Gallop (metal rhythm)

The gallop is a rhythmic pattern central to metal, made of one eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes within a single beat, almost always played with palm muting and a fast down-up pick stroke on the two sixteenths. Its name comes from the resemblance to a galloping horse's hoofbeats.

A common mix-up: it's not a triplet

The gallop is often wrongly called a "triplet" because it also splits the beat into three attacks: in reality, a triplet divides the beat into three strictly equal parts, while the gallop is asymmetrical (one eighth note twice as long as each of the two sixteenths that follow) — playing the gallop's three notes at perfectly equal intervals doesn't sound like a real gallop.

Guitarshelf's metal gallop riff in E minor and its gallop-pedal power riffs apply this pattern directly.