Today I’m going to write a rhythm part for a metal song and explain the process I go through at each stage. I’ll go for a combination of Thrash and Melodic Death Metal.

I’ll assume that you have a “metal tone” for writing metal rhythm guitar, but in a future post we’ll cover some tips for getting a good tone. For now just remember that you want plenty of mids, and a decent amount of gain, but not too much. We want a nice tight rhythm not tons of crackly white noise and feedback.

Writing Metal Rhythm Guitar : First Steps

I’ll start by playing around with a combination of 8th notes and “gallops”. Below is a quick example of an E5 power chord played as 8th notes: