Scales and Theory need to know's for metal and hard rock?

Harriots_Spices

Hi all, I am a beginner guitar player (9 months in) and I really want to start playing metal and hard rock music. I'm stuck in a bit of a rut as I don't know what I should learn to be able to play 80's metal and hard rock improvisation. What scales and theory do I need to know to be able to achieve this? I barley know any theory and I know the minor pentatonic and major scale. Both are the first positions. Any help is truly appreciated, thanks   

DaiCapp

There are some big brains on here for this kind of stuff who will be along soon I'm sure...


Personally I'd learn the 5 positions for the pentatonic, how you can link them together and also work them out for the majors and relative minors as a starting point...


There's a little video by a guy at Andertons called Peter Honore where he teaches some basics (for blues but the theory is relevant). He's a really musical player and so focuses on musicality over being too theoretical which helps makes stuff more accessible..

Lestratcaster

Natural and harmonic minor might be useful for these styles, esp hard rock.

Nikos

Hi, I haven't posted much on here but I saw this and I wish when I started out someone had advised me to learn the names of intervals, basic chord theory (how chords are constructed and how they relate to the key signature), and rhythm notation (basically how to mentally count rhythms and subdivide notes).

Troy Stetina's Fretboard Mastery is a good book on theory from a metal/hard rock guitar perspective. For general theory, Harmony and Theory published by the Musician's Institute is good. Both these books have tonnes of exercises which you might not want to get bogged down in on a first read.

AxeInsight

Hi, as far as theory, you're on the right track as far as I'm concerned. You might want to push further in this direction by learning the five Pentatonic positions and the seven modes of the Major/Diatonic scale.

If you know these two scales and can visualize them in relation to each other, you'll be on your way.

Of course knowing your intervals is always great because they compose everything, but scales are a good start.

Also, the Harmonic minor is a good idea

Max

Harriots_Spices

Thanks very much all, truly appreciate the help 

AxeInsight

@Harriots_Spices You're welcome

thomasross20

Never read "harmony and theory" before - is it all staff notation or tab, also? 

Apart from V7-Im where is harmonic minor mainly used.. and is melodic minor more useful? In fact, out of every possible scale with associated mode, I wonder what "set of modes" is really new , interesting and practical to learn over the whole fretboard. 

viz

Harmonic minor is really only originally designed to describe minor harmony, ie, CHORDS in a minor key, particularly the (major) dominant V chord in an otherwise aeolian piece. We practise it as a scale, because, well, why not, but it's really only designed to express the notes in a proper V chord, ie the 1, M3, 5 and m7 of the V chord (just like a dominant 7th chord in a major key).

The V chord's 1357 notes are the 5, M7, M2 and 4 of the tonic - so from bottom to top the M2, 4, 5 and M7. The V harmony doesn't tell us what to do with the other notes in the tonic - the 1, 3 or 6. That's melody's job. So in the harmonic minor SCALE, they remain at their default (aeolian) positions - ie, the 1 stays as the tonic, the 3 stays as minor (because we're talking about minor harmony) and the 6 stays as minor (same reason).

So in terms of the tonic minor key, the harmonic minor scale is therefore 1 M2 m3 4 5 m6 M7 8.

And in its 5th mode, ie on the V chord, it's 1 m2 M3 4 5 m6 m7 8. This is called phrygian dominant - phrygian because it has a minor 2nd, and dominant because it has the V chord's major 3rd, ie not like a piece in aeolian "should" have. 

These then are the notes of the harmonic minor scale, because they fit over the proper V chord of 1 M3 5 m7, and they just have the remaining notes unaltered from the original minor tonic. The full scale is really only ever played as phrygian dominant on the V. Rarely in music is it played as harmonic minor on the i chord. 

Melodic minor is for melody (tunes), where you need that 2nd note of the V chord, and, although it could be left unraised (and therefore called harmonic minor lol), it is traditionally raised so there's not too big a gap between it and the raised 3rd degree of the V chord (the M7 on the tonic). 

Hence melodic minor is normally what you need to be playing if you're playing the tune over the V chord. Harmonic is what you need if you're playing the chords and therefore not playing that 2nd note on the V chord anyway. 

Of course, there's nothing stopping you playing phrygian dominant as a scale too - cue Yngwie, as we've discussed before!

if you want other families of scales and their modes to check out, try persian major and minor, hungarian major and minor, neapolitan major and minor. (you've already used neapolitan major in one of your own compositions!)

thomasross20

Lol - I'm going to have to get back on this horse proper. Great post, as ever!!

viz

thomasross20 said:

Lol - I'm going to have to get back on this horse proper. Great post, as ever!!

i've rewritten it (and probably made it worse)

thomasross20

I need my morning coffee first..  

thomasross20

Ok I'm up to the bit on melodic minor, I'll get v to that soon. But I understand agree everything you wrote before it, though in a longer and more confusing way than I think about it BUT it did make me think and obviously you're better at this than me! 
Get back to you later about melodic minor bit..

Do you use anything else like whole tone ? Which scales do you typically use 90% of the time?

P.s. that's funny about neopolitan major.. I did a van halen