Tagged: leadsareweak

"Marge, are we Jewish?" The post The Leads Are Weak: Building Unorthodox Riffs appeared first on MetalSucks .

• Metal Blade Records - Job for a Cowboy "Tongueless And Bound"

This week, Tony will teach you some old school style tapping techniques that will make your mom swoon. Also, get the latest JFAC tour dates!

Tony and special guest contributor Greg Burgess of Allegaeon provide some exercises to make your arpeggios stand out and break down the theory behind them.

Tony takes inspiration from Nuno Bettencourt -- via Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure -- in his latest guitar technique column.

Job For A Cowboy's Tony Sannicandro breaks down a shred picking technique frequently used by Paul Gilbert.

My favorite movie of all time is Amadeus. I recently re-watched it for the bagazillionth time and it yanked me in the direction of this column. I take the stance that if you don't like classical music you cannot be my friend, much like how I don't respect people that don't like Hawaiian Punch. There's [...]

OK, let's talk turkey. Let's make some original recipe licks. Think about when you first start doing anything - playing guitar, working out, making a fucking cheesecake, whatever - you always start out by doing what someone else has already done. This is good. It's important to get a start from someone that knows what [...]

Someone wrote in and asked me to cover how I like to construct a solo. This is a very good question. In fact, it's so good that I don't think it can be definitively answered. Obviously it's going to differ from player to player, song to song, riff to riff, but I journeyed into my [...]

Put that coffee down! The leads are not weak. You're weak. This is a cold fact. Mr. Baldwin said it himself. You always have to be closing. After all, coffee's for closers only, and who doesn't like a nice cup of sludge in the morning to get their ass in gear? Let me tell you something, [...]

The Phrygian dominant scale is the most metal of all the possible combinations of notes. As metal musicians, we are practically born knowing the power of this scale and all the riffs that were forged in its might. One of my favorite examples of this scale and the best way to hear and recognize it is [...]

This week I'd like to talk about one of my favorite techniques that's often overlooked in metal guitar playing; hybrid/fingerstyle picking. As a former classical guitar student, I love to incorporate fingerstyle playing. I've since cut my fingernails and picked up a plectrum but I can't escape the need to Adrian Vandenberg a few licks [...]

I've got the blue box blues. I just ate a box of mac and cheese, the kind that comes in that familiar blue box with the little baggie of cheese dust that magically becomes the nectar of the pot gods when introduced to the very sexy milk and her fatter friend butter. I love macaroni [...]

Hey man, I love the standard major, minor, and pentatonic scales as much as the next guitar player. But sometimes all that's needed to give my playing a little sauce is to learn a new scale or arpeggio. Lately I've been looking at eastern scales as well as scales more common in jazz than they [...]

I was a huge fan of Bruce Lee when I was growing up. Not for his martial arts technique or his acting, but for his Zen-like confidence and attitudes towards life. Use your mind before you use your body and you can accomplish a lot more than you initially thought. A lot of things in [...]

Hello! Welcome to my first ever column on Metal Sucks! It's pretty damn cool to be a part of this site and to be able to impart some of my guitar and tour knowledge to all of the readers. A lot of you probably don't even know who the hell I am, so let me [...]