Originally posted by concrete chaos
U can play in the same key i guess, or u can improvise or use notes which are discordant its ll in relation to what style u play and what sound u want to produce.

If I'm reading you write, you may be intrepting something for what it is not. It's not a good idea to play an E minor scale over a D minor harmony. What is actually going on when you see the first note in a solo is a second above the root of the harmonic chord is a sus2. Suspensions are exceptions to playing one of the three notes of a triad. The other being a suspension 4th, which in the second solo on Master of Puppets. Kirk plays an A over james' E, a suspension 4th that resolves to E as all suspensions do (resolve to one of the notes in a triad).

As for knowing what key someone is playing in, you have to learn your scales. Once you do, you'll be able to quickly see what scale a riff is in by it's pattern or that the notes being played all exist in one particular scale. Usually the first note played is the root of a scale, sometimes it's the fifth. Stick around the site for awhile you'll learn. The key lies in knowing your scales and key harmony.

It's sort of like this, saying the riff starts by palm muting an open E (as most metal riffs do). You can pretty much guess that the root is E. Now if the G is played in the riff, a good guess is it's in the key of E minor. If it's a G# instead, the key is E major. Two notes is usually not enough, so say the notes played in the riff are E, G, and F#, you know now it's definitely E minor cause those are the first three notes of the e minor scale. If F is played instead of F#, it's E phyrgian. E phyrgian is very popular with metallica. Just try to think of all the metallica riffs that start with E, and have F and G in them.

[Edited by noticingthemistake on 01-26-2004 at 10:44 AM]