Machine Head is an American heavy metal band from Oakland, California. The band was formed in 1991 by vocalist/rhythm guitarist Robb Flynn, who remains the only original member of the band.
Machine Head's aggressive musicianship made it one of the pioneering bands in the New Wave of American Heavy Metal.
Its current lineup comprises Flynn, bassist Jared MacEachern and drummer Matt Alston. Bassist Adam Duce, lead guitarists Logan Mader, Ahrue Luster and Phil Demmel, and drummers Tony Costanza, Chris Kontos and Dave McClain are former members of the band; Mader and Kontos toured with the band in 2019 and 2020 as part of the 25th anniversary tour for its first album, Burn My Eyes (1994).
Disclaimer: All tablatures are provided "as is" for purely EDUCATIONAL purposes. All other uses are prohibited. All copyrights in the original works remain the property of the owners.
Albums will be added as tabs are created for them.
Read here for details on how I make them and my committment to accuracy.
The tabs for this album are a mix if B Standard (B-E-A-D) and Drop B (B-Gb-B-E) tunings. Things get quite music theory spicy here though... (remember: the point of music theory and transcriptions is to make things as tidy as possible to read)
The tabs are written out as if they're in E Standard and Drop D despite the actual tunings and this means that all keys are written out as if the bass is tuned up to those more "normal" pitches. While this is to make them easier to read it has the knock on effect of there being some odd looking key signatures on the page due to the harmonic choices that Robb makes when writing his riffs.
Notes about these will be in the individual song details sections below as needed.
*** NOTES ***
The tuning here is Dropped B (B-Gb-B-E). The tab is written out as if it's tuned to Dropped D (D-A-D-G) for ease of reading.
The song uses a combination of regular (diatonic) Keys and Modes. In the Modal sense, remembering that we're working "as if" in Dropped D, the song predominantly uses E Phrygian (E-F-G-A-B-C-D).
As you can see there are no accidentals in that collection of notes; this is because it's the 3rd Mode of C Major. As such, there is no key signature marked because C Major doesn't have one!
There are a few accidentals that crop up as the song goes along but they're used as chromatic movement, like the "blue note" in a Pentatonic scale and not really "key" specific.
I've added in some suggested Up/Downstroke markings for certain riffs. Feel free to try them and see if they improve how you play them. 👍🏽
