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Metal Riffs In The Style Of Metallica

This collection of riffs is meant to help you work on your technique and improve your knowledge of some of the common patterns and ideas used in metal style guitar playing. You will see very similar ideas in a lot of Metallica songs. Begin on an E power cord. Cover the fourth and fifth strings with your first finger, Play the chord then hit the open E string twice. Then play the chord and one open E string. Then play the chord, an open E and the chord again. Notice the accent pattern this makes. You are playing the chord on beat one, and then the off-beat of two, the off beat of three and then the off beat of beat four. The second bar are eighth notes on open E, on beat two your doing a hammer-on to a pull-off from the seventh to the eighth frets, and back to the seventh fret. Beat three is The open E string again then a hammer-pull from the fifth to seventh frets.

Bar three is the same pattern as measure one. The fourth bar is a series of single notes starting on the open E string. Use your second finger on the sixth fret on the sixth string, and your third finger on the seventh fret. Next, play the fifth fret and then the seventh fret on the fifth string. The last three notes here is the open sixth string, then the fifth fret on the fifth string and then the seventh fret on the fifth string. Use alternate picking for this part. The first four bars are played twice through. Notice the repeat sign in the notation.

In measure five play the open low E string twice and then the G power chord on the third fret, do this twice to complete the measure. Bar six is a F# power chord on the second fret. Play this eight times in this measure. Measure seven and eight are a repeat of the previous two bars. Measure nine is the same as measure one. Measure ten is the open low E string eight times. Play these two bars twice.

The last section of this exercise is a fast sixteenth note pattern that starts on the open low E string four times and then the open E power chord. Quickly mute everything to nail the rest on the off beat. Hit and quickly mute the chord again on the up beat of three and the off beat of four. This is a tricky section and will take a little time to get down. A good rule to follow with this style is to use palm muted downstrokes for eighth notes, use alternate picking for the faster rhythms. I recommend that you listen to these songs as well, to get a good feel for how they are playing these parts.

Free Demo Video

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Backing Tracks

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Transcriptions

Every exercise includes a transcription in standard notation as well as guitar tab. The transcriptions are presented online and are also available for download as a PDF for printing or saving to your computer. The transcriptions are available for Paid Members of PracticeTheGuitar.com