How to Play Heavy Metal Guitar

Transcript I’d like to talk a little bit about rock cliches. There are so many of them. I’ve chosen just a few to focus on. To start with, let’s take a loot at this little pattern popularized by Chuck Berry. All I’m doing is taking my first finger, playing up the fourth fret, or wherever …

Transcript Hi, my name is Alex Skolnick. I’ve been playing the guitar since I was ten years old. When I was in high school, I joined a band of guys in their 20s called Legacy. We recorded our first album when I was 18 and changed our name to Testament. I spent the next five …

Transcript How do we get into two octaves? Well, let’s start where we are here at the fifth fret. We keep going down and we just play scale tones. It actually looks like an A minor bar chord. Alright? So from there I can sweep. Alright? And this gives me a nice two octave sweep. …

Transcript For this lesson, I’d like to focus on right hand fretting. I’ve looked at a couple other two-handed licks in the other Howcast videos. For this lesson, I want to focus specifically on a lick where you’re playing multiple notes on one string. So I’m on the E string, the first string. I’m going …

Transcript Let’s talk about cross string picking mechanics. I have to confess this is not a term I use very often, but I know a lot of players do use it, and I’ve learned a lot of licks and have come up with a lot of licks that I suppose apply to the concept of …

Transcript Vibrato. Anytime you have a note and you hold it for a little while, it sounds nice to give it a little bit of vibration. It’s a lot like singing. So if somebody sings a note, you don’t want them to vibrate it right away otherwise it sounds funny. Right? But if you hold …

Transcript Alright. Let’s sort of talk about sweep picking. That’s something a lot of people want to know about. I think it’s something best delved into slowly. I can show you the concept of it without even fretting any notes. It’s really with the right hand where you go across the strings in one direction …

Transcript Another type of tapping that was also popularized by Van Halen was harmonic tapping. With this type of tapping you take any chord, go 12 frets higher. So, for example, here I am. Here’s an E minor chord. 12 frets higher, I have the same notes up here. Now, if I just move to …

Transcript Alright. Legato techniques were popularized in the 1980’s by Eddie Van Halen. The basic idea is that you’re taking a note off of the first note you play, you can pick a note, and then hammer-on and pull-off and get a whole flurry of other notes. Say I’m at the fifth fret. My A …

Transcript Two handed tapping was popularized initially by Eddie Van Halen, who caught on, and was used by a lot of different guitar players, including yours truly. I try not to use it too much, because it has become somewhat of a cliché, but you can do some really cool stuff with it. I want …

Transcript [music] I want to talk to you about lead guitar melodic licks. It’s a pretty broad term. It can apply to a lot of things, but generally what comes to mind for me is something that doesn’t stick with the pentatonic scale. The pentatonic is great for licks. It’s great for flash. It’s great …

Transcript Shredding techniques, it’s a very broad term, and there are other videos that I’ve done for Halcast where you can see me talk about speed picking, contour sequences and stuff like that. And that all applies to shredding. But what I’d like to do right now is take bits and pieces of that and …

Transcript Let’s talk about alternate picking and 16th notes. One of the simplest ways to play this is just on an open string as a rhythm, either the E string or the A string. Or. And you’ll often hear that with chords thrown in. But either way, you have to be very careful with the …

Transcript Okay. I want to talk to you about string skipping arpeggios. A common way to play arpeggios is just taking triads and linking them. In a sweep picking arpeggio, you might do something like this. Okay, and I have another lesson on sweep picked arpeggios. And that gives you options, like this. That’s very …

Transcript Alright. I’d like to talk to you very quickly about using the bar, sometimes called the whammy bar, sometimes called the vibrato bar. And it’s something that’s overdone a lot, so you have to be careful with it. I actually stopped using it very early on in my career. But, it’s fun to play …

Transcript Speed exercises. Okay, one of the most important things to keep in mind for speed picking is that you have to start out slow. One of the things I liked to do when I was learning was take a pattern, maybe a four note pattern where I had to switch strings, for example. Alright, …

Transcript Hi, I’d like to talk to you about the major arpeggio. There are major arpeggios in all keys. We’re going to be looking at A major. There are variations on the arpeggio, but the basic arpeggio form is just the root, third, and fifth. If we take the root, third, and fifth of the …

