Wassup to all the metalheads of the internet, the OldSchool_Metalhead has created another take, yet again. This time its a take that was requested by a follower, @Nice222, when I had another account. Sorry for the wait man!
So this one is going to be a bit different. Aside from the usual takes about the history of a metal album and a review on it, this one is going to be about my experience with guitar playing through the years, and about the type of guitar rig I got.
Born Into Music.
As some people know, from the beginning of my life I've been surrounded by the old school rock n roll and heavy metal due to my parents. My dad has been in the music business for a good bit of his life as well, specializing in singing, guitar and drums, yet drums have always been his main favorite. So music is in my blood. Around the first 6 years of my life, they were the last years that my dad worked in music. He had done it since he was 14 (he is now getting to be in his late 50s).
First Ever Picking Up An Instrument.
I was age 5 when I first ever even touched a genuine instrument. And when I say genuine I mean not the type of toy instrument type stuff. A former band mate of my dad's was staying at our house for a few weeks. One day he brought a guitar to our house. I can't recall what brand, but it had no paint to it and was pretty small. I had just woken up that morning, and my dad's band mate saw me, and handed me the guitar. He also handed me a slide. I never even held a guitar or slide in my hands before, yet I sat down, and I started moving the slide up and down the frets and I would pluck strings. He was stunned because I looked like I knew exactly what I was doing. He said "keep the guitar!"
That guy did try to teach me a few chords on the guitar, but I sucked at keeping even just 1 in my memory.
From age 5 - 12, I never took any lessons. Even though my dad still has the guitar, my parents took it away from me after the band mate became a very troubled guy among us. So really for years I didn't have a guitar or anything.
Heavy Metal's Lucky 13 In The Making.
By age 13, at Christmas my dad got me another guitar. It was an acoustic by the brand Maestro (which is by Gibson). It came with DVDs of lessons, a guitar strap, picks, everything needed.
Right away I started learning. But then I started slacking off real bad because the lessons couldn't get through my thick skull. I even spent a whole summer not learning. But then I started looking up lessons on youtube..
I started learning things here and there, started catching on with a few chords like E minor and A. At this age I was really starting to get into music, honestly going through a time where my favorite band wasn't even metal. It was Billy Idol lol. I wanted to play just like Steve Stevens in that band. My dad also helped me out with learning by teaching me some stuff and have us jam out on a few chords.
Rigging Up.
By the year 2015 (I was 15 at the time), my dad surprised me with an electric guitar. This one was a used guitar, a Schecter (diamond series) Damien-6. He had it in a gig bag at first, giving me a fake backstory of finding the gig bag in a dumpster or something, then he unzipped it and said "anndd look what I found in it!!" I thought I was going to lose my shit that moment lol. I thought it was the most bad ass guitar I've ever seen. Flat black, vampire bats on the inlay, I mean come on man!
The only thing is that one of the pickups had gotten replaced by whoever had the guitar before. The Damien-6 comes with EMGHZ pickups, but I'm not even sure what the replaced one is. Its the kind of guitar that surely gives off its most menacing growl, yet its also easy to play classic rock type stuff as well. I've played a ton of AC/DC on there for sure.
I didn't have an amp at the time, so I had to borrow my dad's a lot. But by Christmas of 2015, my dad got me a Fender Mustang I (V2) amp.
Now of course I've always had a soft spot for Marshall amplifiers too. I'd love to have one someday. But this amp is pretty killer. It has many presets to it and effects already built in. AND you can plug it up to a computer and add/delete effects and add presets you can customize yourself. I've already gone overboard with customization XD
I remember Christmas night I had my guitar plugged in to that amp. And I started playing around with the strings, and somehow I figured out how to play the intro to Alice In Chains' "Check My Brain". All I had to do was bend the bottom E string! This made me wanna pursue more songs.
Rocking Down The Highway To Hell.
So the first song I really tried to learn all from was Black Sabbath's "Iron Man". Yet somehow I couldn't do it. I went through hell and back, trying out different songs that were too hard. But then I finally had success! By September-early October of 2016, I learned an entire song. It was AC/DC's "Back In Black". I don't know how in the hell I was able to do it if I already had enough trouble with "Iron Man" lol. Even some pros have trouble playing that song. Yet it was like nothing to me. I started learning more AC/DC after it. The second song ended up being "T.N.T", which I only learned by ear. Super easy. I remember my dad being so proud that night I learned that we played those two songs together for hours in our basement. Me on guitar, dad on drums.
I continued with AC/DC, working with songs like "For Those About To Rock," "Rock n Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" (never finished that one, too hard back then), "Dirty Deeds", "Highway To Hell", etc. I eventually started growing a love for thrash metal too.
Nitro Junkie, Paint Me Dead.
Now I know that some people argue saying that Metallica isn't metal at all, but it was a band that made me love thrash. I love nearly all their albums but the first three stood out to me from their speed and intensity. I started paying more attention to other thrash bands like Anthrax and Slayer. Around 2016 I started working on Metallica stuff. The very first was the song "Whiplash". But the intro I couldn't hook onto much. So then I moved on to "Fuel". Its the only song on the album "Reload" that I seem to consider thrashy enough and just total fun.
It took a little over a month for me to catch on to the whole thing. Since I couldn't do soloing (still can't yet) I would play the rhythm parts over the solo. I learned both the lead and rhythm sides to the rest and tried to incorporate both, because playing one without the other just seemed to strange sounding. I ended up getting a nasty blister on my middle finger when I practiced that song for 3 hours a day, but hey I wore it as a badge of honor XD Around October-December of 2017 I learned "Jump In The Fire", which ended up giving me carpal tunnel lol (no joke). I was proud to have been able to play a thrash song though.
I started working more with stuff from Master of Puppets, such as the title track and "The Thing That Should Not Be". However I'd love it more if I could learn the second song on bass 'cause ever since I was little I loved how doomy and evil sounding the bass was on it. I have been able to learn this song on guitar though simply through listening in recent time.
This Year And The Future.
In recent time I've been relying heavily on youtube for lessons, and using tabs from sites such as songsterr.com (highly suggested one). Since I've been focusing a lot on thrash metal I've been learning the scales and what not. The crazy down picking and alternate type included. I also learn simply from watching from what the musician(s) do. It was a trick that helped me learn "Back In Black". It was hard keeping up with little Angus Young, but I had this one video (recorded on TV) that was in black and white.
A live show. Probably from around 1981 or 1982. But every day I watched that video like 3-6 times, trying to watch how Angus did it. I couldn't watch his brother Malcolm though, because from lack of coloration I couldn't even see him in the shadows much.
I've started working on more Black Sabbath type stuff too. Recently I had learned "Sweet Leaf" and starting to work with "Fairies Wear Boots". By the time I am through with high school I will be working toward being in a thrash metal band. I know enough on guitar where I could survive lol. Since I lean on the old school thrash a lot that's probably going to be the sound of the band. I'm working toward that level of being lead guitarist. Pretty soon I will also be working on getting an effects pedal and/or footswitch for my amp. I'm still checking out the options so I got ways to go before getting it.
Plenty of times on GAG I've been asked to send recordings of my guitar playing. Sorry, I can't. Only recording thing I got for right now is my phone, and it sounds terrible. So I'm also having to work on that as well XD However once I do get that in order I will record a lot of stuff.
So that's it, a peek into the experience that the OldSchool_Metalhead has to offer. Hope ya guys and gals enjoyed :) and remember to \m/STAY METAL!!\m/
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