Metallica For Intermediates

Hi GMC!

Welcome to my new intermediate series based on the style of most popular metal bands ever. In this series I will share original compositions specially composed to help intermediate students to improve their guitar playing in an entertaining way. I remember being a beginner/intermediate player and getting bored soon with repetitive exercises. That’s why I'm presenting these real music lessons with the addition of theory concepts that help you to understand what it’s happening and how I composed it. Ok friends! I hope that you enjoy this journey.

Music Style:
Metallica is the most popular Thrash Metal band ever. They practically created this style and took it to the masses. They have many albums, and some of them are very different (Check “Load” and compare it with “Master of Puppets”). In this lesson I based the most powerful parts of their old school mid tempo songs like “Seek & Destroy” and “For whom the bell tolls” and also added a later, softer interlude that can be found similar in their ballads like “One”, “Fade to black” but also in the middle of the song “Master Of Puppets”.

Tonality, Chord Progression & Scales:
This tune is in A minor tonality and I used the most used scales in Thrash metal to compose the riffs and different parts: A minor scale, A blues scale, Chromatic scale and Phrygian mode. I will give you information about each of these scales in the slow videos and you will also find some interesting homework in the last slow video’s text.

Techniques:
This is mostly a rhythm lesson so we will use palm muting, which means that you mute a bit the strings with the palm of your right hand to get that thrash riffing sound featuring only downstrokes (which means that you only play with your pick in a downward direction) but also vibrato, alternate picking and legato. I will mark when each technique is used and suggest lessons that can help you master them.

Sound:
I used my Pod HD 500 to create a tone based on Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Amp and Head.
The drums have been recorded using SSD 3.5 and the bass with Trillian.

Click HERE if you want to download the patch used on this lesson for Pod HD 500.

Tuning: standard EADGBE tuning

Tempo: 140 BPM