Symmetry arguments convince me that only the direction that a chord is struck is of significance.
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I do love a good symmetry argument, but please explain what you mean here? I don’t follow.
I’ll keep it short. Use suppinated forearm roation like James Hetfield. My friend struggles to downpick with his suppinated wrist deviation, though he is an accomplished two way pick slanter.
Late reply but in short? Yeah… but no. 
I’d rather play Blackened because it’s around 190BPM while MoP is 212. To the point that since I haven’t practised it for a while, I simply struggle to play MoP to tempo even though I used to be able to. The section after the solo is torture to play up to speed, especially after you’ve been already picking during the whole duration of the solo nothing but 8th notes. The gallop it starts with requires a bit more finesse than what you’ve been playing until then, and alternating two palm-mutes with an open F5 saps stamina rather fast.
Back when I was trying to clean up my down picking, I was doing nothing but the first few bars on repeat in Guitar Pro, asking the software to increase the speed by one percent after every repetition. For days. It was more of a physical exercise than a technical one to be honest…
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When I was a teenager I played the whole song “downstrokes only”, with 1 exception: this particular riff you mentioned. I played that in a “2 down 1 up” pattern … with the last 4 notes alternate.
Simply because … you cannot tell the difference with “downstrokes only”. And because … it gave me a tiny break from all that downstroke-madness .
To get this up to speed I used a metronome. Start slowly … the key for me here is relaxation and patience. Only higher the speed when your movements still feel comfortable and relaxed. Give this process a couple of months.
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I can help with this.
Using a metronome can help develop your technique but you need to understand the riff shouldn’t be thought of as played in perfectly spaced eighth notes.
I think what gets most folks thrown off is that when you start to get it up to speed, you are still thinking in terms of perfect eighth notes.
You want to think of the 2 notes on the E string as a very quick double-hit, then hit the A string.
Don’t think of it as 3 equally spaced notes. You can even pull the tune up, slow it down to 40% or whatever and listen - the 2 E notes are in quicker succession.
Practice getting the 2 E string notes as quick a double-hit as you can possibly make, this allows the time to get the A string and start all over again. I like to accent the A string notes.
Refine, refine, refine your picking technique to very, very small pick strokes and until you are using the very tip of the pick, no more. That wild, unrefined picking hand all over the place, catching the strings a quarter inch into the pick is not helping any.
Try emulating a drum beat to get a good feel of this - this exercise may help to understand:
First use 1 hand to tap out the beat - 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, … include the double tap on the A string when appropriate. Accent the 3, make it like the riff with accents where appropriate and try to play it fast, like the song.
You will find it’s not easy just like on guitar.
Now do the same thing, but use 2 hands instead. One hand represents the E string (I use right) taps out 1, 2 and the left hand, representing the A string, taps the 3 after every double tap of the right hand. Get that up to speed - See how much smoother/easier it is?
It’s not analogous, you are still using a single picking hand on guitar but it helps emphasize the importance of getting that double tap on the E as quick as possible to provide enough time for the distance motion to the A and back.
Hope this helps. I should do a video on this but too lazy.
Anyone is welcome to use it in a video if this helps them and you want to educate the masses; shout-out to rotjab would be welcome.
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That pattern is actually not as hard as it seems. 0-1-3 - is a down-down-sweep.
Well, it doesn’t feel like sweep totally, but techically it’s very close. You need less movement to get from E-string to A-string than when playing on one string only.
There’s a fun riff I like to play in a song ‘Be Dead or Die’ by Starkill. You can hear it from 2:08. May be they play it with alrernate picking, but downstrokes all the way feel muuuch better and fun )
There’re a lot of movements between two strings, so it can give you an understanding of that type of playing. I actually started with this one and tried to play MOP much later. It starts like this (if I recall correctly)
----------9----9---------8----9—10-9----7
—7-7----7------7-7----7----7---------7–7-…
(guitars tuned down to C)
Wanted to also add a non down picking strategy in addition to my prior post to help with all down picking. I think the thread was asking about other picking strategies also. As I noted in my 1st post, at speed - it’s critical the timing of this riff is not all equally spaced notes and the 2 notes on the E-string are in a quicker succession. When looked at like that and you practice the double-hit on the E as a single chunk, this will greatly help get it to all down picking speed. Likewise, the issue with other patterns, like incorporating a sweep, is the timing. There are a few mentions of a downward sweep in the post. The problem with a downward sweep, if you are really wanting to emulate the lick, is that is doesn’t lend the same timing of a “double-hit” on the E prior to hitting the A. A downward sweep motion will tend to create a quicker timing between the last note on the E string and the A string which kinda throws it all off. One pattern that is a lot of fun to play, emulates the riff almost perfectly, and is very easy to do - goes like this:
Start with an upstroke on the E string - you are going to keep the quick double hit on the E by doing an upstroke, then a downstroke on the E. Play it like it’s almost a single motion, very small pick strokes. You want to start with the pick just touching the bottom of the E string. Up, down. Then on the downward motion off the E string, you bring the pick down to the Bottom of the A string and the motion will be hitting the A string with an upstroke and then bring the pick back to the bottom of the E string to repeat. Think of it kinda like the rest stroke or what ever its called when you hit the A string and bring it back to the bottom of the E string in the same motion. This is an upward sweep motion rather than a downward sweep. The whole sequence is a circular motion that can be played very fast and stays true to the “timing” of the lick, maintaining the quick double on the E and then an accent on A. The part of the riff that has the double hit on the A string is done by catching the A string at the top instead of the bottom - down, up on the A and back to the bottom of the E. Rinse/Repeat. Get that double hit down on the E however like it’s 1 little microchunk and you can get it to all down picking speed.
