How to play heavy metal guitar

Heavy metal is a very loud, very aggressive style of music which requires some major guitar skills and fast hands. Beginning guitar players are often drawn to metal cause of its fast, complex, aggressive style. To effectively play heavy metal guitar you´ll need a distortion or an overdrive pedal or something similar to get the heavy metal sound going. Don´t get to caught up in the accessories needed for this, you’re just mastering your skills now, not recording an album requiring perfect sound. Now let’s take a look at some of the basics.

Tuning

Most heavy metal guitar players play in drop D tuning. The reason this is so popular is cause of the extremely heavy sounds you can get from drop tuning your guitar. For this exercise we will use the drop D tuning. To do that, simply place your index finger on the seventh fret on the top E string. Now pluck both the E string and the A string. With the seventh fret pressed, when tuned right these two should sound identical. See the picture below.

Power Chords

If you have never heard about power chords before then this is going to open up a whole new world in your guitar experience. Power chords are extremely easy to learn but a powerful skill none the less. As you can see on the images below, power chords are mostly know in two variations. The first one is mainly used on the top two strings cause of the drop down tuning, while the other one is used on the string below.












Palm Muting

Place the palm of your hand which holds the guitar pick against the guitars bridge while picking the strings. This will result in a kind of “damped” sounds. Try picking open E while palm muting the E string at the same time. Then try palm muting different variation of the two power chords.
After you start feeling confident with you metal skills, try finding tabs to some heavy metal songs you enjoy and try to play them. Don’t go ahead of yourself and go straight for some insanely fast metal riffs. Start with something easy and not too fast and then add more and more songs to your practice list and before you know it you should have mastered the basics of the heavy metal guitar style.

For those interested in mastering the heavy metal play style, take a look at this review of the Burning Metal, Heavy Metal Guitar Lessons.

Guitar bar chords

The ability to play bar chords is one of the most important skill a guitar player can learn. Bar chords give you the ability to play almost every open chord by just sliding your hand up and down the guitar with just some minor finger placement changes here and there. The name bar chords probably come from the fact that you bar all the strings on just one fret. Let´s try it out.

First just place your index finger over all the strings on the third fret. Like on the picture below.

Now try plucking just one string at a time and see how it sounds. If this is your first time it probably won’t sounds all the good at first, just like every other skill you learn you have to practice to get good at it. This is probably going to put some strain on your index finger but you´ll get used to it :). Let´s take a look at the picture below and look at the bar chord version of G.

You can see the open chord version of G on the picture to the left. As strange as it may seem, the sounds from these two variations if the chord G will sound identical to one another. Now if you move the chord up two frets you will have the bar chords version of A. Play around with this for awhile, try moving the bar chord up and down the guitar. When you’re ready, take a look at the picture below.

This is the bar chord version of D. One the picture to the right you see the open chords version of D. now don’t get frustrated if it doesn't sounds perfect right away, this will take some time to master. Your index finger will probably be sore after practicing but you index finger will get stronger with time. With these two bar chords variations, you can play tons of songs or even write your own. Just remember to stay motivated and keep practicing.

Open Guitar Chords

Ok next we are going to take a look at open chords. It may take some time to master but once you do master it, your guitar experience will reach a new level of enjoyment. Let´s take a look at the open chord we will be using in this example.



The chord on the image above is G. We will begin practicing on this one. There are countless other chords available but for now we will just use these three.




Place your fingers on the frets show on the image and do a down stroke using all the strings. If this is your first try then this probably won’t sound so good at first. But don’t let that discourage you, practice makes perfect. When you’re satisfied with sounds of the chord, let’s move on to the next one.

Next up is C. just like before, place your fingers on the right frets and do a down stroke. Keep practicing those two until both begin to sound ok. To worry too much if all the strings don’t sound perfect because that’s not the goal here. The Goal here is to practice the muscles in your fingers, get them used to all the stretching between frets.


Ok as soon as both chords sounds ok try playing one after the other. Switching between chords can be difficult at first but you will get the hang of it in no time. Just remember there is no hurry, take you time and play at your own pace.

After the switching between those two chords start to become more fluid and the D chord to the mix. Once you start feeling more conferable, try adding more chords to the mix. Once you get the hang of this you should be able to start playing some songs.



Just remember to keep practicing and stay motivated, and before you know it you´ll be playing chords with a blindfold. If this all too easy for you I reacommend you check out the Guitar Success Training Course.

Guitar tabs for beginners

Learning to read guitar tabs is an essential skill that every guitar player that is serious about playing should learn. And the good thing about guitar tabs is that it’s probably the easiest method to read guitar notes available. I´m going to show you a few examples below, which will show you just how simple this is.

One the picture below you will see the basic setup of tabs. The 6 horizontal lines represent the guitar string, and the numbers on the lines represent which fret you should place your fingers.

If there is a zero on one the string that means you should place that string open. So to play this you simply play open E, then place your finger on the second fret on the A string, then open E again. Pretty simple stuff.

One the next two pictures you will see tabs that represent chords, first one is G and the second one is C.

The next picture might look complex but don’t be intimidated by the all the numbers, just play at your own pace and as you start to get the hand of it increase the speed.

This is an old exercise I used, simply play the fret until your all the way down the go back up but go backwards now 4 3 2 1 instead of 1 2 3 4. When you reach the top string again move one fret forward and continue. So go down, up, then one fret forward, down, up, one fret forward. You get the idea.

How to tune a guitar

Whenever you pick up a guitar to play you should always check if the guitar is tuned right. If the guitar is out of tune then it won’t matter how good you are its still going to sound bad. There are many different methods to tune a guitar, most noticeable is probably using an electric tuner.

The method we will be using here is a little bit different. First you need to find the E note, which you can most likely find on the internet with a search engine. Once you have the E note your ready to begin. First listen to the E note and then tune the E string (top string) to match the first one. Once that is completed put your index finger on the fifth fret on the E string then plug the E string and then the A string(the second string), now tune the A string after the first string. Then simply repeat the steps always using the fifth fret as reference for the string below. When you reach the B string (second lowest) you will use the fourth fret on the G string for reference. And for the last string we will use the first method, the fifth fret one the B string.

Using the method above you should be able to tune your guitar to perfection without the help from an electronic tuner every time.