Metal Rhythm Guitar Workouts Vol. 2
Lessons Included in this Course
Course Content Overview
This course develops your rhythm technique through a series of structured, riff-based lessons. Each workout targets a specific area of metal guitar playing, helping you build stronger right-hand control, better fretting-hand coordination, and a more varied vocabulary for writing heavy riffs.
Pedal Tone Legato Riff - Combine low-string pedal tones with hammer-ons and pull-offs to create fluid, aggressive metal phrases.
16th Note Group of Three Riff - Develop syncopated rhythm control by playing grouped accents across a steady 16th-note pulse.
Phrygian Dominant & Diminished Riff - Use darker, exotic scale sounds and diminished tension to build dramatic metal riff ideas.
Byzantine Scale with Tremolo Picking - Strengthen speed, endurance, and picking consistency while exploring Eastern-flavoured metal sounds.
Natural Harmonic Riff - Add texture, atmosphere, and contrast to distorted rhythm parts with cleanly controlled natural harmonics.
Tremolo & Chromatic Mediant Idea - Blend tremolo-picked intensity with cinematic harmonic movement for more sophisticated metal writing.
Black Metal Minor Chords - Explore darker chord voicings, sustained textures, and atmospheric rhythm parts inspired by extreme metal.
Combining Diminished & Byzantine Ideas - Merge unusual scale colours and tense intervallic movement into cohesive, heavy riff vocabulary.
G Minor Byzantine Riff - Apply Byzantine scale ideas in a focused key centre, turning theory into a practical riff-building tool.
Prog Metal 7/8 Riff – Clean - Improve odd-time counting, rhythmic confidence, and dynamic control using a clean progressive metal study.
Prog Metal 7/8 Riff – Distorted - Add gain, palm muting, accents, and weight to the 7/8 concept for a complete modern metal rhythm workout.
Across the course, you will work on alternate picking metal riffs, palm muting, open-string riffing, galloping rhythms, syncopated accents, hammer-ons and pull-offs, chromatic movement, sustain, slides, power chord control, odd time signatures, and scale-based metal writing. These are all highly relevant search and learning areas for guitarists looking for advanced metal rhythm guitar exercises, progressive metal guitar lessons, and modern metal riff construction lessons.
This Course is Ideal for Players Who...
This course is ideal for guitarists who already have a grasp of basic metal rhythm playing and now want to build greater precision, endurance, and musical range. If you can play power chords and straightforward palm-muted riffs but want your metal rhythm guitar to sound more controlled, more creative, and more professional, this course gives you targeted material to practise.
It is especially useful for players who want to:
- Improve picking-hand strength, timing, and consistency for fast metal rhythm guitar.
- Make palm-muted riffs tighter, cleaner, and more rhythmically defined.
- Learn how to use tremolo picking guitar lesson concepts in musical riff writing rather than as a purely technical drill.
- Expand beyond minor-scale riffing with Phrygian dominant metal guitar, Byzantine scale guitar, diminished intervals, and chromatic ideas.
- Build confidence with progressive metal phrasing, including odd time signature guitar riffs and 7/8 rhythmic patterns.
- Add black metal, extreme metal, and cinematic harmonic colours to original riffs.
- Study Richard Shaw guitar lessons through a LickLibrary course that connects technique with real songwriting application.
Players interested in metal, progressive metal, black metal, death metal, technical metal, and modern heavy rhythm guitar will find the lesson material particularly relevant. The course also suits songwriters who want new ways to generate riffs, not just faster ways to play existing patterns.
What will I achieve from completing this course?
Metal Rhythm Guitar Workouts Vol. 2 works because it treats rhythm guitar as a complete discipline. The lessons do not only ask you to play faster; they encourage you to play with clearer articulation, stronger timing, better muting, and more deliberate musical choices. This is important because effective metal rhythm guitar depends on precision, dynamic control, and rhythmic evenness, especially when working with palm muting, alternate picking, and fast repeated patterns.
Rich Shaw’s approach connects technical development with the kind of theoretical and compositional thinking that helps riffs stand out. His background as a professional metal guitarist, songwriter, educator, and author of a metal-focused fretboard and songwriting theory book gives the course a practical edge for guitarists who want exercises they can actually use in their own playing.
The course also succeeds because it balances physical technique with creative vocabulary. You will practise endurance-building tremolo picking and alternate picking, but you will also learn how scale choices, chord movement, harmonic tension, and odd-time phrasing can make riffs feel more distinctive. For students searching for LickLibrary metal guitar lessons, metal riff workouts, or online guitar lessons that develop both hands and musical ideas, this course offers a clear, structured route into heavier, tighter, and more imaginative rhythm playing.
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Metal Rhythm Guitar Workouts Vol. 2 by Richard Shaw
Take your heavy rhythm playing to the next level with Metal Rhythm Guitar Workouts Vol. 2 by Richard Shaw. This intense and highly focused course is designed for guitarists who want to develop tighter rhythm playing, sharper picking control, stronger timing, and a deeper understanding of modern metal riff construction. Across a wide range of exercises and musical ideas, this course explores everything from exotic scales and odd time signatures to aggressive tremolo-picked passages and atmospheric black metal-inspired chord work.
Whether you’re aiming to improve your precision, expand your riff vocabulary, or push your endurance as a rhythm guitarist, this course delivers practical and musical workouts that can be applied directly to your own writing and playing.
