Turning Blues into Metal

Here is a follow on from my previous post about how great learning blues can be. I recommended all you metallers learn blues if you want to play leads, and now I will tell you how to start turning blues into metal, in three easy steps. But before we start I want you to find a good, fairly simple metal backing track, put a metal setting on your amp and improvise with some blues over that track. You should hopefully see we are already not to far away.


Now, here we go.


-Heavy it up: To start making your blues a bit more metal try giving it a more aggressive sound by using a hard guitar pick. Add in some screaming harmonics, big bends and fast runs to give it more impact against the heavy riffs your soloing over.


- Metal licks: What you have hopefully learnt is that blues and improvising is mainly about piecing together different licks through the blues scale positions. So try learning some licks by some of your favourite metal players and start working them into your improvising.


- Speed and tricks: Metal is not all about speed, but it is a common thing, and feels good when you pull it off. So trying increasing your picking speed, switching licks at a faster speed and adding in a few tricks here and there to fill your solos with real adrenalin and excitement. But make sure you stay in time.


I hope this has helped in getting you on your way to making great heavy metal solo's out of your blues skills.


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