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for me, it really helped using James’ pick grip. two fingers plus one thumb gripping the pick . you can search in youtube. once you get used to it and you got rid of the tension, downpicking would be a lot easier.
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I always played it using downstrokes. James used to play it with just downs way back in the day but I’ve seen videos of him from years later alternate picking it. Load really got his right hand lazy.
Just downstrokes is really tough but it gives you that meaty aggressive sound Metallica was known for. It took me about a year to get to album speed. If you don’t keep practicing downs like that you will lose your speed and endurance really fast. I haven’t played that song in so long I couldn’t make it through with just downs now. There’s a reason James wouldn’t let Kirk record rhythms. Kirk couldn’t play all downs at that tempo.
There’s also a cheating way. Using a little bit of trailing edge with your thumb locked. It allowsyou to make downstrokes really fast but I can’t do palm muting properly with this approach. So I prefer good old bruteforce. Moreover, for me it’s left hand which I’m struggling more when playing MoP.
Ok, last post to elaborate a bit further and build it up to all down picking speed.
Check out the other 2 posts to catch up.
The next question is how to develop the quick double hit on the E string.
In the 2nd post if you try the alternate method using the upward sweep motion you will find it’s critical you start with the pick touching the bottom of the E string.
Likewise, one way to develop the quick double hit on the E string using all down strokes is to start with the pick touching the top of the E string. Start slow and build it up. Learning to get this up to speed effectively trains you to remove some of the excess motion on that double hit.
We tend to learn things on guitar 1st with large, wild motions and refine to smaller motions. This is a case where you are kinda going the opposite direction - start with the pick touching the string and make very small, precise motions. When you get up to speed this approach helps eliminate the excess motion that is slowing you down to begin with.
Something kinda in between using all downstrokes and the upward sweep method I mentioned in the 2nd post is to start the riff with the pick touching the top of the E string and play the riff using all downstrokes. When you get to the part of the riff with the double hit on the A string, you perform the double hit on the A as mentioned in the 2nd post, hitting the top of the A string and doing a quick double hit on it; down, up. Now - incorporate the upward sweep method on the E string to get back to all down picking, Up, down on the E right after the double hit on the A. Then go back to all down strokes just like you started - down stroke on the A string and the quick double down stroke hits on the E. This is an all down stroke method that incorporates an upward sweep method for the “turn-around portion” of the riff. Practice that and develop those small double hit picking motions both as down strokes only and down/up alternating - with the pick starting off touching the string to eliminate excess motion and you will be able to get it to all down picking speed soon. I don’t know if James was messing with these same concepts or not at the time but these quick double hits are seen many times in MoP - the Damage Inc. lick uses that quick double on the A string as an alternate down/up. Note when you bring these all up to speed, you aren’t focusing as much as trying to start with the pick touching the string - you have simply trained yourself to eliminate excess motion that is slowing you down to begin with. Hope these posts help!
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Hello fellow guitar players,
after weeks of struggling to play it at full 212 bpm, I watched Rick Hollister’s interview with @Troy , after which I could instantly play the Verse and Chorus at ~250bpm.
The tricky parts however were
- The Spider Riff
- The Scale run after the Solo
It took me some time to develop the technique, but now I can play it 10 times in a row without getting tense.
Here is my cover of it:
I understand that I need some time to fully sync to the song and it still needs work, but I think (after noodling around as a teenager) after playing for about 4-5 months now it is pretty okay.
If anyone is interested, I plan on making a tutorial (as documentation for myself, as any good software developer would do) called “Learn how to downpick Master of Puppets from someone who barely just learned it” and if anyone is interested, I would share it here. Just let me know!
Many thanks to Troy, he really makes the impossible possible for us!
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Great job dude ! I revisited it a few months back and was dismayed to realise I still couldn’t play it. The spider riff is a problem mainly because of the fingering I seem to resist using the middle, ring, pinky and use the middle, pinky, pinky just out of habit. I’ll have to check out the Rick Hollister interview again.
When you’ve done your documentation I would be interested to read it, assuming you don’t do the typical software engineer trick of skipping it and moving onto the next thing, not that I condone that of course being a software professional 
I once had a backlog of over 100 documents after a crazy year of writing a lot of code, but I guess you could say that was as much a result of the company’s focus on raking the money in and not focussing on process and quality.
Also good to see someone else using the pinky power chord method. I always thought I was a weirdo for doing that. My guitar teacher taught it to me in my first lesson, because my hands were so small I couldn’t stretch to use the ring finger, but when my hands grew I never migrated.
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Actually you challenged my professional honor with your insinuation of me skipping documentation. I am a god damn professional, you know. So I cranked out a 4000 word epic adventure story within 4 hours about downpicking master of puppets, just for you.
Still needs some proofreading, but the gist is there:
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This is the best wall of text about guitar picking since that Tuck Andress page
Well… that’s epic @korreil thanks a lot.
Only thing missing is a TPS cover sheet and some token UML diagrams.