You know my sloppy-ass indie-hipster guitar stylings.

Let's say I wanted to learn how to shred up some metal style riffs (both rhythm chugga chugga and lead weedly weedly), what songs/bands/exercises would you suggest I look into?

I've been in a heavy mood recently, and want to make some noise.

Edit: There is a reason for this, without getting into too much detail I was approached with a project that might include a "metal" element that would require some decent riffage.

Well, I cut my teeth on Death songs. Tune your guitar a step down and download some of their discog, see what you might want to learn?

Welp, you should go listen to the song Wolverine Blues by Entombed. That is about all the advice I am worthy of.

Try recording a chuggy Dropped D breakdown @ 152 bpm. Curious too see what you come up with.

I think he wants to build skills, not find shortcuts around them.

If I drop, I drop to D standard. :mexican:

I'll see if I can cut something tonight.

Will do.

I just wanna hear a Br00talz devin breakdoan.

Thick framed glasses breakdown.

The best kind of break downs.

Any Death albums I should start with specifically or just dive into 'em?

Maybe Symbolic.

I know it's nowhere near as hip as anything anyone else would suggest, but the chromatic riff from the Master Of Puppets intro. All downpicking, I think 208 BPM? (it's been years; eighth notes at whatever tempo you count it as. Might be up as high as 220.) and it is as fine a finger exercise as one could ask for.

Megadeth's Holy Wars main riff or the whole of At The Gates' Slaughter Of The Soul (the song, not the record... though the record isn't a bad workout by any means) for your alternate picking at even faster tempos. Watch for the time changes in the latter. There's some oddball stuff in there. And again, if we're talking time changes and old thrashy things, and I mentioned Metallica, Blackened. The whole thing. Main riff's in 7; the fill at the end of said hates you coming back into the start of the riff, sorry 'bout it.

Also: Meshuggah- Bleed, and Iced Earth- The Coming Curse, just because I hate your pick hand and want you to suffer playing syncopated 16ths at those tempi.

Ah yes, these will do just fine.


I am gonna try to run a few of these tonight, and try to record something just to show you guys what I am working with metal-wise.

They're pretty accessible songs as a whole and are excellent riffs- and make good picking practice. I can stumble through them with my hamfisted technique and not make a terrible hash of it which I guess says something. Suggested for precisely those reasons- they sound like picking exercise riffs, but you won't hate yourself too much for playing them repeatedly and you don't really have to dive into the middle of anything either. Also, there's totally solid transcriptions out there and have been forever; I remember the At The Gates site used to have tab for everything written out by one of their guitarists- he would know, wouldn't he?- and the others have been published for over twenty years now.

I'd say my picking technique is probably my weakest point.

I also just tuned my Jazzmaster down to D standard and remembered I hadn't changed the strings from the stock 9's or 10's. Like playing spaghetti ...


So whenever I can make my way over to the ol' shop to buy some 11's, I'm gonna start teh chugga-chugga.

That may help. This from the asswhole who uses 10-52 or 11s in standard depending on my mood. For B-tuned stuff I used 12-56 on 24.75" scale just 'cause it was the biggest gauge I could readily buy at the store.

The first two I mentioned (Metallica and Megadeth) are in plain old standard E, and the Metallica one especially is such an exercise riff it'll sound fine tuned wherever.

You get extra points in my book for doing this on a Jazzmaster. Even more if you do this on stage at some point.

I wonder if I can tune my Talman to B without too much flub. I am kind of digging Slaughter of the Soul right now ...


I'm going to tune the JM back to standard and fuck around with Master of Puppets, might post some results later today.

Do you have an acoustic sitting around? Play all the metal you've learned on that, including any shredly lead bits. (I don't think we've covered that yet in the thread...) This will clean you up, like a lot a lot. I have awkward, bad technique, but I am not sloppy and I pick at a consistent velocity- very hard- mostly because of this. The guitarist in the metal project I occasionally bass for- whose picking technique destroys that of everyone else I know in person- will attest to the efficacy of this. It will un-fuck your picking pretty well if you keep at it and have any desire to sound not-horrible.

The metal stuff is at the very least useful to familiarize yourself with, even if it's not otherwise a part of what you do as a guitarist, if only for what it will do to clean up your picking. And it's a lot more relevant to rock styles than jazz- which will clean up things too- is, especially the rhythm work. (Yeah, the chord vocabulary's a lot more limited, but seriously...)

What's it (the Talman) strung with and what's the scale length? Re: the Jazzmaster, if it's still the stock strings I'm guessing 9s; 10s would at least be passable in D I think? (or is that short scale?)

Slaughter Of The Soul is a spiffy riff. It's pretty well alternate picking the whole way through; I suppose the tremolo picking sections count too. The bridge after the solo could probably be done all downpicking if you wanted to work that in there. Helps that it's a catchy song, too; it's funny picking metal apart and finding the hidden pop songs in it.