There are two combatants in this video, and only one of them is human. I showed up to play Muse's "Knights of Cydonia," my guitar showed up to renegotiate its own tuning, and by the end a couple of my bends were auditioning for a free-jazz quartet. Rematch lost, dignity mostly intact.
This clip is a warts-and-all run at the galloping main riff of Muse's space-western epic — the palm-muted charge that makes air guitarists everywhere pretend they own a horse. It's short, it's loud, and yes, I heard those bends too.
How the Knights of Cydonia gallop works
The engine of this riff is the gallop: a tight down-down-up sixteenth-note feel over a palm-muted low string, straight out of the spaghetti-western playbook Ennio Morricone would nod at. Rest the edge of your picking hand lightly on the strings near the bridge so every note comes out choked and percussive, then let the accented notes ring just enough to imply the melody. The useful takeaway: practise the gallop on one muted note first, metronome slow, before you add the pitches — nail the rhythm and the notes almost play themselves.
The other half of the magic is those soaring octave melodies and whammy-bent lines Matt Bellamy stacks on top. Clean palm mutes underneath, screaming bends above — and if your bends drift sharp like mine did, well, that's just the guitar reminding you who lost the tuning rematch.
Come watch a grown man apologise to a piece of wood and wire on Patreon, where the tabs and backing track live.