What Scale For Slayer Type Riffs?

[Modular1]

What kind of scale should i learn to be messing around with this flavor of tunes?

i mainly play around with pentatonics and A natural minor. What would be a good all rounder scale for me to learn to get this kind of dark metal goodness?

There was a cool feature on the band Death (a fave of my late teen years) in  the may Guitar Techniques mag and im wanting to learn more.

Can anyone give me a few pointers? I want to scare my girlfriend with my ableton live and drumkit from hell noises. hehe

Are there any basic rules for keys and scales to start with?

[Stevepage]

The Harmonic Minor would be a good one to learn. It's classical sounding but you can make it sound pretty menancing.

Also try learning the whole tone scale and dimished scale. You find info about these scales on the net so it won't take long to get to grips with it.


If you want to read from a book, get The Right Way To Read Music. If you can find it that is, it's what I got for when I started learning theory years ago and it helped out alot.

[Modular1]

so... the  A-harmonic minor scale ive already learned is gonna be good depending on what chords i place it over i spose...

[warpthrone]

slayer use scales? I thought they just played some random cr@p and hopes it sound good.

But yer A minor sounds the part

[HairyChris]

Play everything in E minor, E Ionian or E diminished. That'll do it in a fairly unsubtle fashion.

For the solos just randomly hit stuff and call it chromatic.  :P

[Will]

Think of a 2 bar riff, play it twice, then do it in double time for a bit (and headbang), then the verse :P

[JDC]

I'd say use your ear not scales, but playing around with scales helps your ear...

slayer are more chromatic than diatonic

anyway use the diatonic ones with minor 2nds in them, I always forget my mode names

playing by ear I use a lot of minor 2nds with major 3rds, it's pure evil :)

also try the half whole and whole half scales

the whole tone scale I'd say is more meshuggah than slayer, and is hard to use at first, or was for me, I'd accidentally make it sound major ish because of the major 2nd and 3rd

[il˙ti]

slayer are more chromatic than diatonic

anyway use the diatonic ones with minor 2nds in them, I always forget my mode names

Yep. Chromatic works for chainsaw style riffs.

And that would be Phrygian and Locrian. Both rather "dark" sounding modes.

[PoshCollins]

I'd say Locrian, Phyrigian, Phyrigian Dominant and Harmonic minor as well as the bog standard Minor (Aeolian).

[noodleplugerine]

Personally I never use scales to make riffs, riffs come from jamming in my experience, solos come from scales.

[Horlicks]

Chromatic  :P

[Afghan Dave]

For the solos just randomly hit stuff and call it chromatic.  :P

I've actually seen Kerry King say that in print!! - Or as EVH calls it "falling down the stairs and landing on your feet"...  :lol:

[Johnny Mac]

Slayer don't use scales it's all random and out of tune sounding! They do have some great riffs but should just forget about solos as they all seem to be ascending runs of unrelated notes with some wammy bar gymnastics on the end.

[HairyChris]

I've actually seen Kerry King say that in print!! - Or as EVH calls it "falling down the stairs and landing on your feet"...  :lol:

Yeah, seen similar. Jeff writes solos all the way through, KK works out the start & finish and just makes up the stuff in the middle.

The KK approach certainly works for me!  :P

[MDV]

Kerry "I have a khaller and I'm going to use it!" King and jeff "Screw those keys, I'll make my own" hanenman have their own private, patented scales. They're a jealously guarded trade secret.

To quote king

"I'm the most idiotic guitar player on the planet"