Beginner Metal Rhythm Workshop #1

Welcome to the Begrinner Metal Workshop #1 lesson!

This one is dedicated for beginners who are already familiar with necessary playing essentials (usually one step further after mastering chord strumming skills).If you know how to stroke with the pick and how to set up your electric guitar for heavy, distorted tone, then this lesson is for you. It's purpose is to show and teach you some basic tools (techniques)that makes metal sound...like metal. The tone I'm using here is done with free plugins so don't hesitate to copy it unless you have your own tone you like for the purpose.

Make sure to use bridge pickup position. It's recommended to have humbucker pickup - it handles more distortion with less noise and it's much more tight/focused in the midrange.

Proper amount of gain (only as much as necessary) will be crucial to keep things clear and tight. Too much gain will destroy good separation between notes, and will make the whole riffing more blurry. Too much gain can cause less effort from player himself, and will affect the overall profit, that could have been taken from the lesson. Learn the roots of metal guitar playing, inspired by 90's metal bands, like Pantera, Megadeth and Metallica.

Gear used (in order of connection chain placement):

1. Custom "Bloody Mary" guitar with EMG 81/H/89 pickups
2. Behringer MIC100 tube preamp (-20db switch on, gain and out knobs about 50%)
3. Presonus Inspire 1394 firewire audio interface (input gain 25%)
4. Poulin Legion plug-in:
- Channel - green
- Mode - Lead
- All knobs (eq, drive, input etc.) - 50%
5. Kefir impulse loader (mix 100%)
6. Impulse - Catharsis 2off_preshigh
7. Cubase 7.5 equalizer:
- 1.6 kHz -4dB Q=0.6
- 4.46 kHz - 4,9 dB Q=9.3
- 11.47 kHz - 3.5 dB Q=2.5 Low Pass II mode

Tuning - Standard E

Backing track progression:

4/4 Em | Em | Em | Em | C/E | C/E | C/E | C/E |
Em | Em | Em | Em | C | C | A6 | Bbmaj7#5sus |

4/4 B5 | F5 | D#5 C5 | Bdim |
E5 | A5 | Bb | E5|
B5 | F#m7| F | E5b |
E5b | E5b | Bb5 | Bb5 E5 ||


Tempo: Main song tempo is 138 bpm. There are backing tracks available at 50, 70, 90, 110, 125 and 138 bpm.

Time signature: 4/4

Scales used in this lesson:

E minor scale




E blues scale