Play Guitar Like Dave Mustaine

Dave Mustaine, founder and lead singer songwriter of Heavy/Thrash metal band Megadeth is famous for his screaming fast licks and fast riffing on his guitar. A few techniques Dave uses to play guitar are:

-Power chords

-The “spider chord”

-Hammer ons, tapping and other shredding techniques.

The power chord is used a lot in all forms of metal/ and rock guitar.

Dave Mustaine uses it very effectively and led him to develop the power chord to play a sort of rapid power chord progression, this isn’t quite technically correct but its the best way to describe how it sounds.

This is the Signature Dave Mustaine spider chord which he made famous.

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|-4—-5—–6—–7—–8—–9—-10—-11—-12—–13——|

|-2-3–3–4–4–5–5–6–6-7–7–8–8–9–9-10-10–11-11-12-|

|—1—–2—–3—–4—–5—–6—–7—–8——9—–10—etc|

Now take it slow when you start and get faster when your confidence increases.For an idea of how to play the spider chord correctly, listen to “Holy Wars” and “wake up dead” by Megadeth it will help you understand the progression.

Mastering this style of play will allow you to play really fast scales and chord progressions.This will require a bit of practice but increasing your muscle memory and skill with this guitar technique is worth the effort.

He mixes these guitar riffs with sweep picking-which is playing up and down in a sweeping fashion mostly arpeggios and chords but also a very flexible technique.

Alternate picking:Which is playing note progressions with the up and down stroke of the guitar string with your pick.

He also uses tapping and some classical techniques to produce that signature Dave Mustaine style and sound.

Keep practising and you to can learn to shred like a maestro.