December 8, 2010
Heavy Metal Guitar Lessons: Tips For Getting Started
You don't even have to sign up for regular heavy metal guitar lessons if you're interested in learning how to play heavy metal music. Whatever way you decide to go about it, there are a few particularly important facts that you will learn with these lessons. Anyone can learn how to play heavy metal music as long as they are willing to work at it. You can't just pick up any old guitar and expect to be a whiz, and there are a few things that you need to remember to get that heavy metal sound.
First it's important to know that your amplifier will have one of the largest impacts on how your music will sound overall and you need to have enough distortion from your email if you want it to sound right. For heavy metal music you need to make sure that there is enough distortion from the amplifier. Once you have adjusted the settings you then want to focus on your guitar, starting by turning the volume control to ten. The guitar needs to be tuned properly, otherwise the strings may play too high.
You may need to tune your guitar strings down to a full two steps, depending on where they were to start with. Most guitarists will tune from a half a step to two whole steps. Rather than tuning high as you would to play acoustic guitar for instance, for heavy metal music you want it as deep and throbbing as you can get it. You may even want to tune your guitar down two whole steps, and it really all depends on the type of guitar that you have but you can tell by the sound as you go.
The high notes of a chord are rarely used in heavy metal music, so there’s really no point in keeping them on the guitar if you don’t have to. It’s easy to take them off and this is why a lot of the time you see heavy metal guitarists playing a guitar that may look like a bass because it only has four strings, when in actuality the guitarist has simply removed the top couple of strings. In heavy metal music lessons you will quickly see that some of the best heavy metal songs of all time such as Ironman by Black Sabbath and For Whom The Bell Tolls by Metallica never use the B or E chords so there’s really no point to have them left on the guitar. Take a look at songs like Ironman by Black Sabbath or For Whom The Bell Tolls by Metallica and you’ll see that these notes are not used once throughout the entire song in both cases.
The most commonly used in heavy metal music is the Minor Pentatonic scale. This is most similar to the Blues Scale. As long as you’re willing to work at it you can become a fantastic heavy metal guitar player. Even if you just want to play the guitar in your spare time, it can be enjoyable and a great outlet.
Filed under Playing Guitar by VicBils











