I was screwing around the other night on my guitar, mimicking/tabbing some death metal and tech death. After a while, I kind of started to get the feeling that there were very minimal guitar differences between the two genres. Listening to Obscura and Origins guitar work versus Gorefest and Grave it still sounded and felt like fairly simple riffs, only slightly faster, and that the real "tech" difference was all in the frenetic insanity of drumming or just speed. Certainly the riffs were different, but the general idea seemed the same.

For instance, listening to some Origin, I felt that the riffs weren't really all that intricate despite being one of the best tech death bands around. I could pick them up fairly easy if I just looped sections and concentrated hard enough. Which got me to thinking what is the REAL difference between tech death guitar and death guitar, at least stylistically speaking. This could just be me realizing that I've gotten better at guitar or tabbing, but even so, I feel a discussion about the stylistic differences would be interesting. With all the sub-genres like brutal, -core, tech, slam, groove, what really are the stylistic guitar differences when it comes down to playing? I don't feel I have enough experience outside my random five years of improvisational practice sessions to say. Any learned musicians with cross genre experience have something say about this?

Origin guitar parts are extremely complex. Are you sure we're listening to the same Origin?

Origin Antithesis?

I may not have had them 100% on the nose, but it certainly sounded like it matched up to what I was hearing. Certainly couldn't nail a solo or some of the amazing attonal sweeps, though, and if that's the defining factor than it all makes sense.

i thought, that it is really just in solos... because rhytm parts arent that "tech" in most cases