nesmith did not play the cool Flamenco-like leads on The Monkees' "Valleri"-- but that could have been expected.

Mami's still a great guitarist, and getting better with each passing year.

In regards to this thread's main topic: as a guitarist I don't hear anything in her playing that makes me think, "Oh, that's difficult," but I think that's one of the reasons why I admire her so much as a musician.  She's very melodic and to-the-point, and doesn't waste her notes.  She's a very tasteful player.

Don Dio wrote:Say it isn't so, Joe!

Discovering now that Mami does not play those ripping leads in "Queens Are Trumps" is as disappointing for me as when I found out years ago my favorite Ace Frehley solo of all time was not played by Ace Frehley ("Sweet Pain" on the DESTROYER album). 

Nope, she's never really tried to cover that up... his playing on that track was as an intentional guest performer, since he's a famous guitarist in Japan. (He even did a televised guitar "teaching" segment with Mami on one TV show around that time, though I can't remember the name of the show it was on.) When they play QAT live, she just doesn't play those parts. She plays the main riff and that's it. I think she throws in a few of the easier flourishes, but not his shredding or his crazy vibrato. Somehow I don't miss it that much; I felt like that song was a little overdone on the album.

Koi no gestalt houkai sounds pretty complex to me,  it doesn't have a solo, but there are some pretty hard riffs, but I guess because the song is just really fast paced.  The instrument breakdown part that comes right after the psychedelic sounding bridge (around 3:09)sounded pretty difficult to me. And like with QAT, haruna doesn't play the guitar for the live, but only for the last lead riff of the song(the outro). Which surprised me that Mami didn't do that part.

Metronome, the girls said it themselves that it's a hard song to play,  mainly because there's a lot going on in each sec of the song.  The solo itself isn't really hard to play, but the rest of the sounds pretty difficult, even though it may not actually be.
Scandal Nanka buttobase to me is under the same thing as Metronome, just a lot of riffs and tricks going on at 100mph. It sounds pretty hard to keep up within 3 minutes.
Want you solo has three different styles to it, and the lead part during the chorus must have been hard to play especially while singing back up,  a lot of use of the Wah paddle.

Hoshi no furu, Anata ga mawaru,  and Take Me Out solos sounds hard to keep up.

Basically majority of my faves songs solos seems hard to me. ^^

I'm not much of a guitarist so if anyone has tried this song's out or has the score of then can give me insight on the uses and difficulty of the song.  

I have the digital albums, and they unfortunately don't come with any liner notes.  It may be the biggest drawback to not getting the actual CD (assuming I could find one in English).  I also hadn't seen any interviews in English where they discussed a guest appearance.  I have seen a few videos where they are joined by more seasoned performers, but the songs they play always seemed to be a cover song, and I assumed possibly by the artist that was joining them. 

One of the reasons I got into SH was to find out a lot more about their creative process and how they wrote and recorded these songs.