Metal Guitar Lessons - Learning the Guitar With Heavy Metal Music

Although heavy metal is distinctive as a genre of music, it's also known for having numerous sub-genres (and in some cases, sub-sub-genres!). In particular, many of these sub-genres play out their differences in the guitar parts.

As you progress in your guitar lessons, it can be fun to explore the varying elements in these styles. Below we'll go over a few of the most well-known kinds of metal.

Classic Metal - Originally, this was the only kind of metal! Bands like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest really helped to define metal as its own kind of music. Although influenced by blues and psychedelic rock, early heavy metal was defined by distorted guitar sounds, gruff, heavy vocals, and complex dual guitar work. It's a great genre to explore as a student of the guitar, as it provides numerous classic and popular songs to explore.

Thrash - The key element of thrash metal is SPEED! Thrash music is known for being incredibly fast paced, and therefore might not be the best choice for beginner musicians. Look for bands like Metallica, Megadeth and Testament for great thrash songs.

Power Metal - Although it grew out of early heavy metal, power metal now has its own distinctive sound. Many elements are separate from the guitar, including high pitched vocals, double bass drumming, and fantasy lyrics. However, there's still plenty to offer for the guitar. Chord changes are somewhat less frequent compared to other styles of metal, although complexity is far from lacking in this genre due to fast guitar solos. Power metal is a great place to look for long, exciting guitar solos that are at times missing from other kinds of music.

Extreme Metal - Somewhat of a catch-all of term for non-traditional styles like death metal, black metal, and doom metal. Every element of metal sees exaggeration in these kinds of music. It might be the slow, dirge-like sound in doom metal, or the highly distorted melodies in death metal. Although not for everyone, excellent musicianship can be found in this kind of music.

There are many more styles of metal music to be found! As you progress in your guitar lessons, a great way to add some variation to practicing chords and scales is studying and learning popular metal songs.

Constantine Walker is a life-long metal fan and musician. He wants to make learning to play music as fun as possible!

Metal Guitar Lessons

Learn Heavy Metal

Learning How to Sing Or Play Music

Music is a very strong medium. It is a universal language. Whether you sing, play or just listen to music, it is enjoyed by everyone. People disagree on genres and types of music, but one thing everyone can agree on is a love of music.

You may prefer to listen to Country music, Gospel may be my favorite, another may insist on Rock and Roll music but even in these mainstream genres there are many sub divisions. Take Rock and Roll for instance, when you say Rock and Roll music, you're including many different styles and types of Rock and Roll music. Motown, Metal, Punk, Pop all of these styles differ, and the way you play and sing these types of music is going to be unique.

When you ponder Gospel music, there is Country Gospel, Bluegrass Gospel, Southern Gospel and Contemporary Gospel. There is Choir singing, quartet singing, solos, duets and trios, and the way you sing and play each subdivision is going to different.

Accompaniment is another thing; do you to use just piano, a guitar, a 4 piece band, a full orchestra or just simply a cappella when you sing and play music?

All of these need to be taken into consideration when you are choosing an instrument to play or deciding to sing. It would be a great drawback to take a classically trained guitar player and put them into a bluegrass band. In the same respect, you would be unfair to a banjo picker to assume he could play a punk rock or death metal rock and roll song.

The same holds true for singers and singing as well. A country music singer could cross over to the genre of southern gospel music, but a gospel singer would have great difficulty effectively singing a punk rock song.

Some genres of music have close related ties and allow crossover both in singing and playing, other styles require that fundamental essentials be learned and practiced.

So, one of the first things you must determine when selecting to learn to sing or play music, is what style or genre of music should you concentrate on first. This really should be determined by what style or type of music that you listen to. If you prefer heavy metal music, you definitely would not be satisfied or even interested in learning to pick bluegrass style guitar. If you enjoy classical opera it would not be in your best interest to grab a fiddle and try to learn how to play The Orange Blossom Special.

To keep your attention, you should choose a style that fits your preference. If you have been raised in Church all of your life and prefer listening to Gospel Music you would find punk rock offensive. If Death metal is your gig then Gospel music is not going to appeal to you.

If you are going to learn to sing and play an instrument, if you are going to stick with it, it is imperative that you choose to learn a style of music that appeals to you individually.

Clint Kerns is the director of the Concord Baptist Church Revival Choir, the choir website is http://www.ChurchChoirMusic.com If you are interested in learning to sing or improving your singing, I recommend http://www.SingPlayMusic.com [http://www.singplaymusic.com/h1/track.php?kw=ezine]