# Metal guitar progress



## MasterOfRiff (Sep 2, 2012)

Hello,

I play guitar since few years and i have good bases. I want to play thrash metal, but I do not know where to begin...

I want to play fast riff like metallica/megadeth/slayer and solo like hammett.

Can you recommend me song to learn?

I have an other question. How make Mustaine to compose? Which modes?


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## Matt1the3Beast (Sep 2, 2012)

Well it depends on what skills you want to work on. If you want to work on fast downpicking, go Metallica(such as Master of Puppets). If you want to work on gallopping I would go with Raining Blood by Slayer. But if you just want to work with lead stuff I would recommend learning your scales and Improvising over a backing track. And for what Dave Mustain uses for modes, I don't believe he follows modes very often, he has more of an atonal approach. But one thing he does use is his "spider" chord(look it up on google) Some great songs to learn by Megadeth are anything from their Rust in Peace album.  Hope I helped!


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## Matt1the3Beast (Sep 2, 2012)

And also If you like thrash metal I highly recommend Trivium's album: Shogun. Best thrash metal album ever IMO


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## Pooluke41 (Sep 2, 2012)

Matt1the3Beast said:


> And also If you like thrash metal I highly recommend Trivium's album: Shogun. Best thrash metal album ever IMO


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## apeswithhobbies (Sep 2, 2012)

Matt1the3Beast said:


> And also If you like thrash metal I highly recommend Trivium's album: Shogun. Best thrash metal album ever IMO


 
*scratches head*

Evile are well worth checking out.


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## Grimbold (Sep 2, 2012)

the only reason i excuse your metallica love is that you're french

i'm french too and i think its stupid that metallica is "underground" here but there you go

*anti-metallica rant over*

you might want to learn the slayer back catalogue to brush up your down picking
the songs are pretty simple but a lot of fun, and give you plenty of time to practice

also for more theoretical stuff check out testament, i love them to death!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Sep 2, 2012)

Matt1the3Beast said:


> And for what Dave Mustain uses for modes, I don't believe he follows modes very often, he has more of an atonal approach.



I don't think that you know what that word means.



> But one thing he does use is his "spider" chord(look it up on google)


To be clear, the spider chord is a fingering technique, not an actual chord.

----

Scalewise, you're going to want to look at natural and harmonic minor, phrygian, locrian, and minor pentatonic. This isn't the be-all, end-all of harmony in thrash metal, but it's a good chunk of what you hear. Anthrax, for instance, uses quite a bit of major and lydian material (Among The Living, Efilnikufesin, Intro To Reality/Belly Of The Beast). Don't let "genre" dictate how you compose. You should learn the diatonic modes, for sure, as you can't really call yourself a musician if you don't know them. After that, though, I recommend that you analyze what's going on in your favorite music and make a facsimile based on that until you have understanding of how to make that kind of music.

There are some common root movements that you should be aware of, like tritones and minor seconds. I can expound upon that more later if you wish.


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## MasterOfRiff (Sep 2, 2012)

I have make a list of song that i should learn:

For arpeggios: Fade to black, Lucretia, good morning black friday, diary of a madman (strange position)

For riff: Master,Blackened, Battery, some slayer song (dead skin mask, season, raining, black magic,...)

For solo: ... maiden song?



@SchecterWhore

Can you explain me a little bot of natural and harmonic minor, phrygian, locrian, and minor pentatonic? Because I think i can apply them if i have tabs of them for help me, but i want to understand them


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## Matt1the3Beast (Sep 2, 2012)

SchecterWhore said:


> I don't think that you know what that word means.
> 
> To be clear, the spider chord is a fingering technique, not an actual chord.
> 
> I know what modes are, what I meant is that Dave Mustaine tends to harmonize out of scale in many layers. He also tends to use notes out of mode, such as his many chromatic riffs such as Wake Up Dead( In which he uses his "spider chords" which is actually just two different bar chords played one after the other utilizing all four fingers (not good at explaining), but yes he does tend to use the Phrygian Mode, Blues Hexatonic, and the Harmonic Minor alot. And when Marty Friedman was Megadeth, he would use many exotic scales such as the Japenese Pentatonic and the Hungarian Gypsy. Hope I cleared things up a little!


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## Grimbold (Sep 3, 2012)

MasterOfRiff said:


> For solo: ... maiden song?
> 
> Can you explain me a little bot of natural and harmonic minor, phrygian, locrian, and minor pentatonic? Because I think i can apply them if i have tabs of them for help me, but i want to understand them


dewd
for maiden solos, they're all pretty easy once you have your scales and whatnot down.

now before schecterwhore comes and blows your mind (because he is god) it might be more effective if you told us how much theory you currently know. If you don't really know what modes are or how they work and how a pentatonic works and whatnot it'll be hard for you to understand what we explain to you...

also what do you mean when you say you're learning a song for the riff?


just trying to help  
stay metal \m/


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Sep 3, 2012)

MasterOfRiff said:


> @SchecterWhore
> 
> Can you explain me a little bot of natural and harmonic minor, phrygian, locrian, and minor pentatonic? Because I think i can apply them if i have tabs of them for help me, but i want to understand them



This is an area of music that takes a while to learn. Fortunately, once you know why and how a scale works as it does, you're good for pretty much every scale you ever come across. Since my usual spiel is probably beyond the scope of this thread, I'll teach you what I consider to be a practical approach to scales.







Above is a D natural minor scale. The first measure of music (A.) is the scale itself. In the language of music, these notes are D E F G A B&#9837; C D. (Since you're French, you might know the notes by different names: Re Mi Fa Sol La Si&#9837; Do Re. I will be referring to the notes by their English names.) A scale is made of seven different pitches. We have eight notes in the first measure, but the top note has the same name as the bottom note. The scale may be divided into two four-note groups called tetrachords. You can see this illustrated in i. and ii.. Tetrachords are useful, because they provide a framework for pitch selection.