Transcript Let’s talk about speed picking. There are a lot of different ways to speed pick. I started speed picking by listening to music from different cultures. For example, Italian mandolin, Flamenco guitar, Greek bouzouki, you know, many others. I often find that that’s the best source of speed picking. Just to take the mandolin …

Transcript Guitar soloing tips. I usually like to play ideas that are memorable and that you can sing along to. I don’t want it just to be a barrage of speed and flashiness. You can throw in speed and flashiness but it should be used tastefully. I think the most important thing is a melody. …

Transcript Pinched harmonics. Whenever I think of pinched harmonics the first person I think of is Billy Gibbons the guitarist for ZZ Top. A lot of other great players have made nice use of pinched harmonics as well. One of the things to keep in mind is that there are harmonics five, seven, and twelve …

Transcript Changing keys. There are many keys to change to. If you’re playing in one key and suddenly it switches, a couple of things you have to keep in mind. One of the most important things to do is search for common notes. Most keys have at least a couple of notes in common. You …

Transcript Let’s talk about sixteenth note triplets. First of all, what is a triplet? Well, a triplet is the division of a beat into three parts. So, if you have any tempo, we can take each beat and divide it into three parts. So, let’s say I have this tempo. All right, one, two, three, …

Transcript Natural harmonics. The three main positions for natural harmonics are at the fifth, seventh, and twelfth fret. Every string has a harmonic at the fifth fret, the seventh fret, and the twelfth fret. You’ve probably heard these in the intros to songs by Yes, Metallica, and many others. There are a lot of possibilities …

Transcript Okay, improvisation and phrasing, much can be said about it, we could probably talk about it for hours. This is only going to be a few minutes, so I’m just going to focus on taking a pattern and just changing a note around. So for example, here’s an E minor triad, right, I may …

Transcript All right, lest’s talk about the concept of pedal notes. So anytime you have pedal notes you have some notes that are being traded off with either cord or other notes. I have a bunch of other lessons here about metal rhythm guitar which cover this topic but in terms of pedal notes it …

Transcript All right, let’s talk about triplets. If you’re relatively new to the guitar, a good place to start might be the pentatonic scale, where you have the option of ascending or descending in triplets. A common way to play the pentatonics with triplets would be to take the scale, which is this, then start …

Transcript I want to talk to you a bit about thrash metal rhythm guitar. You know when metal started it wasn’t all fast, some of it was very slow and driving. Groups like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest who were pioneers for this style really laid the groundwork, but it was later on in the …

Transcript More and more guitar players are asking about Drop B tuning. Drop B tuning is something that got popular in the 90’s and the 00 and the basic idea behind it is you’re tuning the whole guitar to B. So, if I take the B string, and then I take the low E string …

Transcript I like to talk about some power chord riffs. There are many different variations on power cord riffs, different keys, different chords. Let’s look at a few different chords, let’s start with the G chord. Now this one is a little more common amongst hard rock groups rather than all out heavy metal groups. …

Transcript Let’s talk about rests for moment. Rests are a very important part of the process of playing metal rhythms. A rest gives the music a chance to breathe and it’s not just a matter of stopping the chord. It’s actually a matter of dampening the chord in time with the music. You’ll hear this …

Transcript Alright, I’d like to talk about metal guitar riffs in drop D. You have a lot of possibilities when you drop D. Basically you’re turning this low E string to the D. And it gives you this chord. And one of the best ways to create riffs is to really concentrate on the difference …

Transcript I would like to talk to you about E-minor heavy metal riffs. E-minor is probably the most common key for metal riffs, there are a lot of variations on it. You can sneak in a lot of chords that take it out of the key, but as a foundation, E-minor is probably the most …

Transcript Rythmic patterns. Rhythmic patterns is a very broad subject, but I’d like to talk about a couple important examples in metal guitar playing. And one of them is the gallop. So, a gallop is exactly what it sounds like, kind of, like a horse, right. Okay, so for that, I’m pressing down. I’m doing …

Transcript Power chords are quite simple when you break them down. All you really need is the low note and the fifth, two strings. You can move that around, sliding. Sometimes, you can play three strings. A lot of guys do that. What I don’t want is the third, the major third. I don’t want …

