A good riff, lick, or solo doesn’t need to be fast and complex.
But there’s much more to metal than that. Yes, we love fast tremolo picking and shredding legato guitar solos. Metal guitar players are not playing difficult things all the timeįor instance, though it’s going to take you thousands of hours of focused practice to even think of playing most of Kirk Hammet’s solos, the intros to some Metallica songs shouldn’t be out of your reach.Ģ. However, if you love Metal and are just a beginner on the guitar you can still get started in the genre because:ġ. Heavy Metal is not an easy genre to play. Would I be able to play those riffs if I managed to locate the notes on the fretboard? It didn’t seem likely. What my favorite guitar players like Tony Iommi and Ritchie Blackmore were doing looked impossible to play and worse still, what I was learning in my guitar lessons – mostly reading standard music notation and a few chords – seemed to have no relationship with what the Gods of Heavy Metal were playing. I added new genres among my favorites along the way, but back then it was just Metal and its close relatives Hard Rock and Punk music. The sole reason I picked up the guitar 25 years ago was to play Heavy Metal. Your very first Heavy Metal guitar lesson
