Progressive Metal Guitar: An Advanced Guide to Modern Metal Guitar (Learn How to Play Heavy Metal Guitar)

I somewhat disagree with the other post that said it wasn't just more boring exercises, because it pretty much is, however there are quite a few different techniques covered (tapping, alternate picking, sweep picking) and they are all good exercises. The sections build on each other gradually in difficulty and there are some pretty cool example solos at the end of the book that piece everything together, and the MP3s of each exercise come in a slow and fast version.There are definitely some types of exercises that are left out of this book (left hand stretching, dexterity, and finger independence exercises). Those helped me a lot more than speed exercises ever did, even as a left handed player (so I can only imagine how much they would help a right handed player). But yet no one ever seems to cover them, probably because they are very difficult. Look into those if you want exercises that will rapidly help improvement.That said, it's fairly comprehensive and yet straight to the point and can set you in the right direction as far as speed exercises. I've been playing for a long time and the exercises covered are commonly recommended and seem to work pretty well. It's worth the 20 bucks if you want to save the time of trying to find a bunch of different exercises online that may or may not help. Most of the exercises work well even if you don't understand all of the nuances as to why yet as a beginner-intermediate player (eg. they force working on the pinky a lot, force a proper picking pattern with the right hand, help muting with the left hand, etc).

This is the third book in Rob Thorpe's trilogy of books on metal guitar. This one both expands on the material and subjects in the first two works, and covers new ground as well, all in Rob's competent, accessible and readable style. The approach of Rob's three works is academic and scholarly, but simultaneously engaging and approachable. Music notation and tab are used throughout, and theory and technique are both covered thoroughly, but engagingly and with great compression and expert editing.Till now there has been a hole in the metal guitar pedagogy available to be filled by a progressive, well structured, approach which steps away from the limited tab only approach, and caters for the reading guitarist who wants to understand and progress through the beginning and intermediate stages, and beyond, of this challenging genre. His books deserve better presentation and better quality paper, but Rob's trilogy is a much needed addition to the metal guitar instructional canon and is highly recommended.

I have about 15 go the guitar books from this publisher and they have all been great..... until this. Tab is horrible... it's like they used a computer in some spots to tab it and what should say be an A on the 10th fret 2nd string is instead shown as an A on 5th fret 1st string. And the examples are just all over the place and don't match against the downloaded audio from the publishers website. So it could be good but needs to be cleaned up huge.

Love it

Great book. I've ordered tons of guitar instruction books, this one delivers the goods.

Learning a lot filling in the gaps in my lead playing. Excellent book with audio examples..

Not the same boring exercises and shred licks. This book helped me break out of a rut, my phrasing and technique has greatly improved.

Great Learning Book AA++

If like me you, you're not too concerned with musical labels and knowing all the sub-genres, you might not have noticed that this book is not for progressive "metal guitar", it is for "progressive metal" guitar. It's prog-metal.Did I feel a bit silly? Yes, but I read it anyway. However I read it fast, skimmed chunks, noted pages to revisit, but decided to buy another book.Stylistically much of chapters 1-4 is neo-classical exercises. For me, the finger tapping bass riffs were cool. I bought the book to learn sweep picking, but I'd say the sweep picking in chapter 5, is too hard if you haven't used the technique much before. Chapter 6 is Pentatonic shredding.I felt there wasn't enough guidance explicitly on playing technique. Obviously you can gain insight into technique from doing the exercises too, but too often that depended on you seeing it for yourself. In some places in the book, pick direction markings petered out, or weren't given, leaving you to either figure it out for yourself, or to listen for it on the audio file. Which was unhelpful on quite a few exercises.Chapters 7-9 are music theory and composition orientated, rather than on playing technique, but do look interesting from skimming them. Chapter 10 covers the demo tunes to play along with.**My top tip… I recommend listening to the audio before choosing a book. I found the audio files for all the guitar books published by Fundamental Changes, was freely available on their website. So I had a listen and found 5 lead guitar books that were suited to my taste and advancement.

An adequate introduction to contemporary metal playing best paired with the guide to heavy metal playing. In some areas it doesn’t go into too much detail only offering a brief explanation of a technique and on occasion ending a section bluntly on the note that further detail is contained in the previous book in the series annoyingly forcing you to buy that book as well to complete the picture. Each section is generally well explained and does contain signposts to artists and songs for listening and further technical study which is useful. The example licks contained within I found challenging if fairly musically uninspiring but serve their purpose as exercises moving you towards the neoclassical performance piece which is tabbed fully at the end of the book. I would highly recommend this book if your looking to find out more about modern metal but would certainly buy it as a pair with the previous book in the series if your completely new and needing a full explanation.

Really decent guide to metal guitar soloing. Starts with Neo Classical licks and the patterns helped me a lot with building up speed. I was taught the harmonic minor in a different position years ago, so it was great to see where someone would actually 'shred' it on the fretboard. As others have mentioned, this is NOT a beginners book. I have played for years and can do a pretty good impersonation of a shredder, but these exercises gave me a lot of trouble and taught me a lot.Might just be my style, but the legato chapter was by far my favourite. Interesting ideas throughout the book though. I especially liked the three quite unique solos at the end.Slight printing issue on some of the pages, but that is a minor gripe. The main thing stopping me from giving this a 5* review is that most of the licks, while being a great hand workout and teaching you valuable techniques, just don't sound that musical. But I guess this is the point: the idea isn't to steal complete licks and use them in your solos, these exercises should instead be a springboard to help you compose your own licks. Still, if you are practicing the same lick for several hours with a metronome it helps if it sounds cool. It would have also been nice to have more technical directions, e.g. hand positions, etc. (But maybe these are covered in parts one and two...)These are pretty minor criticisms though. I am loving this book; I bought several guitar books recently and this is by far my favourite. Great job Rob Thorpe!

This book is fantastic!I have been playing guitar for 17 years and have a degree in music and I have found this book to be enormously useful in pushing the boundaries of my technique and application of theory.It covers alternate picking, legato, tapping, sweep and economy picking, odd rhythmic groupings, exotic scales and much more!It also has some rhythm guitar sections which covers some odd meter playing. The audio is available by downloading it from the website, which is pretty easy and allows you to keep the book flat, when you get a CD with a book I find it gets in the way and becomes annoying when you are trying to lay the book flat or in a music stand. The audio is also of a very high standard.Overall I highly recommend this book of you are an intermediate player trying to push yourself to a new level but I also think advanced players would find this book helpful and informative!

Some great guidance in this book that explains some of the techniques used in today’s progressive metal. Recommend for the intermediate player.