Behind every great heavy metal song there’s a great guitar riff or rhythm figure. Whether you’re cranking old-school Cream-Zep-Purple-Sabbath tones through vintage plexi Marshalls, or pumping out ultra-hi-gain, rectified, scooped-mid Metallica-style mayhem, it’s usually the riff that is memorable, not the solo. With that in mind, this metal rhythm guitar primer was designed to provide some cool tools, tips, and tricks you can use to forge your own fiery riffs.
As with any stylistic analysis, we begin by examining recurring patterns, motifs, techniques, etc., and then organize them into a method of sorts. The elemental table of metal music includes power chords built from perfect fourth and fifth intervals, muscular single-note and partial chord riffs, galloping and stuttering rhythms, and yes, even tender moments framed by gently arpeggiated chordal figures.
And consider this: If rock and roll was birthed from the blues, then heavy metal is the offspring of both. How so?
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
Scores of well-known metal riffs have their origins in the blues scale, partially because its root-b3-4-b5-5-b7 formula lends itself well to parallel (i.e. equally spaced) harmonies, especially fourth and fifth intervals, the main ingredients in power chords. EXAMPLE 1A shows an A blues scale (A, C, D, Eb, E, and G) harmonized in parallel fifths. Think of it as an A blues power-chord scale, and try out a few of your own stock blues licks in fifths.
Inverting these fifths, by moving the bottom note up one octave, transforms EXAMPLE 1A’s power chords into EXAMPLE 1B’s easy-to-play, one-finger, double stopped parallel fourths, while EXAMPLE 1C offers a descending, octave-lower version of the same chord scale. Get to know them.
LICK IN A BOX
Planting your fret hand in fifth position (index finger