Fast Guitar Picking in Heavy Metal

It's worth pointing out that although I've put fast guitar picking under the heavy metal category, it's a general lead technique. The heavy metal genre uses fast picking techniques to their extremes, so it's a useful genre to work with for building endurance and timing.

In this lesson, we're first looking at fast guitar picking commonly heard in thrash metal rhythm guitar. Some people call it scratch guitar because of its harsh, cutting sound.

If you're more interested in developing fast picking for general lead guitar purposes, try starting with the alternate picking lesson.

Scratch guitar is used as a rhythmic tool to add appropriate texture to more violent and quicker guitar riffs. It requires accurate alternate picking (a technique also used in fast lead guitar) and you need to master alternate picking to execute fast guitar picking. Let's get started...

Alternate picking is simply the repeated down-up motion of your plectrum over one string, one pick per note. Now, I really don't want to patronise, but are you holding your pick correctly?

You want to hold the pick firmly, and grip it more towards the point so there's less pick to obstruct the movement over the string. Your index finger should almost cross downwards behind your thumb because creating an "O" with your thumb and index gives more stability for this type of playing.

For fast guitar picking you are best off using a thinner plectrum like a 0.6mm - this allows it to flex more easily over the string. A less flexible pick will a) wear out your strings unnecessarily quick and b) not move as smoothly over the string.

If you're just getting into this stuff, you should practise this movement regularly. Start on the fattest string, don't fret it, just play it open, up and down, slowly at first, then gradually build up your speed but don't lose the rhythm of that 1-2-3-4 1-2-3-4, up-down-up-down etc.

Head over to the Palm Mute Guitar lesson page if you need to learn palm muting or don't know what the hell it is.

So, using the same positioning as for palm muting your going to be applying alternate picking to allow for much faster rhythmic playing. Now you have upstrokes to fill in the gaps between the downstroke beats meaning you can play double or triple the speed.

Ok, try turning up the gain on your amp to get more of a rock/metal tone and play the sound clip below...

>> Click to hear

A simple down-up-down-up etc. riff on the low E string.

This is really good rhythmic exercise for your picking hand at first, not too fast, but enough to keep your alternate picking in constant, accurate, smooth motion which is more important than blinding speed at this stage.

You should also practice this same action on the A string above. Beginners especially find the A, D and skinnier strings harder to alternate pick at first as you need to keep your picking "window" tight to avoid hitting strings above and below.

The example above is the essence of that "machine gun" sound common in 80's and 90s thrash metal - bursts of rhythmic, alternate picking.

Now, I'm aware of the fact I'm going to lose some of my learning audience here because of the lame analogy I've weaved through this.

The next step is to look at adding more complex rhythm structures to our machine gunning, so we're going to...uh...reload. The "reload" is when you unmute the strings inbetween the palm muted alternate picking blasts...

In the previous examples we've been palm muting, but now we're going to do exactly the same thing but without the muting. All this means is you should retreat your picking hand's palm back over the bridge so it's not touching any strings. It may still need the stability of resting on the bridge, but when you remove the palm muting you get this great chainsawing effect popularized by bands such as Slayer in the early 80's.

Simple stuff - take a listen...

>> Click to hear

This style of rhythm guitar is often used in metal to back the lead guitarist's solo as it provides an undertone harmony. This particular example is very typical of a Slayer riff (who eat fast guitar picking for breakfast).

Rhythm is not as important here as the drone kind of disguises the rhythmic scratching sounds that palm muting highlights, however, you still have to change note/fret at the right time which I'm sure you will gain a natural sense for if not now, soon.

Ok, so we've learned some of the fundamentals of heavy metal rhythm guitar - palm muted machine gun riffs, scratch rhythms and accurate alternate picking.

Let's put all these elements together into a musical phrase. Look over the tab below and see if you can come up with a good rhythm for it. Remember, the black squares that follow on from the "pm" mean you're using that scratch guitar/machine gunning technique. The dots underneath the actual powerchord shapes signify just strumming that chord.

>> Click to hear

Hope you've enjoyed this lesson - heavy metal and thrash are really good for building your speed and strength with fast guitar picking whether you like the genre or not. For more complex thrash rhythm guitar exercises, visit the thrash guitar lesson here.

Alternatively, head back to the heavy metal page or return home and choose another genre/area of guitar to learn from the menu at the top left of this page. There's hours of lessons!

See you soon... 

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