Metal guitar is a very popular genre with people who feel that hopelessness and aggression don’t get much of an airing in today’s music. This genre started of with groups like Led Zeppelin who played guitar loud and aggressive but were also very aware of creating melodies. While guitarists like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page remained central figures in the early metal scene, the kind of music that was generally identified as metal quickly lost its love of melody and simply moved on to expressing emotion by the use of volume and in-your-face technique. Some groups that practice the Metal philosophy are Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Motorhead, Kreator, Destruction, Children Of Bodom, Tankard, Testament and Pantera are among the ruthless and rugged practitioners of heavy metal guitar.
String bending is an essential skill for a Metal guitar player. Your whammy bar will bend strings for you but on many cheap guitars the whammy bar does not work without breaking strings. Anyway, you don’t need to use the whammy bar when you can just move your guitar string sidewise to change pitch.
An attractive element of metal guitar is the chugging noise. This sound is achieved by muting the strings. The technique used is called palm muting. You do this by resting the side of your hand on the strings while you are picking. Just try the technique according to this simple description and compare it with the sound you hear on your favorite CDs. This should be enough material for you to get the technique right. You can combine the palm muting with fast up-and-down strokes.
Your main piece of equipment as a Thrash Metal guitar player is a distortion pedal. The music you will need to learn is basically blues and rock. The major, minor, pentatonic, and minor harmonic scales will be useful as well as the Phrygian, Lochrian and Byzantine modes.
Metal guitar makes good use of drop tunings. If you are a serious metal guitar player your guitar should be tuned low. Your control over your sound and your guitar strings is more immediate, letting your emotions express themselves through the guitar. Also the sound you are getting is much more aggressive and you have more latitude with using hammer ons, pull offs and tapping. Why not start with just tuning your guitar half a step down? This is not a big deal but it makes your guitar growl while still giving you some high notes to play with. On the other hand you could tune your strings down one half step so that your guitar is tuned to D G C F A D.
The maximum you should tune your guitar down is three steps. When you get to this stage you could be looking at getting a guitar with an extra long neck, otherwise you may find your strings moving around under your fingers way too much.
Here is a Metal Guitar video lesson:
Speed Picking Techniques In Metal Guitar: Free Online Lessons – Amazing videos are here
