At the same time, there are metal licks I can nail down that he cannot, and he is totally at peace with that. He could definitely dedicate an hour to that particular lick and get damn close, but its not his style. He knows the fretboard inside and out, and to watch him play is amazing.
Its so easy these days to go on YouTube, and be totally astonished by any number of guitarists. It can seem like everybody is a better guitarist than you. Another great example of even faster playing is Synyster Gates of Avenged Sevenfold. The run from to is incredibly fast, so many individually picked notes in just five seconds.
My last example of naturally gifted shredders is Herman Li of DragonForce. I mean, its just utterly astounding. Sitting down to try and learn that song on guitar is gonna take you a long ass time. I never did perfect that solo, its just above and beyond my willingness to sit for hours and hours going over licks. Eventually, as a guitarist, you learn that everyone has their own playing styles, strengths, and weaknesses. The same goes for you.
Synyster Gates can play his sweeps like nobodies business, but can he play that Jazz riff you wrote last week, with the same phrasing, accent, and overall feel that you can? He could probably get pretty close, but chances are, you would hear the difference. Their licks should influence your style, thats how progress is made. Probably not. Some of those guitarists are more influential to his style than others.
Evan Ball: It's so awesome. I was prepping for this interview, so I looked in there and I had to pry myself away just so I could continue prepping, but so much cool stuff in there.
Maybe I'll let you talk about it. It's a partnership between you and your dad. Synyster Gates: Right, right, yeah. Very exciting. We're actually doing a full renovation right now. Some of the code, source code, got hijacked. Building anything is next level. You have to be super passionate about it, and then when it does come to fruition, your passions just blossom and then you see these kids having opportunities that you never had growing up and that's been the main thing.
Synyster Gates: It's really not about or so lessons that we have, although I'm proud of that number especially for a free school, but it's all about the community. Anybody who says you can learn something or play like somebody else in 23 videos is either lying or completely ignorant to the fact that there's so much nuance and so many relatable gems that one teacher can't teach, and so what we've really tried to implement was putting a teaching hat on all of the students of all levels, shapes, and sizes.
I've found that beginner students have been the greatest contributors to a lot of the stuff and that's what you hope for. Synyster Gates: The beginner students are sharing their eureka moments that I've long forgotten with all these other kids.
There's a few different ways of how you go about these eureka moments that resonate differently with all these different kids, and all of a sudden you're expediting growth in their formative years, which is huge. They're not going to have to unlearn any bad habits like bad timing, because they all know to play with a metronome and that's the only way, and there's so many more examples of just really fundamental tricks and techniques that you'll alleviate so much future pain and suffering unlearning these things.
Synyster Gates: The community has been it, and so that's where we're really focusing our growth and consideration and time. It's really paying off, we're seeing some insane turns of events here and it's only going to get better. Evan Ball: Is there a common stumbling block that you can think of that comes to mind that keeps coming up in the community?
Synyster Gates: Yeah, just frustration that it takes too long. If there's one thing, and it's the first time I've actually ever said that, it's a great question because there's a maybe a bunch but the basic thing that frustrates people is not getting there as fast or a regression but pretty much the same thing.
I'm putting in the hours, I'm putting in this, I'm putting in that," and there's usually two variables.
Synyster Gates: It's, you have to enjoy the process and understand that if it was easy everybody would do it, and it's not. It's one of the hardest things in the world. Doing anything well is the hardest thing in the world. Then, two, you're probably doing it wrong. If you're never getting to that point, if you're spending a year on a major scale and you haven't figured out how to run through a major scale, you're probably practicing it wrong or don't understand the application of the major scale.
Synyster Gates: That's what the community is there to do is to support, let you know that these are the horror stories that come with it. Then, also, "Wow, this thing completely reinvented my approach to this and that, and this is how I got it. This was my eureka moment. It's not the videos. I haven't even jumped into the community yet, so I'll just hype the videos real quick, because that's what I noticed.
It's just a treasure trove of content, of value. Synyster Gates: Thank you, yeah. Evan Ball: It made me want to go back to square one. There are so many gaps in my playing and my knowledge. Synyster Gates: Well, that's it. Yeah, you should, it'd be fun. Evan Ball: All these videos sound interesting, so I want to go back and work through it.
Synyster Gates: Yeah, I love to hear that, I love to hear that. Evan Ball: Your dad does the bulk of those teaching videos, and then you offer up a ton of licks, different riffs, different techniques, so it's a really cool combination of you guys. I assume he was your first teacher? Synyster Gates: Yeah, absolutely, first, second, and probably last teacher. We have a blues series coming out and he's doing this whole blues series, so the whole first videos were a collaboration. Then I just said, "Just make sure you get some chords in on this and make sure you get a little out, because blues lends itself to jazz very much so, so get a little depth here harmonically.
