How To Arrange a Thrash Metal Song

Hi GMC! Welcome to my new lesson about Metal Guitar Arrangement at the studio! I started working on this lesson because I noticed that we don’t have enough easy thrash lessons in our awesome archive. I started this composition as a group of exercises for beginners combined in a 80’s Trash Metal composition. However you know that there a lot of awesome software out there! When I started to mix this lesson I opened Reason and some other synths to make this piece sound more modern. I added an industrial drum over the original acoustic one and also many FXs and Synths.. What I am trying to show you is how much the same song can change with a different mix and arrangements.

I recorded many guitars to show an example of how you can arrange a metal song at the studio. For example there are 4 guitars in the Chorus parts. You’ll find every guitar transcribed an explained in the video parts and in the guitar pro file. The idea of this lesson is to show you how I work the guitar at the studio to give you some tips for your own compositions. 

In this lesson we have a special guest to explore even in a deeper way how I worked to compose this lesson. This special guest is my brother and Cirse’s bass player called Ziva (Sebastian Leopardi). I asked him to record the bass part of this lesson so you’ll find him at video part 1 playing the lesson up to tempo and slowly.  The idea of this is to give beginner players and composers a complete idea of how to make a song.

This lesson can be divided in four parts: Intro, Main Riff, Chorus or Main Melody, & Coda.  

As I said earlier, there are many different exercises for beginners in this lesson.  We’ll work on these techniques:
-Alternate picking
-Palm Muting (Only Down strokes + alternate picking)
-Pinched Harmonics
-Vibrato

Tuning:
Dropped D

Scales used:
D minor scale
D pentatonic minor + blue note
D Phrygian mode


Ok, I hope that you enjoy the lesson!!

D minor: