Kim Thayil

• Alternative tunings are essential — Thayil rarely plays in standard tuning. Drop B (BGDGBE), open D, and drop C are his most common registers
• Open strings ringing against fretted notes is the signature dissonance — in "Black Hole Sun," the open low B creates a constant drone under the chord changes
• Less is more — Soundgarden guitar parts leave space. Count rests as carefully as notes
• The boss DS-1 settings are mid-way, not maxed — tone around 4-5, distortion around 5-6. It adds grit but doesn't eliminate the amp character
• Heavy pick gauge (.10s or heavier) for the low tunings — lighter strings feel like rubber bands in drop B
• The guitar body matters more than the amp channel — Les Paul into the Marshall's clean channel with DS-1 in front is very different from a Strat
• Feedback is a compositional element — "Superunknown" era Soundgarden uses feedback as melody in places like "Like Suicide"
• Listen to the bass first before learning guitar parts — in Soundgarden, the bass and guitar are often in different rhythmic layers, not locked together
• Keep amp mids at 6-7 — the mid-forward British Marshall character is part of what makes the dissonant tunings sound musical rather than just ugly

Kim Thayil of Soundgarden built his vocabulary around dissonance, open-string resonance and alternative tunings that made Soundgarden heavier than their peers without resorting to speed or conventional metal technique.