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Cliff Burton

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'Master of Metal' was written to represent Cliff Burton, the legendary Metallica bassist who recorded with the group on their first three albums. Cliff was an integral part of the band and was largely responsible for their use of irregular time signatures, harmony guitar lines and the use of different musical styles within one composition. This fast rock track contains all of those elements, alongside a lengthy bass solo which features many of the hallmarks of Cliff’s playing.

Don’t forget to hit the Download Resources button above to get the PDF transcription and the audio files for this piece (available to subscribers only).

This course contains the following videos, each of which can be selected from the video player above:

1 – ‘Master of Metal’ Play-Through

This video is a demonstration of ‘Master of Metal’, performed on a Zon Sonus bass.

2 – Course Overview

This video gives a brief overview of the course.

3 – Intro and A Section

In this video we’ll be working through the short two-bar Intro section, followed by the main riff that is played throughout the A Section. This lesson covers bars 1-15.

4 – B Section

This lesson covers the B section of the piece, which features a simple line which supports some harmony guitar lines. This lesson covers bars 16-23.

5 – C Section

In this video we’ll be looking briefly at the C Section, where we re-use the riff from the A section, but without the 5-8 bar. This lesson covers bars 24-31.

6 – D Section (Part 1)

In this lesson we’ll be working through the opening section of the bass solo. This lesson covers bars 32-39.

7 – D Section (Part 2)

In this lesson we’ll be looking at the second part of the bass solo, which contains an arpeggio-based line similar to parts that Cliff played on his bass solo ‘(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth’ from the first Metallica album. This lesson covers bars 40-49.

8 – D Section (Part 3)

This lesson covers the next part of the bass solo, which features some lead guitar-like lines which are played in the upper register. This lesson covers bars 50-57.

9 – D Section (Part 4)

This video covers the final part of the bass solo, which is bars 58-69.

10 – E Section

In this lesson we’ll be looking at the E section of this piece. This is a new part, with a new key, new time signature and a new bassline. This lesson covers bars 70-85.

11 – F Section

This lesson covers the final section of this piece, which features a challenging unison riff that is played with the guitars. This lesson covers bars 86-93.

12 – Tone

In this final video of the course I’ll be talking about Cliff Burton’s tone and offering some advice on how you can achieve something similar.