It's just so deep. Synyster Gates: The thing about blues that you don't realize is it's everywhere. It's in pop, it's in jazz, it's in blues, it's in country, it's everything, it's everything. If you want to play minor blues, you can shift that pentatonic up and then you're playing major blues. It's all very, very relative, it's all very basic yet very pervasive throughout any genre of music. Evan Ball: Being of two different generations, I assume you guys grew up learning some different stuff, but does he ever now come to you for lessons on metal riffs?
Synyster Gates: He used to, and then he outgrew me. We outgrew each other at different points in time. He's always told, really, I very much appreciated stories about him listening and saying, "Oh, that's a pretty cool thing," and then going and working it out to the point where he couldn't work things out that I was working on, when I was going to MI and different things like that.
He'd ask me, "What the fuck are you playing there? Synyster Gates: I think the thing that I've really appreciated about him is that he approaches music from a songwriter's perspective, which is what I've always tried to do which I think he appreciates about me. You've got to focus on motif and melody and harmony. The solo, the attempt, is that the solo's as strong as the melody and lyrical content of the song.
You want to write a great song first and then write a great solo second that completely complements your hopefully great song. Evan Ball: Yeah, yeah. How old were you when you started? Synyster Gates: I believe I was eight or nine years old when I Evan Ball: Oh, okay, pretty early. Synyster Gates: Yeah, when I was first serious, music was in the house.
I think I picked up a guitar as early as four or five or something like that or maybe even earlier. My dad was a musician well before I was born, a successful musician. He was playing with Frank Zappa probably five or six years before I was born. He was 17 playing with the absolute cats, so music was all that I knew growing up. I always knew that that's what I would do for better or for worse at some capacity.
Yeah, it was always there for me. Evan Ball: If you look back at the earliest Avenged Sevenfold albums, do you feel like you've continued to progress playing-wise? If so, in what ways? Synyster Gates: Yeah, definitely. I've definitely attempted at least to broaden my horizons, always trying to do something a little bit different. The one thing that I do pride myself in is that I'm a pretty well-rounded player.
The problem with that is that you don't want to be a dilettante or a mere dab hand, as they say, at a bunch of different styles, so you have to know who you are and what your DNA is, but I love jazz, I love country, I love classical. Synyster Gates: There's so many different techniques that apply to all these different things, so you might find all of the necessary metal techniques or you feel that they're the necessary metal techniques in your early 20s if that's what you're going for, but then you want to be innovative on those things and then that takes 10 years of just strictly devoting, applying yourself to the practice of innovation, and then you have to get fucking lucky to do something that nobody has ever done before.
That's, for me, an important thing to pursue, and I'm not so sure that I've done that, even, but I pursue it. Synyster Gates: You won't get that way if you spread yourself too thin, but if you don't apply jazz, if you don't apply country, and you don't apply the blues and all these different genres and immerse yourself in it, then you're just going to be a replica of yourself and others and you'll never be you truly, and that's the main thing. Being exposed to all that music, I was just so fortunate that my dad played everything in the world.
Jazz, I didn't have to pick up jazz by force, I just naturally loved it because it was in my house playing since I was a little kid, same with classical, country, the Beatles, whoever. Evan Ball: Yeah, that's so cool that you can practice in all those different genres and then bring it to a band like Avenged Sevenfold. Synyster Gates: Yeah, that's the true gift is that I can apply all those things in my day job. Evan Ball: Do you practice a lot now? Synyster Gates: A lot less, to be honest.
Evan Ball: Wait till your next kid comes. Synyster Gates: I know. Literally, it's kids, it's business, I'm really obsessed with songwriting. I write music all the time, constantly writing music. I'm constantly playing through different tones. I'm obsessed with the Axe-Fx. There's so many unique different colors to paint with there that it's like beginning to play guitar all over, so I'm extremely excited about that. As far as the quest for innovation, songwriting, and taste, that's still there, but scales and jazz harmony, classical harmony, the stuff that I was obsessed with a year ago, for the previous five years it was all about that, there hasn't been much of that at all, to be honest.
Evan Ball: What do you like to do apart from music, hobbies, sports, TV shows you like? Synyster Gates: Man, so many wonderful things in my life have fallen to the wayside for family and music, but it's great. I loved jujitsu, I did that for about five years, and I was excelling and doing really well and then this very green, very small white belt just about broke my thumb, landed on it, and he couldn't have been more than lbs.
He's a little kid and it was irresponsible of me to throw this little kid around and just working all my brand new moves, and it bit me in the ass, so I couldn't play guitar for two months and I was just completely swollen shut, for lack of a better term, and I couldn't move my thumb. Synyster Gates: Then my feet started hurting when I was doing Muay Thai and so all those bruiser manly-man hobbies fell to the wayside, but surfing has been my side piece for my entire life.
