Death Metal Guitar Lesson – Improving Your Picking To Really Thrash

Learning how to really pick like a professional on your guitar is an essential lesson for playing really powerful death metal guitar. Most of the verses and intros of common tunes are comprised of insane picking sections that really get your head banging.

Professional metal guitarists have usually been playing for years to develop the speed and skill that they have, but you can acquire a similar level of speed and technique with dedication. Check out these 5 effective tips to improve your death metal guitar-picking.

1. Adjust the way you hold the guitar pick. Holding the guitar pick in alternate ways is a fairly simple way to impact how fast you can pick. Make a decision based upon what allows you to do the most work with the least amount of effort.

2. Limit your picking movement to the wrist and fingers. One of the main lessons to picking fast is learning to separate the effort you use to make the action to just your wrist and fingers. See how much you can do with very little effort and your death metal speed might come a bit easier.

3. You may not be using the best guitar pick for speed. Guitar picks are not all created equally and you may not have the pick that you need to get to that next level of speed. Experiment with some other pick sizes, shapes, and thicknesses and determine what’s right for your style.

4. Keep your double-picking consistent. Learning how to strike notes by strumming up and down on single notes is important, but keeping that action consistent can take time. Practice double-picking while focusing on a firm consistent strike between the notes for playing more powerful death metal riffs.

5. Single out your right hand at practice. If things are getting tough for you to play a riff with both hands working together, maybe it’s not time for that yet. Forget about the left hand for awhile and focus on the right executing all of the picking properly and effortlessly.

Death metal guitar has so many guitar lessons worth learning to develop into a professional player, but you can’t forget about working hard and practicing often. There may not be a quick fix for your skills, but try out these effective tips and see if you can improve your picking.

Kyle Hoffman is a constantly-performing musician that has been playing guitar for years in rock and hardcore groups. Learn his valuable tips for finding the best fast electric guitar lessons at his popular blog, How To Guitar Tune now!