Seek and Destroy Guitar Lesson – Metallica


By far "Seek and Destroy" is the most popular song off of Metallica's debut album Kill 'Em All.

It deserves this distinction for good reason. It opens with one of most identifiable metal guitar riffs ever written.

In this Seek and Destroy guitar lesson I will demonstrate how to play all the main riffs of the song. The only part I won't be covering for now if the fast middle section and solo.

Now obviously, if you guys want me to finish the song just let me know and I will get right on it. 🙂

Of all the Metallica songs, "Seek and Destroy" is one of the easiest to play. At least when we are referring to the main riffs of the song.

The classic opening riff uses hammer-ons with muted notes to create one of the catchiest riffs you will ever play.

From there all of the rhythms are straight forward and quite fun and easy to play. There really shouldn't be anything in this video lesson that any upper beginner level player can't handle.

So enjoy learning this classic Metallica masterpiece and be sure to let me know if you guys wanna finish it with a lesson on the middle section and solo. 🙂

Carl...

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Seek and Destroy Guitar Lesson - Metallica

Seek and Destroy Guitar Lesson - Solo

6 Comments

  1. Kritish Dhaubanjar on September 26, 2016 at 11:02 pm

    Thank YOU For the Lessons !!

  2. frank paparo on August 7, 2017 at 4:35 pm

    Hey carl,
    Real quick question, I am ready for the solo, rhythm easy peasy. What finger exercises should I do to conquer this solo, should it be the hammeron and trills? Also is the anyway you can start adding the bpm’s in a foot note Mabey? ? Some of them are really hard to find

    • Carl Brown on August 8, 2017 at 4:44 pm

      Hey Frank, the main techniques being used here are alternate picking, more specifically the alternate picked pentatonic licks towards the end of the solo and synschronizing legato pull-off with picking.

      So first, work on the alternate picking section of the “alternate picking mastery for guitar course”.. Then try practicing this exercise. Always pull-off to your index finger pulling off from middle then ring then pinky and then back to ring. Or 2-1 3-1 4-1 3-1 … 1 is always sounded with a pull-off and not picked.

      Pick with a downstroke the 2 3 and 4 while always puling off to 1 or your index finger. Try this same lick with different stretches or distances of the fingers pulling off to the index finger. Maybe trace 4 notes of a scale along one string and do the exercise with those notes? That can be a bit of a stretch. Does that make sense?

      Carl..

  3. frank paparo on August 15, 2017 at 7:30 pm

    It does, thank you. The one thing I am confused on I learned the major and minor pentatonic scale across the front board and I drew lines for every position so I can visualize the shapes instead of counting frets, is there also a major scale which is different from the major pentatonic? And I have been putting my blue notes in my scales and learning how to move and connect the scales, I keep on hearing about this hybrid scale I have been putting at least two hours at night in my practice and theory which I am always watching and re-watching the videos it just gets a little confusing sometimes and over whelming , when I learned the major and minor pentatonic I learned each position with the major And minor with the blues scale, instead of learning tree to try and learn three different scales I try to learn them each position on one shot then move onto the next doing an incredible amount of visualization, I have also learned my chromatic and diatonic scale’s and 1,4,5 and 2,3,6. My fifth

    • Carl Brown on August 19, 2017 at 10:31 am

      Hey Frank, I don’t think I completely understand your question. What I can say is that major and minor pentatonic scales are derived from the full natural minor and major scale.

      The major scale would be spelled, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 while the major pentatonic scale, would be the same scale with two of the notes removed 1 2 3 5 6 (making it a 5 note scale hence the name “pentatonic” with ‘penta’ meaning 5)

      For minor, you would start with the natural minor scale 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7 and remove two notes from that scale to get minor pentatonic 1 b3 4 5 b7

      In both cases, the notes that are removed are the ones that create a half-step interval between two notes. By removing those half-steps, you now have a scale that will work in many more musical situations.

      I hope this clears it up a bit.

  4. frank paparo on August 15, 2017 at 7:31 pm

    5ths and 7ths, i’m not trying to overload you but it’s starting to get really intense and I am trying my best to make sense of all of this information and figure out how to put everything together !

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