Playing Opeth's 'Weakness'

This is a hauntingly beautiful track that is suprisingly easy to play to. I say play 'to' because although there are very simple elements that you can play, there are lots of subtleties in it that are hard to pick up and it's almost impossible to find accurate tabs for them. A lot of it is also played on a keyboard, despite it's guitar-like sound. For now I'm just going to show you a couple of riffs that are easy to practice that sound great.

First of all I'm going to tell you the settings I have on my Line6, because you need quite a long eerie sound to come out of your guitar to make this sound right. You can practice it without of course, but it won't sound as close to the real thing.
The sound I get with the following settings isn't exactly as it sounds in the song, but it's as close as I could get and it still sounds great.

Settings

• Amp Model: Clean (you could try Blues, but I found this makes the notes sound a bit too strong)
• Drive: Full (This doesn't mean the sound is very distorted, it just makes the notes a bit 'fuzzy' as the model is set to a clean sound.)
• Bass: 4 (10'o'clock on the dial)
• Mid: 9.5 (4'o'clock)
• Treble: 9.5 (4'o'clock)
• First Dial: No effect
• Second Dial: Delay effect
• Reverb: 11 (5'o'clock)

Ok so here's the song...



The riffs we're going to be playing come in at about 58 seconds in.
Here's the tab:

e|--------------------------------------------------------|
B|--7-7-7-7-7/8-------7-7-7-7-7/8--\5-----7-7-7-7-7/8-----|
G|---------------4-------------------------------------4--|
D|--------------------------------------------------------|
A|--------------------------------------------------------|
E|--------------------------------------------------------|

You will see there is some sliding to be done (the / symbol) but it's very simple in this song. I have found that it helps to pick the string, slide, and then pick the second string as well. You can try just picking and sliding without playing the second note if you want but I find it's harder.

There's then this very similar part...

The seven right before the slide is a really quick one, almost a grace or ghost note. <-- According to the person who write this tab.

>e|-------------------------------------------------------|
B|--7-7-7-7-7-7/8-8/10------------------------------------|
G|--------------------------------------------------------|
D|--------------------------------------------------------|
A|--------------------------------------------------------|
E|--------------------------------------------------------|

This piece is great for practicing very gentle picking and when you feel confident also for sliding (without picking the second note). I can't find a video of someone practicing this, so enjoy this live performance by Opeth themselves.