How to play metal guitar is a great decision to make considering the skills you can learn from such a technical style of music. If you think about it, metal guitarists have a great sense of tempo, rhythm, and technique.

Learning how to play metal guitar will greatly improve your speed along with your technique just like some of the professionals have accomplished. Here are 7 tips to help your development of brutal metal on the guitar.

1. Learn open-chord break-downs.

Once you get to your average break-down section of a tune, you'll discover that it's mostly executed with the open chord. This is done by palm-muting the strings by placing your strumming hand on the strings while still picking.

With enough distortion, the palm-mute should create a powerful crunch that's typically heard in break-downs. Create your own patterns in different rhythmic variations for your own personalized touch to any metal guitar song.

2. Shop for guitars used by other professional metal guitarists.

Using a guitar that's made for pop rock or jazz guitar really isn't going to give you the playing action or speed that's necessary to rip through a metal song. Learn what your favorite metal guitarists play and try them out at your local music store.

3. Use a drop tuning.

Drop tuning is used so that all power chords can be played with one finger, making the chord changes much faster. In drop 'D' tuning, the notes from the lowest to highest string are 'D','A','D','g','b', and 'e' respectively.

You can tune even lower by using the drop 'C' tuning where the strings from lowest to highest are 'C','G','C','f','a', and 'd' respectively. Experiment with the tuning that's right for you and how heavy you want to be.

4. Utilize the first four frets where a lot of awesome riffs can be created.

Sometimes to create really awesome riffs for metal guitar, using less notes and chords is more powerful. Use a palm-muted pattern of picking chords between only the first three frets of the guitar including the open chord.

You'll begin to hear a very dark sound that grinds really well. This is a common practice among common death metal songs.

5. Use an amp with adequate distortion.

You're going to need an amplifier that can supply enough distortion, but be careful to not saturate your tone. Keeping your distortion level at 75% should be just enough to give crunch without sacrificing any tone.

6. Develop your double-picking skills.

Fast double-picking riffs are the meat of most metal guitar songs. Experiment with how they're executed by picking between the lowest and second lowest strings in different rhythms and tempos.

7. Single notes on the thickest string are sometimes just as strong as full chords.

Even though metal guitar songs have choruses containing tons of power chords, single notes can reign just as powerful, while giving it a southern rock flare. Try playing a progression using the open string and frets 3 and 5 to spice up an average metal song.

Learning how to play metal guitar will give you the edge to create music that your fans can really let loose with. Develop those light fingers and powerful break-downs and you should be shaking the mosh pits very soon.