hey there, if anyone can help me please do. i love love love death metal, and im decent on guitar, but i just cant write any death metal riffs...everything i write sounds like that whole new euro-metal breakdown stuff.

i print out and play tabs, but there are no tabs for newer bands like wormed, goratory, devourment etc...just death, obituary, carcass and the like so anything i DO write sounds like 1997.

i bought this book, the ultimate guitarist, which is really good i hear, but dont know where to start. what scales/modes/tones/chords should i use for death metal? and my speed is decent, but i can always get faster. and how do i increase accuracy? any special techniques or just practice like no tomorrow?

im stuck in a rut. anyonw who can help please do, i appreciate it alot.

-xtomx

xeatadickx said:

what's wrong with sounding like 1997? i like obituary much more than wormed.
harmonic minor and chromatic scales are the mostly used. a good warm up is to just go up and down the chromatic scale. When you strech your finger on the next string stretch your index finger going up the scale and stretch your pinky going down, that way your hand doesnt fall out of position. get a metranome and set a temo you're used to and start off with quater notes, then eights notes, then triplets, then sixteenth. then speed up the tempo. do this for 30 min every day and you'll gain alot of speed. try picking two notes of the scale, up and down, and do the same thing. try to make sure you're doing alternate picking while praticing, pick down the string then up then down then up etc etc.. it gets confusing but it helps out ALOT when you get good at speed picking.
Pinch squeals are my favorite part about metal guitar playing. pinch your thumb over the pick on your right hand to get a harmonic at the bottom of your string, that way you can use any note to get a nice squeal you want. its hard at first, but like anything with guitar, its just lots of pratice.

other than speed picking scales, metal is mostly power chords, so just keep on praticing them. make sure you're using your index and ring finger, NOT your pinky to hold down the 5th.
and pratice ever day EVERY DAY. being cosistant is the most important part.

George said:

Ok, I have some things to add to what George said, and somethings to take away. First off, he suggested some nice scales for death metal, but to tell you the truth, just go through that whole fucking book man. Do it all. Don't select only certain things (except of course really basic shit that you know already). What he said about gaining speed is completely true. Get a metronome!!!! Really, they work wonders. As far as pinch harmonics, dont get too carried away. You don't want to find yourself practicing those more than you practice anything else. They are not that important, nor are they essential to any kind of music, and they are overused horribly. I really like the way people such as Zakk Wylde and K.K. Downing/Glenn Tipton use them, but bands such as Killswitch Engage just use the same exact one over and over again in a song and it sounds shitty. That is all, enjoy!

my thanks goes out to both of you, i really appreciate it. once i get a little bit o cash im gonna pick up a metronome. or steal on from school. whichever opportunity arises first.

and i agree george about the whole "old school" sound...i looooooove death (chuck is god), obituary, autopsy, carcass, morbid angel etc etc etc, its just that i really wanna learn how spice things up...broken chords, note runs, slams etc. its just a big hurdle because like i said, its near impossible to find tabs of newer bands. and someone like me cant just pop in a hate eternal show in the vcr and copy rutan's moves. i wish i could, but itll be a while, haha.

but yeah, thanks for all the info, bros. hopefully ill be able to put it to good use \m/

yo, where do you live. if your close to Framingham area then let me know cause you can come down and I'll show you some shit. If not then do what the other guys said and buy metronome. It is the best investment I've made. I practice my down picking to it for 45 minutes a night. start off on anything under 108 that you comfortable at and try to work up to 132. 132 is the speed that Nile, Origin, and new Vital Remains use most of the time. If you can get power chords at that speed then your all set.

ill shit al! i really dont know where the fuck framingham is. but if it means learning some stuff from you then ill find it for sure, even if it kills me.

Framingham is right off the Mass Pike between Worcester and Boston (closer to Boston).
I'd link you to my favorite site for metal tabs but it's going through server changes right now. Once it's back up I'll link you up, hopefully you'll find something fairly helpful on it.

Practice, practice, practice. Give your fingers a good thorough stretch before you play and scale the next with different finger patters and picking patterns. Like this:
--------------------------1234321--------------------------
---------------------1234---------4321---------------------
----------------1234-------------------4321----------------
-----------1234-----------------------------4321-----------
------1234---------------------------------------4321------
-1234-------------------------------------------------4321-
Then move it up a fret, rinse and repeat.
All down-picking, all up-picking, down-up, up-down. And try it without some of the notes: 124, 134, 14, 234, etc. Do it at a comfortable speed and concentrate on steadiness. Speed will come in time.

thats a chromatic scales except you're missing a note.
when you go up the scale strech your index finger up a fret so you get every half step, except from the g to b string, you dont have to strech. thats what i was talking about in my last post.

i personally think those finger exercises, like 1342, 4231, etc are a waste of time. its much more pratical to just learn the scale than exercises like that, cause you cant use anything like that in a song. chromatic are harmonic minor are the basic metal scales. you can shred any scale you want, but those work best.

