amen... i combine the natural minor with half whole diminished and the harmonic minor... it just adds little filler notes in between so you have more to work with... but then again, if you use it ALL, it can sound like crap... just figure out minor and diminished spacing in between the notes and use those...

yeah its pretty vague, but the best tip is, remeber that you can use all the notes, but also remember to make it sound good. play with it alot, dont just read, actually go out and experiment.

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wow thanks for the help!
I left for a week came back and found everything I was looking for.
now when I wrie death metal I use scales (one that I found myself, don't know if it's real or not) or use my ear. Now band will play a lot more death metal in our songs. I don't care if they can't keep up; they better learn.

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The D Phrygian Dominant scale is a good scale. I use fragments from the Phrygians a lot. A Harmonic Minor does my sun-passing too. I've also used B Minor before.
Phrygians make awesome arpeggios, too! Just using some of the intervals for chord roots and then using some minor and tritone voicings, you can create some very dark arpeggios. They suit the breed of ambient death metal I tend to write in.
I recently saw the video for the song 'I, Monarch' by Hate Eternal (someone get tabbing it!) on Scuzz. The riffs are peers with the Black Death in their pestilence. Listen to that song for a fix of ideal death metal scale and chord ideas. I think they use some kind of sharp octave chords. If any of you have the Metal Trax CD that came with Metal Hammer a bit ago, it's no. 5 on there. Truly a lesson on the black theory we pursue...

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what do you do to make a scale prhygian? Yet again I my theory needs a whole shit load of work.

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just take where you want the root of the phrygian to be, and play the phrygian mode.

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To add Phrygian flavours, I usually link notes by minor and single semitone intervals. Think the last three notes of the harmonic minor scale. Or sometimes, you could play two notes adjacent to eachother then skip two and play the next two and so on. Or even try skipping one and playing two.
Skipping one makes sound more depressing and almost hispanic, whatever you call hispanic scales. I think those few seconds of acoustic playing from Dying Fetus' 'Raped On The Altar' uses a similiar scheme.

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umm, any deminished scale would work for death metal. try something like this:----7-8-0-5-7-0-3-5-0-2-3-0-3-5-0-5-7-0-7-8-0-8-10-0-12------
on any string. its a fun little riff.

No I meant what is the phrygian mode, I haven't memorized them yet; what do you flat in the scale?

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1 - b2 - b3 - 4 - 5 - b6 - b7

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Phrygian- Play any major scale shape, but start (and end) on the third note.

eg
c maj-E phryg
Amaj-C#

What scales do Suffocation use? Their death metal is always interesting and it's probably down to their scales and keys...

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I would guess some diminished workings mixed in with atonal and symmetrical type patterns.

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Replace the minor 3rd with a major 3rd to sound doubly Egyptian.
Anyone know the Locrian? I always wanted to write death in it since I discovered how rarely it is used these days (apparently)...

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Locrain Mode:

1 - b2 - b3 - 4 - b5 - b6 - b7

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Almost every death metal guitarist uses the diminished scale to some extent.
Althought O'Brien admitted in the latest Cannibal Corpse dvd that some of his riffs/solos does not match any particular scale.

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Thank you. Praise. Locrian death...

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Nice scale is like that - E-F-G#-A-B-C-D#-E - with 2 enlarged intervals between F-G# and C-D#. Not sure that I can translate it's name correctly in English but I know it as "double harmonic" scale.

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That's just the Phrygian mode with a major 3rd instead of a minor 3rd and a major 7th in place of a minor 7th. Cool scale still. Little chromatic hit if you continue into another octave.

Standard tuner are you?

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Welcome. What a good first post.
Hmmm I haven't seen any Russians here before you ... (though I'm sure there must be some)

It's essentially a harmonic minor but the 4th note is sharp and you start the scale on the 5th note, so that the three chromatic notes aren't as obvious.

And then you can take it too far by doing this:
semitone, 3xsemitone, semitone, 3xsemitone, semitone, 3xsemitone
Like E-F-G#-A-C-Db-E. You would expect it to sound extra egyptian if you were to look at the fretboard pattern, but it doesn't really. Maybe I haven't played around with it enough .... it's a bit hard to write in that 'scale'.

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