How to Get a Good Metal Tone

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LickLibrary
www.LickLibrary.com
Ultimate Guitar Tuition

Metal Guitar Techniques
How To Get A Good Metal Tone

This is Andy James from www.LickLibrary.com. In this tutorial, we are going to be talking about how to get a good metal tone. Now, in this tutorial, I am not just going to be talking about the actual sound, but how you can adapt to the guitar and to get the best out of it especially when playing modern mellow music.

Okay, the first thing that I want to talk about is the guitar that I am using today. It is a John Petrucci, A Newborn Music Man 6-String and it is actually loaded with EMG pickups. Now, I have been playing metal for quite a while now and I have found that EMG pickups above any other a lot of pickups that I have been using, actually seems to be the best. The reason for this is because they are not passive pickups. They are not just solely wide into the guitar and they are actually using a 9 volt battery which adds extra power and actually drives whichever amp you are playing a lot harder.

Now, the pickup configuration that a lot of people use is EMG IE1 in the bridge and IE5 in the neck which is commonly used by Zack Wylder a lot and of other mellow players. Now, what I have actually done, lots and lots of other artists is actually put the IE5 in the bridge and the IE1 in the neck. Now, you get slightly more output in the neck pickup with the IE1 and either a lot of sound in the neck pickups so that kind of helps me out a lot. And a lot of tone of the IE5 in the bridge because it is just abit faster and warmer sounding and I played a lot, I am the only guitar player in my band, so it kind of needs to be the biggest and fastest sound that I can possibly get and I find that using the IE5 really gives me that fast tone and I am after. Also, EMGs are really very noise free. You do not get any kind of hammer hush or anything like that and they are really clean as well, so every kind of new ones can be played. It gets heard and even in the loud band concert you can totally hear everything that is going on.

Okay, some other things that can improve your tone when you are playing is to use palming in the right hand. Now, you know, you do not want to clamp down too hard that you cannot hear what you are playing but what it does is it actually stops any other strings from ringing out. So you know when you are doing anything like, for exampleâ€”you know, you got combination of that palming and then just kind of opening it up a little bit. But normally, when you are playing that metal rhythm, you are really only focusing on the bottom two strings. And again, a lot of bands tend to drop tone as well, so the louder strings will be toned down again, so it lets you just pluck over. So you do not have to insert a lot harder chord for any kind of open string exchanges between any other chords that you are playing up the neck. And palming, it just kind of keeps, it really clamp down really, sort of heavy. And also when you combine that with you using some ultimate picking and then you refinish work can really kind of bring out the rest of what you are playing.

Most metal players use really pointy guitar pick because you know, if they are kind of pointy, they are better to get real definition but for me, I normally finds that using the hardest pick that I can find, I think this is the Dunlop USA 1.5 mm and I use this pretty much in all of my rock and metal playing and soloing as well and I just find that it is a really solid pick. You can dig in and get the tone that you want but it also got a beveled edge, so it glides to the string very easily. It is really important for me when I am doing any fast ultimate picking refs or when I am actually soloing. So, the pick is quite important as well. You do not want to be using a pick that is getting you caught up in the strings so you cannot play what you want to play.

I have got a couple of other things that I use and I have banged on the guitar as well, when sometimes if I am doing any kind of tapping or if I am doing any sort of refs that involves a lot of movement, then it kind of