The most important note in a scale is the tonic. The tonic is the note that the music gravitates toward, and it is also the note that the scale is named after; we are looking at a D minor scale, and the tonic is D. If it were E minor, the tonic would be E, and if it were B&#9837; locrian, the tonic would be B&#9837;. In example B., I show how one of the tetrachords may be organized so that the tonic is emphasized. Notice that there is a direction from the top of the tetrachord to the tonic. Direction is what you want in your music. Play around with just those four notes, and end on D. After you do that, try ending your phrases on a different note of that tetrachord. Each one has a different effect: the tonic is the most stable, the note right above the tonic is the least stable, and the other two are somewhere in between.

Now move on to example C. This is the other tetrachord from our scale. Notice that some of these notes are lower than any of the other ones that we've looked at so far. A scale extends infinitely in either direction: you can move the same notes into any octave, and it will still be a part of the same scale. This tetrachord has the opposite behavior of the first one: rather than going down to get to the tonic, it goes up. Listen to how those notes all lead up to the tonic at the top.

In example D., we extend our pitch palette. Instead of four-note tetrachords, we now have five-note pentachords. The rules for pentachords are the same as tetrachords. For C. and D., there is nothing new. Play around with them and see what you think. If you know what you're doing, you can get a lot of mileage out of tetra- and penta-chords.

The opening riff of Anthrax's "I Am The Law" is a basic example of a riff contained entirely within an E minor pentachord.










You can apply all of this to other scales, as well. Let's look at harmonic minor really quickly.






This is the exact same thing as the previous diagram, but instead of C, we have C#. If you ever want to make a harmonic minor scale, just take any natural minor scale and raise the seventh note. If you look at the tetrachords in this scale, B. is the same as it was in the prior example. C., however, is changed. You can hear the kind of effect that this particular tetrachord has. The purpose of harmonic minor is to create a half-step between the seventh note of the scale and the tonic. This produces tension in the seventh note.






This is another scale, melodic minor. Melodic minor is like harmonic minor, but with the sixth note raised. Harmonic minor has a big gap between the sixth and seventh scale degrees, so melodic minor was invented to close that gap.

And, of course, here's the same thing with phrygian and locrian:

http://i619.photobucket.com/albums/tt274/Schecterwhore/Music Theory/D-tetrapenta-Phr.jpg
http://i619.photobucket.com/albums/tt274/Schecterwhore/Music Theory/D-tetrapenta-Loc.jpg

Hope that helped. I'll touch upon pentatonic scales later, unless somebody else wants to do that.


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## Pooluke41 (Sep 3, 2012)

Matt1the3Beast said:


> I know what modes are, what I meant is that Dave Mustaine tends to harmonize out of scale in many layers. He also tends to use notes out of mode, such as his many chromatic riffs such as Wake Up Dead( In which he uses his "spider chords" which is actually just two different bar chords played one after the other utilizing all four fingers (not good at explaining), but yes he does tend to use the Phrygian Mode, Blues Hexatonic, and the Harmonic Minor alot. And when Marty Friedman was Megadeth, he would use many exotic scales such as the Japenese Pentatonic and the Hungarian Gypsy. Hope I cleared things up a little!



I don't think you know who SchecterWhore is.


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## astralsearcher (Sep 5, 2012)

When i was a teenager i found kirk hammets solos off of Master or Ride to be pretty accessible. its a lot of minor scale stuff just played fast but it gets that sound under your fingers a little.


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## Cdub (Sep 5, 2012)

The first guitar solo I ever learned was "unforgiven" by Metallica. It was tabbed out in guitar world or something. I think it's fair to say the whole song is in a minor, so the solo will revolve around a minor pentatonic. That's a good place to start, right? Big bends, dissonant bends... Battery and blackened are the most fun riffage, I'd say. And master of puppets is like sweet child of mine - if your interested in guitar, you'll learn at least half of both.

* just learn every Metallica song you can find a tab for. You will comprehend every most common technique


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## gandalf (Sep 6, 2012)

I would suggest learning Master of Puppets by Metallica or Constant Motion by Dream Theater to get the down strokes going and learning to mte and open correctly. Mustaine uses natural minor a lot so you need to get some basic major and minor scales down, heres a link: Scale Sequence Study


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## Zoosadist (Sep 6, 2012)

Slayer and Metallica use the Phrygian dominant scale quite often, especially in Hammett's solos. Just remember to annoyingly overuse a wah pedal every time you solo to make it sound more authentic.


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## djyngwie (Sep 6, 2012)

Slayer solos rarely use the "correct" scales, though. It's meant to be dissonant. So, while some of those are classics in their own rights, they're not really going to teach you the usual uses of scales.

As for phrygian dominant and Metallica, listen to Whereever I may Roam. Includes the mandatory wah


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## morrowcosom (Sep 6, 2012)

"Alpha Breed" by Psycroptic is a good song to start learning how to mix leads in with your rhythms.


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## Grimbold (Sep 9, 2012)

Pooluke41 said:


> I don't think you know who SchecterWhore is.



this is the most true statement ever put on this forum


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## theleem (Sep 15, 2012)

MasterOfRiff said:


> I have make a list of song that i should learn:
> 
> For arpeggios: Fade to black, Lucretia, good morning black friday, diary of a madman (strange position)
> 
> ...



Dude, here you have a lot of good songs to get you started into learning thrash, just tackle these and you'll have a pretty freaking solid base to start doing some work of your own.


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