This fun metal tune is from the Jamzone. Go there to learn more and use this to try out your own solo ideas. The tonal centres for this song are E minor, G major, and A minor towards the end. Listen to the normal speed audio a few times until you have the feel for things, then read on...
The trick to playing this is to Loop the ActionTab, and constantly palm mute the low E string in time with the drums. Just do that at first, and don't worry about the chord stabs yet - just palm mute that low E instead. Do that until you get consistent and tight with the rhythm. When ready to move on, then do the following...
Now, whilst doing that - get a feel for where the chord stabs should be. Keep your fingers ready on the first Em chord (on the adjacent strings). Now, keep palm muting the Low E, and whilst keeping that up, start to add in the Em chord with fast open strikes.
Keep doing that with the Em Chord - don't worry about the other chords yet. Just keep playing with the Low E palm muted and adding the Em open stabs. Your Em stabs will still sound ok over the chords in the backing music as you play along. Repeat this until your rhythm hand has the rhythm down.
Once you can alternate between the Low E palm muted, and the Em stabs without skipping a beat, then its simply a case of learning to move your fretboard fingers through the other chords. Change from the Em chord stabs as shown in the ActionTab. The chord stabs are very simple and there are only 3 different chords to cycle through. They are Em, D maj, F#m.
Once you can do it for the Low E section, you'll be able to do it for the Low A section too (this appears at the end of the tune). It is exactly the same riff, except played across by a string. Use thumb muting to stop unwanted strikes of the Low E during that part. The chords for this part are consistent with the A minor scale, they are Am, G maj, Bm.
The only other part of the tune is 4 simple chord strikes in the middle (G5 and G flat5 repeated twice).
Even though the normal speed audio may cause you to worry about the difficulty of this tune, hopefully you can see that it's actually quite simple to do - all based on just training up your rhythm hand to alternate between palm muting and open chord stabs. Everything is downstrokes to keep things easier.
Once you can chop out this type of rhythm, you can experiment with your own chord stabs - try using different chords to make up your own riffs. Or vary the number of times you palm mute the Low E between stabs. You'll soon discover that there's a very wide range of cool rhythms you can make! This kind of rhythmic playing is the key to the majority of metal styles, from Metallica to Waylander, so worth taking time to get right!
