How to Thrash Metal

How to Thrash metal

This is a guide of tips & tricks that I have learned over the years to get started playing some Thrash Metal (a lot of this also applies to Metal in general). These are mostly scattered nuggets of information so you can refer back to this at any time for pointers.

Tone

• Turn up the bass and highs, and turn down the mids
• Use a fuzz or overdrive
• Can use a low delay aswel for a King Gizzard effect

Practice Routines

Triads

Chord Progressions

• Utilise minor keys a lot.
  • Phrygian - i ii vii i.
• In a minor key, mix the

Modulation

• Often modulated between keys for riffs/phrases i.e. you may have a riff in. Bminor and then riff in Cminor for that phrygian-esque sound.
• Mix the minor keys using power chords i.e. i - ii - VI. Here we get the phrygian sound with the minor second power chord, but then we get the major 6th which sounds really dissonant and cool.

Chord extensions

• Diminished.

Phrasing

Note choises

• When in a minor key, play the major 7th for a cool dissonant effect.
• Target the minor 2nd.
• Use the tritone (i.e. tritone of e is a#)
• When in phrygian, use the major 3rd in the same phrase as the minor 2nd - this adds really cool dissonance.

Riffs

• Drone back and forth on the tritone (i.e. tritone of e is a#)

Solos

• Use hammer-ons and pull-offs
• Slide into and hang onto disonant intervals i.e. major 7ths and minor 2nd.