Ok, so you want to throw away your cardboard guitar and thrash out some real Heavy Metal music. Right, you're going to need an electric guitar, a big powerful amplifier, and above all, Metal Guitar Lessons!
Lessons? Yes, lessons. Because it might look like Dave Murray just hammers his guitar, but there's 30 years of experience gone into making the Iron Maiden sound. If you want to play like Metallica or Judas Priest, you have a lot to learn.
Metal Guitar has bred it's own techniques and styles, you don't need to learn how to quietly strum chords, but you do need to know how to do hammer-ons and pull-offs, and do it with the hard fast beat that Metal music demands. Metal Guitar Lessons place the emphasis from the outset on the special techniques that are fundamental to Heavy Metal music. Some Metal riffs can seem impossible to play, unless you know all the little tricks that Metal guitarists have invented over the years.
Metal guitar uses a lot of special fingering techniques, using both the right and left hands. Not only do you need to learn to play them, if you want to learn all the famous tracks then you'll need to learn how to read and write them as well. Traditional music scores are pretty useless for explaining how a heavy metal guitar note is to be played, guitarists have developed their own system of notation for Rock Guitar called TAB. This type of notation shows the way to play the note as well as which note. Unlike traditional music scores it doesn't include timing, being a modern system it assumes the player can listen to a recorded track to understand the speed.
TAB notation is easier to read than other music notations. Invented just for the guitar, it shows the 6 strings and the fret numbers, learning from the outset using TAB notation is quicker than traditional techniques.
Metal guitarists hammer out power chords like machine guns, they're not superhuman, there's a trick. The classic Metal sound relies heavily on sets of chords that can be easily played in quick succession, sometimes relying on unusual fingering for fast changes from one chord to another. To get the chords out faster they dampen the strings with the palms of their hand. It's no good learning traditional guitar playing techniques, to pump Heavy Metal you need Metal Guitar Lessons.
Metal Guitar is hard on the hands, playing the guitar always requires agile fingers, Metal Guitar needs sheer brute force as well. It's very useful to have exercises designed to work out your fingers and build strength and resistance in the right places.
In any sort of music the instrument is important, but with Metal guitar the effects pedals and the amplifiers play a big part in making the heavy metal sound. Metal Guitar lessons will teach you all about the different types of equipment guitarists use, it's essential if you want to create the same unique styles of the big Metal bands. Using the right guitar is important, but you need to know when to use which pickup, how to use your tremolo bar properly, and how to use the gain control to regulate the sustain and overdrive.
Metal bands might be noted for the big guitar solos, but it's the drummer who calls the shots on the speed. There's no conductor in a metal band, you have to learn to listen to the other instruments and play in time with them. It's not some magical harmony, Heavy Metal bands have developed their skills to allow them to thrash out their music at high speed all in time with each other. Metal Guitar lesson put a lot of emphasis on band playing, you'll also need specially recorded jamming sessions that allow you to practice playing along with other instruments, adapting your speed to theirs.
Playing Heavy Metal guitar is a 100 times more satisfying than playing an air guitar, but a 1000 times more difficult! It's no good just learning how to play an ordinary guitar and then try to play it harder and faster, Heavy Metal has it's own special techniques and if heavy metal is what you want to play, then you're best off starting with Metal Guitar lessons from the outset.
For information on where you can find the best online metal guitar lesson resources you need to take a look at http://www.online-guitar.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment