Welcome to your new Guitar Fail Math class, and this is a promise… It’s gonna be as loud as it gets!
Today’s lesson is all about Metal…
What Does it Take to Play Metal : a Breakdown of the Equation
Surprisingly, to play a good heavy metal lick you only need three things :
- Angst… A lot of it !
- Distortion… Your tone needs to be drowned in it ! The more distortion, the more your angst will look real… scary real!
- A double bass pedal blasting the shit out of that tune.
Angst and distortion are the meat of good metal riff… The double bass pedal adds that final doom flavor.
No, technically a double pedal doesn’t make it four required things !
That’s not how math works. At least not our math.
Bonus Math Note
- If you use a pointy guitar, it automatically adds 100% metal to your metal ! Now, that’s heavy.
- Headbanging never hurts except maybe your neck. Remember though:, headbanging is not just an art, but a science. More on that later… or not because our departments are understaffed.
- Metal is velocity. I don’t want to unnecessarily drown you in details but you need to remember V = D/T where D is the distance travelled across the fretboard and T is the time required to get there.
Therefore the bigger the D and the shorter the T, the greater the V. In plain guitarist English: play more notes, faster.
Does that automatically make your Metal better?
According to Guitar Fail Math 101, yes. According to musicians, apparently we need more research.
Until next time… Class dismissed.
