Somebody in the guitar player's advice exchange group I'm in was questioning how to play the sextuplet riff in Metallica's song "One."
I offered advice to look at how Hetfield plays the riff live, and to actually feel the sextuplets, because if done right, your picking hand gets in a natural down-up motion that keeps you locked in the groove.
Now, there's a pervasive myth about Hetfield's rhythm guitar playing. Everyone seems to think he plays everything with a downstroke.
Mind you, this is a section that has sextuplets, that is 6 notes per beat, at a tempo of 220 bpm.
Someone literally said that Hetfield downpicks the riff.
That is literally physically impossible, not very economical, and downpicking everything isn't very wise as a rhythm player, because you can easily loose the feeling and the groove of the track if you downpick everything, assuming you could.
So what does Hetfield do?
Like a sensible rhythm guitarist, he alternate picks the riff. Granted, this doesn't make getting the rhythm as tight as him any easier, but it's way easier to do sextuplets at break-neck tempos if you can remember that you can do downstrokes and upstrokes.
I hate bad advice that makes physically playing the music much more difficult than it really is. It's a pervasive myth that Hetfield downpicks everything, speaking as a metal player, that I just wish I could stamp out.
Once you realize that Hetfield's main influence is the Misfits, a punk band, then his rhythm playing makes way more sense.
I offered advice to look at how Hetfield plays the riff live, and to actually feel the sextuplets, because if done right, your picking hand gets in a natural down-up motion that keeps you locked in the groove.
Now, there's a pervasive myth about Hetfield's rhythm guitar playing. Everyone seems to think he plays everything with a downstroke.
Mind you, this is a section that has sextuplets, that is 6 notes per beat, at a tempo of 220 bpm.
Someone literally said that Hetfield downpicks the riff.
That is literally physically impossible, not very economical, and downpicking everything isn't very wise as a rhythm player, because you can easily loose the feeling and the groove of the track if you downpick everything, assuming you could.
So what does Hetfield do?
Like a sensible rhythm guitarist, he alternate picks the riff. Granted, this doesn't make getting the rhythm as tight as him any easier, but it's way easier to do sextuplets at break-neck tempos if you can remember that you can do downstrokes and upstrokes.
I hate bad advice that makes physically playing the music much more difficult than it really is. It's a pervasive myth that Hetfield downpicks everything, speaking as a metal player, that I just wish I could stamp out.
Once you realize that Hetfield's main influence is the Misfits, a punk band, then his rhythm playing makes way more sense.