Transcript Hi. I want to talk about metal guitar riffs in A major. There really aren’t that many to be honest, but one that comes to mind is one of the most famous metal songs, Crazy Train, by Ozzy Osbourne. There are a few others as well. And a thing to keep in mind about …

Transcript A one fret bend is similar to a two fret bend. In both cases you are taking a note and you are bending it to the next note, but with the one fret bend the next note is only one fret higher. As an example let’s look at the A minor scale. So if …

Transcript Okay, we’re talking about notes on the fifth string. It’s important to memorize them. It’s actually important to memorize all the notes. It’s most important to memorize notes on the low strings because a lot of your chords, most of your power chords, are going to be based on those strings. So, it’s important …

Transcript OK. When you bend the first three strings you always want to bend towards the top of the neck. It’s a litle different when you bend strings four through six. When I bend those strings I try to bend towards this part of the neck, the bottom. You do have the option, but I …

Transcript Alright let’s talk about notes on the 6th string of the guitar. One of the things that helps guitar players remember where they are is the concept of dots and inlays. So you notice that I have inlays as well as dots on the third, fifth, seventh, ninth and twelfth frets. Each one of …

Transcript Let’s talk about over bending. Any time you bend a whole note it’s a two fret bend. Any time you bend a half step it’s a one fret bend. An over bend is a little less defined. With an over bend you want to go pretty much as high as you can go. The …

Transcript Alright, we’re talking about Drop D tuning. The first time I ever heard Drop D tuning was one of my favorite guitar players, Eddie Van Halen, on the tune Unchained. It was just one of the heaviest sounds I’d ever heard. He also had the whole guitar tuned down a half step to begin …

Transcript Hey there. I want to talk about using distortion. It’s a little different depending on what amp you’re using. If I’m using a stack high-gain amp, I will usually go for the high gain channel. Right now, I’m playing through a Budda combo amp. Here, I’m playing on the equivalent of the high-gain channel. …

Transcript Two-fret bend. It’s exactly what it sounds like. You’re taking a note and you’re bending it to the next note two frets higher. You can do this anywhere on the neck. It’s usually done on the higher strings but you can do it on the lower strings as well. A good place to start …

Transcript Alright, let’s talk about the Dorian mode. The Dorian mode is the second mode in a system of the major scale. So, if i take C major, most of have heard this: Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. [plays scale] If I start that from the second note [plays scale], that gives …

Transcript Alright, what’s a hammer-on? Well, picture a hammer, the way the hammer strikes down. That’s what happens with your finger. You take any note. So if I look at the minor pentatonic scale, we go to the first string. I play this note, I pick the note, but then the next note on the …

Transcript Okay. Let’s talk about the octave position. There’s a different position for each pair of strings with an octave. If I look at the sixth string and I play any note, say, G, I have an octave two frets higher and two strings away. I can play these together and I can dampen the …

Transcript All right, let’s talk about scale tones. With scale tones, you have to be a little careful, because scale tones will sound good or bad, depending on which chord is being played in the background. If I take a simple, C major scale, technically, any of those notes should work over a rhythm such …

Transcript Let’s talk about the diagonal form. When that term comes up, I believe most people are thinking the pentatonic shape that can be moved across the neck in a diagonal fashion. Normally when you learn the pentatonic scale it looks something like this. What is that exactly? It’s actually just five notes played in …

Transcript Let’s talk about the natural minor scale. If I play the natural minor scale from A, it’s also called A Aeolian, by the way, there are several ways to play it. I like to start out on the 5th fret position. This is very close to the pentatonic scale. The minor pentatonic scale first …

Transcript Let’s talk about the Blue scale. Blue scale is a bit of a misleading term. Real Blues players don’t really think of scales. They may have practiced scales at some point, but the actual playing of the blues is not picking notes from a scale, but rather, the Blues scale as a concept, is …

Transcript All right. Let’s talk about octaves and how to use them. One simple use of octaves is as a substitute for power chords. So, you can take any riff and take a sliding power with chords. Say, something like this. I could play the same thing with octaves. So, using octaves on the 4th …

Transcript Okay, what exactly is the minor pentatonic scale? Well, it’s a five note scale, and there are two notes per string. So, if I take a seven note scale, A natural minor for example, and I remove the second and the sixth, I get this five note scale. Really all that it is, is …