Intro to Metal and power chords

Welcome to the Metal Section!

We've made it to the metal section. This is the part where we're going to start rocking out in this course.

Setting Up Your Gear

• Amp Settings:
  • If you can, and if your amp has it, use lots of distortion.
  • Turn the gain all the way up to get as much gain out of the amp as you can.
  • This will give you that heavy rock metal sound.

You can hear a bit of that sound when I switch back to the Les Paul.

The Importance of Pickups

As I mentioned before, the pickups give it that beefier sound on your guitar.

• Bridge Pickup:
  • We want to be using the bridge pickup.
  • This is all the way down for a Les Paul, or if you've got a Telecaster, all the way to the right.

This setup will give you that bright sound that cuts through all the distortion. Otherwise, it may sound too muddy.

You can hear here there's no real clarity. However, when you switch to the bridge pickup, it really cuts through. That's what we need in this style of music.

Influential Metal Bands

Some big bands in this style include:

• Metallica
• Iron Maiden
• Megadeth
• And going back a few years:
  • Black Sabbath
  • Deep Purple

These are the bands we think of when we think of metal.

Listening Recommendation

It would be great if you could listen to some of those bands to understand:

• The kind of style we're getting into
• The sounds
• The parts

You'll notice some parts of the songs are really slow and sludgy, while others are quick and fast. That's why this style is so great to study; there's so much we can learn from it! It heavily relies on our picking hand.

Learning Power Chords

In this section, we're going to look at chords for the first time. We'll be learning some power chords, which are two-note chords.

• Six-Note Chords:
  • On the guitar, you can learn chords with up to six notes in them (one note on every string).
  • However, for rock metal and similar styles, we tend to use power chords, as they cut through more and are more direct and to the point.

Understanding Chord Types

• Open Chords:
  • For example, playing a G chord with all six strings can make the notes get lost and muddy.
  • With that amount of distortion, it can start to sound like a blur.

This is why we opt for power chords‚ they are really direct and cut through effectively.

Getting Started

We'll look at an E power chord and an A power chord in this first part of the metal section.

Hopefully, you've turned your amp up now to the distorted setting, and we can get started!