I love to surf and that's not because I've gotten hurt or this or that, it's just because time with the school and Avenged Sevenfold and all these things, family, it just doesn't allow for My mornings need to be spent with my kid and my future kid in the next couple of fucking days.
Evan Ball: Do you have a solo, song, album, maybe all three that you're most proud of? Synyster Gates: I'm very proud of a lot of the work on Stage. It's been a couple years since I heard Sunny Disposition, and I just heard that the other day and it made me laugh. That solo just made me laugh. I had the biggest smile because I knew I was just having so much fucking fun in the studio just writing the most ridiculous little fucking excerpt of music, and that song is the most ridiculous little excerpt of music, a part from The Stage.
It just reminded me of a very, very happy time where art wasn't sacrificed at all. Evan Ball: Yeah, that's cool. We'll link to that in show notes. What gauge strings do you use?
Synyster Gates: , historically, although we're going to see what happens, maybe Evan Ball: 7, people, do you hear that? Synyster Gates: Yeah, because we're working on some funny business here. I think we were talking about it a little bit earlier. We got a fretless, headless eight-string with a high A string and a low G string, so the middle of that is your typical standard six-string, and then we have a low G and a high A.
Evan Ball: You keep the , a skinny top, heavy bottom in the middle. Synyster Gates: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then maybe even, I like the lower strings pitch-wise to be a little bit thinner, too, so I might have two 52s, I don't know. I love dropping the 52 to an A. It's punchy. Evan Ball: Do you play Cobalts or the standard Slinkys nickel-wound? Synyster Gates: I've been playing Paradigms recently.
Evan Ball: Paradigms, okay. Synyster Gates: They keep the tonality and they're just strong as fuck, they're incredible. Evan Ball: Nice. Can you name three albums that were influential for you, or however many you want? Synyster Gates: Oh, my God. Hell, yeah. Bungle's eponymous record, the self-titled is a masterpiece and that just changed my entire life probably for the worse, definitely not for the better. Evan Ball: I don't think so. Synyster Gates: That is my go-to.
That is the quintessential melange of depth meets most approachable melody. It's just so melodic. It'll take you a week or two to get there if you're more of a pop guy, but I promise you you'll get there, and that fucking record is nonstop. Synyster Gates: My north star as a whole is the Beatles.
My north star individually is Paul McCartney. Pick a Beatles record, I don't care if it's early, middle, or late-stage Beatles. It's all just masterpiece harmony, melodic tension release, fucking brilliance. I'd have to say that Abbey Road fucking stole my heart but, yeah, and then third Evan Ball: Was your dad a huge Beatles guy?
Synyster Gates: Oh, yeah, both of our favorite bands, for sure, for sure. Synyster Gates: Sgt. Pepper's, absolute masterpiece, I do a lot of studying with that record, but I think Abbey Road just speaks to me a little bit more. I love the adventurous nature of the medley and the ending and it's just incredible. Dime just, how he expressed himself, I still don't get it. There's a lot of things that you can mimic or maybe think that you can mimic musically if you spent enough time.
Evan Ball: Dimebag, huge inspiration for you. Synyster Gates: For sure, for sure. What do you take from him? If he feels it, it's just there. There's no block from mind to tips of his fingers. It's just there, he absolutely commands the guitar.
Evan Ball: Are you picturing solos when you say that? Synyster Gates: Everything. Evan Ball: Everything? Synyster Gates: Absolutely everything, riffs, solos, yeah. Evan Ball: Yeah, so creative and melodic on his solos. Synyster Gates: Insane, yeah. Evan Ball: Note selection. Evan Ball: All right, do you have a favorite social media platform, or how should people find out what's going on?
Synyster Gates: I guess I do. I'm definitely more familiar with Instagram, although my last post was a couple of months ago and it was this year-old fucking shredder kid, Jayden Tatasciore? I know I'm pronouncing that wrong, but, yeah, year-old kid. I think he's on Rock of Ages in Australia right now, but just he played one of my hardest solos in Not Ready to Die, crazy sweeps and weird things going on as well as legato.
So my hope is that kids help each other, and hopefully they can make a little money, if they wanna do a Skype lesson or something with somebody. Another big part of the school is the ability to participate in competitions.
There will be grand prizes such as flying you out and putting you up in a cool hotel in Huntington Beach and we can hang out and just talk shop, and go get some food and have a really immersive, in-depth experience. All the way to personal Skype lessons, to answering customised questions, to free shirts. And always very available to help me. I knew what I was going to do since my earliest memories, because that was my environment — music, and specifically the guitar.
He learned thousands of songs, between playing studios and touring with people, to doing Top 40 stuff — he really has a very deep well of knowledge and experience.
He is a huge contributor to the depth and the scope of this school. So you wanna start someone. So they can profit off of this platform, and not just contribute, but hopefully create or supplement their career with this stuff. So trying to make it all-encompassing.
I went to school to be a studio musician, and my father was an incredibly successful studio musician.
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