Pedal Tone Legato Riff
This lesson combines aggressive pedal tone riffing with flowing legato phrasing to create a modern metal sound that feels both technical and musical. By integrating hammer-ons and pull-offs around a repeated low-string pedal note, players learn how to create movement and tension while maintaining rhythmic consistency.
Developing this style of riffing improves left-hand coordination and builds stamina while helping players sound smoother and more fluid at faster tempos. It’s also a fantastic way to learn how modern progressive and technical metal guitarists create dynamic rhythmic phrases without relying entirely on alternate picking.
16th Note Group of Three Riff
This workout focuses on rhythmic displacement using groups of three played over a steady 16th-note pulse. The result is a syncopated and driving riffing style often used in progressive metal and djent-inspired music.
Learning this concept helps guitarists develop stronger rhythmic awareness and timing precision. It also trains the picking hand to remain locked to the groove even when accents shift across the beat. This style of rhythmic phrasing can instantly make riffs sound more advanced and unpredictable while remaining highly musical.
Phrygian Dominant & Diminished Riff
Dark and exotic sounding riffs are a huge part of modern metal, and this lesson explores the powerful combination of the Phrygian Dominant scale with diminished ideas. These sounds create tension, drama, and an unmistakably sinister atmosphere.
By studying this approach, players gain a better understanding of exotic scale application and how diminished intervals can be used to intensify riff writing. This lesson also improves fretboard visualisation and alternate picking accuracy across fast scalar passages.
Byzantine Scale with Tremolo Picking
The Byzantine scale delivers an unmistakable Eastern-inspired sound that has become a staple of extreme metal genres. Combined with relentless tremolo picking, this lesson captures the aggressive energy heard in black metal, death metal, and melodic extreme metal styles.
Working on tremolo picking improves endurance, pick control, and consistency at high speeds. The scale itself also introduces players to more unusual interval structures, helping expand songwriting possibilities far beyond standard minor scales.
Natural Harmonic Riff
This lesson explores the use of natural harmonics within heavy rhythm playing to create texture, atmosphere, and contrast. By integrating harmonics into distorted riffs, players can produce eerie and cinematic sounds that stand out in modern metal arrangements.
Learning to control harmonics cleanly develops picking accuracy and muting technique while encouraging greater dynamic control. It’s also an excellent way to make riffs sound more unique and expressive.
Tremolo & Chromatic Mediant Idea
Chromatic mediant movements create dramatic harmonic shifts often used in cinematic metal and progressive music. This lesson combines those harmonic concepts with aggressive tremolo-picked patterns to create dark, expansive sounding riffs.
Players benefit by learning how to move beyond predictable chord movements and create more sophisticated harmonic ideas in their rhythm playing. The tremolo-picked approach also sharpens right-hand stamina and accuracy.
Black Metal Minor Chords
This lesson dives into the atmospheric chord work associated with black metal rhythm guitar. Using dark minor chord voicings and sustained harmonic textures, players learn how to build immersive and emotional rhythm parts.
Studying these chord shapes improves fretboard knowledge and chord vocabulary while helping players understand how harmony can dramatically affect mood and intensity within metal songwriting.
Combining Diminished & Byzantine Ideas
Here, exotic Byzantine sounds collide with tense diminished phrasing to create truly aggressive and unpredictable riff ideas. This lesson demonstrates how combining scales and intervallic concepts can generate riffs that sound both technical and memorable.
Players will improve their scale fluency, picking precision, and compositional creativity while learning how to blend contrasting sounds into cohesive rhythm guitar parts.
G Minor Byzantine Riff
Focusing specifically on the key of G minor, this lesson develops a crushing riff built around Byzantine-inspired phrasing and rhythmic variation. The result is a heavy and dramatic metal riff that sounds both modern and exotic.
This workout strengthens timing, alternate picking control, and fretboard familiarity while showing players how to turn unusual scale ideas into practical songwriting tools.
Prog Metal 7/8 Riff (Clean)
Odd time signatures are a huge part of progressive metal, and this lesson introduces players to a clean-toned 7/8 riff designed to improve rhythmic understanding and counting accuracy.
Learning to play confidently in 7/8 helps players break out of standard rhythmic habits and develop greater versatility as musicians. The clean tone also exposes timing inconsistencies more clearly, encouraging tighter and more controlled playing.
Prog Metal 7/8 Riff (Distorted)
Building on the previous lesson, this distorted version of the 7/8 riff adds aggression, palm muting, and dynamic accents to create a fully realised progressive metal groove.
This lesson develops tight muting technique, rhythmic discipline, and the ability to maintain precision under gain-heavy conditions. It’s a fantastic exercise for players wanting to improve overall tightness and groove in modern metal settings.
Richard Shaw’s Influence and Playing Style
Richard Shaw has built a reputation as one of the UK’s most technically versatile modern metal guitarists. Known for combining extreme precision with advanced theoretical concepts, his playing draws influence from progressive metal, black metal, neoclassical guitar, and modern technical riffing styles. Throughout this course, Richard demonstrates how advanced rhythm concepts can remain musical, memorable, and practical for real-world songwriting and performance.
His teaching style focuses on breaking complex ideas into manageable exercises, helping players not only improve technique but also understand the musical reasoning behind the riffs.
Techniques Used In This Course
About The Tutor
Tutor Profile
Rich Shaw
Richard is most well known as the guitarist and co-songwriter for UK metal band, Cradle of Filth, from 2014 until 2022. In his time with the band, he co-wrote and performed on the albums ‘Hammer of the Witches’ (2015), ‘Cryptoriana - The Seductiveness of Decay’ (2017), and ‘Existence is Futile’...