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Archive for the ‘Heavy Metal Guitar’ Category

Learning guitar solos by ear  is hard work.  I remember many years ago, a friend of mine managed to secure a copy of Ritchie Blackmore's guitar solo to Smoke On the  Water slowed down to half space.  Suddenly we could hear how clean his runs were and how many notes he was actually playing.

I still love playing that solo note for note because it was the first real guitar solo that I ever  learned and the great thing was that it taught me so much about phrasing, light and shade and what notes not to play.  And I have to say that without being able to listen to the guitar solo at half pace I would never have attempted to study it the way I did.

Fast forward a quarter of a century or so and learning guitar solos is still a challenging and time consuming process – but technology has zoomed way past whatever reel to reel tape system my friend accessed to get that solo slowed down.

A great piece of software on the market is the recently updated Riffmaster Pro.

Riffmaster Pro saves hours of time and frustration by instantly enabling you to

• Slow down music to a pace you can play Without changing the pitch
• slow down Mp3, slow down Wav,wma,Mp4 , Ogg Vorbis and AFF files directly from your computer
• play any Riff or phrase over and over
• Zoom right into the wave allowing  You to find the exact phrase you want to work on(down to the note)
•  Save your own user settings
• Slow down an entire song so you can play along at your pace.
• Change the key of a music file for convenience
• Rip audio directly off a cd and save as mp3 or wav.
• Save a slowed down loop for training purposes
• Transcribe music of any song (tab or transcribe what you hear)

The benefits of Riffmaster Pro are simply awesome.

• You can master ANY Guitar solo faster than ever before
• You can master Any Guitar Riff faster ever before
• You can master the Chords To Any Song faster than ever before
• You can build and maintain Amazing speed of Any solo or riff
• You can master difficult phrasing like never before
• You can master any guitar solo, lick or riff Note for Note.
• You can learn the lyrics to Any song quickly
• You will discover the Magic of “Playing By Ear”
• You will learn any song Fast
• You can transcribe music of any song FAST

Riffmaster Pro is the Perfect Speed & Ear Training tool for all musicians  -from raw beginners to advanced.  I have bought this for myself – simply as a teaching tool to help me quickly teach students their favorite riffs, solos and tunes.

This is the shortcut to playing good quality guitar solos – slow down guitar solos learn them and increase the speed to full tempo as you master the solo.

I highly recommend Riffmasterpro

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Heavy metal riffs are the basis of most of the great heavy metal songs and in most instances are reasonably easy to get a handle on.

Heavy metal evolved out of the blues and many riffs draw heavily upon the blues or pentatonic scales.  If you spend a little time to learn and master these basic components of guitar playing, you will find that you will be able to figure out many guitar riffs .  These scales are not difficult to master and if you focus upon training your fingers and ears to become proficient with them you have taken big steps towards being a capable all round guitar player.

Some of the earliest Heavy Metal guitar riffs put together by pioneers like Tony Iommi and Ritchie Blackmore pretty much pointed the way for all Heavy Metal players.  Classic tracks like Smoke On the Water, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Speed King and Paranoid  all contain the essential elements of a great riff and to my mind are essential listening for all prospective guitar players.

None of these riffs are particularly difficult  and Smoke On The Water and Paranoid are perhaps two of the simplest straight forward songs but their brilliance lies within their simplicity (With the exception of Blackmore's solo in Smoke which is simply outstanding).  Both tunes make great studies and the riffs are easy enough to master.  Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Speed King are a little more difficult structurally containing multiple riffs and phrases within the tunes,but the basic riffs contained within these songs again are easy enough to get a handle on.

Once you have several heavy metal riffs mastered you can begin to work out heaps as many patterns are similar.

If you want to progress further quicker, a great resource I found is this Heavy Metal Guitar guide written by a heavy metal player for heavy metal players

Technorati Tags: Brilliance, Guitar Guide, Guitar Player, Guitar Players, Guitar Riffs, Guitar Scales, Heaps, Heavy Metal, Heavy Metal Guitar, Heavy Metal Riffs, Instances, Little Time, Metal Riffs, Metal Songs, Pentatonic scales, Pioneers, Riff, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Simplicity, Smoke On The Water, Speed King, Tony Iommi

Heavy metal (well, Hard Rock in any case) inspired me to pick up the guitar and start thrashing away, learning the riffs to such classics as Paranoid, Smoke On The Water and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

At a base line level learning Heavy Metal is easy – its all power chords, bass notes and the occasional splintering fourths sequence thrown in  -Smoke On The Water -  is played in fourths (as most of Blackmore's famous riffs were) not fifths like every kid in every guitar shop plays.  But to master heavy metal guitar playing is no mean feat.  The virtuosity of players like Kirk Hammet, Eddie Van Halen and Yngwie Malsteem has raised the bar and it has to be said that fans demand a very high level of musicianship.

Pioneering Heavy Metal bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath drew heavily upon a broad range of musical influences including  jazz, blues, classical and eastern music (Zeppelin's In the Evening and Rainbow's Stargazer spring immediately to mind) and todays players have pushed the envelope even further.

As with anything, a sound foundation is required to play Heavy metal properly.  I would recommend a solid grounding and knowledge of basic chords, before learning how to play blues guitar, as Heavy metal is often simply the blues turned up very loud with distortion.
This basic knowledge will give you a solid grounding before progressing further with  Heavy Metal guitar.  Once you have the basics, you can progress to more difficult lessons.  There are some great guitar lessons for Heavy Metal guitar available at guitar tricks,alternatively, there are some great Heavy metal guitar lessons  through the following sites

• Guitar Burning Speed- the ultimate Shred Guitar Course
• Burning Metal the fundamentals of guitar from beginner to advanced

Each course is priced quite reasonably and will help you on the road to learning Heavy Guitar.
 
 

Technorati Tags: Basic Chords, Bass Notes, Black Sabbath, Eastern Music, Eddie Van Halen, Great Guitar, Guitar Course, Guitar Lessons, Guitar Shop, guitar tricks, Heavy Metal Bands, Heavy Metal Guitar, Kirk Hammet, Musical Influences, Occassional, Power Chords, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Shred Guitar, Smoke On The Water, Sound Foundation, Yngwie Malsteem