How to Use Octaves for Heavy Metal Guitar

Let musician Alex Skolnick teach you how to use octaves on guitar in this heavy metal guitar lesson from Howcast.

Transcript

All right. Let's talk about octaves and how to use them. One simple use of octaves is as a substitute for power chords. So, you can take any riff and take a sliding power with chords. Say, something like this.

I could play the same thing with octaves. So, using octaves on the 4th and 6th string. I'm muting the 5th string.

All right. So it just gives it a little different texture. I could alternate between the two.

Okay. So that's using octaves in a riff. You can also use octaves in solos. They're great to substitute for single notes and playing in a melody. Right now I'll play a quick little solo using mostly octaves. One more thing, when I go across the strings, the shape changes. As soon as I get to the 2nd and 4th string there's a three fret difference. 1st and 3rd string, three frets. Be sure to see the other how cast video I did on octaves.

Okay. So that was done with mostly octaves. And a lot of that was the E-dorian mode, and I'm often sliding from octave to octave.

Okay. So it's not that hard. Take your time. Learn it. Have some fun with octaves, and I hope you enjoyed the lesson.