The minor scale, bro......learn the minor scale in it's entirety. It will lead you to great creative heights.

I just think of it as an endurance exercise. But you reminded me of other ways to do the run: 125 (biggest pain in the ass), 135, 145. Fun stuff.

if you REALLY want to know your shit, learn all the forms of the major scales. the major scales are the building blocks of theory. if you learn the major scales, even though they're really campy sounding, you'll start seeing how the other scales play out. you'll start seeing that all scales are just raised and lowered major scales and such. but that might be too much theory for you. the nice thing about guitar is you dont have to know shit about anything to be a great guitarist. anybody can play guitar if you give them enough time.

George said:

Every instrument is like this dude.

George said:

You certainly can use shit like that in a song! As a matter of fact, you can pretty much play a scale and it is a song. Let's look at the first shape of the blues scale in the key of A (this would be the same as the first shape of the pentatonic scale in the key of A except with you add the D#):

------------------------------------------5--8---
-----------------------------------5--8----------
-------------------------5--7--8-----------------
------------------5--7---------------------------
--------5--6--7----------------------------------
-5--8--------------------------------------------

Now, let's look at Heartbreaker by Led Zeppelin:

---------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------
------------5--6-7--------------5--6-7-----------------------
-3---5--8----------3---55558-----------3--------------------

As you can see, this is simply the first 5 notes of the blues scale, followed by the 6th (and last) note an octave lower. Therefore, Mr. Page is just playing a blues scale in the key of A.

It's too bad Zeppelin is boring.

Pinch harmonics are sick, the more over used the better

pinch harmonics are the gbest thing about metal ghuitar

im druink on chakmpaine

mky frfiend is wearing a silly hat

DeOdiumMortis said:

Fuck you, Zeppelin rules.

i can do them in my sleep


xPaulBLAHBLAHx said:

baneofexistence said:

now try keeping in time with me.

menstrual_sweatpants_disco said:

Ok, now write 15 minutes of music for each of the following instruments:
1st Violin
2nd Violin
3rd Violin
1st Viola
2nd Viola
3rd Viola
Cello
Bass
1st Cornet
2nd Cornet
3rd Cornet
4th Cornet
1st French Horn
2nd French Horn
1st Clarinet
2nd Clarinet
1st Flute
2nd Flute
Oboe
Bassoon
Snare Drum
Bass Drum
Timpani
Cymbals

Fuck you, ass.

no you follow me

menstrual_sweatpants_disco said:

hey check this out...fuck books unless you already possess the knowledge of heavy guitar riffs, and where they should and shouldnt fit together...books are great for learning scales, but you will never learn to be creative from a book, you can play scales all day long and sound like some shredding scalemaster, but the second you bust into your rhythm riff, and its a warmed over downtuned korn riff, or worse, an overplayed, plain jane, metal riff that every crappy metal band has a variation of, youre gonna sound just like every other shitty garage 'death' metal band. practice, think about your riff placement, write music, and not some revamped riff, and it will come to you. dont expect to learn it fast, this music takes years of practice to perfect...(btw, I, am in no way, saying im some metal guru, i just write good riffs)

powerkok said:

YAY

powerkok said:

hey check this out...fuck books unless you already possess the knowledge of heavy guitar riffs, and where they should and shouldnt fit together...books are great for learning scales, but you will never learn to be creative from a book, you can play scales all day long and sound like some shredding scalemaster, but the second you bust into your rhythm riff, and its a warmed over downtuned korn riff, or worse, an overplayed, plain jane, metal riff that every crappy metal band has a variation of, youre gonna sound just like every other shitty garage 'death' metal band. practice, think about your riff placement, write music, and not some revamped riff, and it will come to you. dont expect to learn it fast, this music takes years of practice to perfect...(btw, I, am in no way, saying im some metal guru, i just write good riffs)

ya, i don't know any scales at all actually. I'm not saying that our music is that complex or good or anything but I like well thought out riffing over playing in the right scale. I would rather write something original. I'm not saying that doing the scales are bad, mabye its just my lack of knowledge in the scales that keep me from liking the idea of using them but I gotten by fine without them.

retzam said:

I have no idea what you're talking about.

menstrual_sweatpants_disco said:

Haha, I was being an asshole, pointing out that there are much better musicians than those who can play fast pinch harmonics on guitar.