But we also got hundreds of letters from kids telling us how they related to the song and that it made them feel better.” Hetfield also spoke about the track in a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, stating that ““Fade to Black” got good and bad response. It’s a suicide song, and we got a lot of flak for it, as if kids were killing themselves because of the song. I was pretty depressed at the time because our gear had just been stolen, and we had been thrown out of our manager’s house for breaking shit and drinking his liquor cabinet dry. I wrote the song at a friend’s house in New Jersey. You could hear every squeak, so I had to be careful. It was pretty much our first ballad, so we knew it would freak people out… Recording that song, I learned how frustrating acoustic guitar can be. James Hetfield (lead vocalist/guitarist in Metallica) commented on the song in a interview with Guitar World in 1991: “That song was a big step for us. The tracks tell the story of a man who wants to commit suicide. “Fade to Black” was written and produced by all members of Metallica, as well as producer Flemming Rasmussen helping with the production. But it is a technique that you’d benefit from, so I recommend you use it instead of your somewhat random method.“Fade to Black” is the fourth track from American heavy metal band Metallica and their 1984 album “Ride the Lightning”. Alternate picking is simply a tool to play fast and efficiently – it is NOT something to obsess over. This is so you become a “100% proficient alternate picker”, which simply means you’re trained well enough at alternate picking that you could begin at any point in an alternate picked song after being told which direction the last pick stroke was.

If you’re practicing an alternate picking exercise then it’s a very good idea to first practice it starting with a down pick, and then all over again but beginning with an up pick.

Just begin alternate picking again starting with a down stroke or whatever feels most natural. If you’re alternate picking something but then you go into a legato passage and later come back to alternate picking, you don’t need to pick up where you left off. alternate picking is a great thing to master, and with a little practice it flows very easily and subconsciously. There are also other picking techniques that you may have heard of, such as economy picking, which work better in certain situations than alternate picking would. Sometimes it’s a good idea to deviate from alternate picking for a moment because certain notes in a song sound best if picked down or up. I am not 100% sure because the video is quite small, but I notice that Kristofer plays downstroke-upstroke-upstroke-downstroke for the first 4 notes of the solo. Now I wonder if it really matters playing the right patterns of downstrokes or upstrokes. Of course I could find it out by counting but I find it rather difficult and annoying if I have to do this for every measure and try to remember on which note I have to play a downstroke or an upstroke. The problem I have is that I don't know if I have to play a downstroke or an upstroke after some legato notes (which aren't picked). If I have a measure that has only eighth notes, I play downstrokes on the counts 1, 2, 3 and 4 and upstrokes in-between.īut in Fade to Black there are many legato techniques like slides, bends, hammer-ons and pull-offs. Since I have some practice in playing scales the work of my left hand isn't the greatest problem.īut I really have problems with my right hand (picking hand), more precisely with the alternate picking technique.įor the moment I play the first measures using downstrokes and upstrokes without a special pattern. At the moment I am practising Kirk Hammett's Fade to Black solo (the intro) with the help of the videos from.

Fade to black songster