In early April, ten guitar enthusiasts were flown to Los Angeles for the lesson of a lifetime. Guitar Center and Schecter Guitar Research played host to the inaugural Master Class taught by Avenged Sevenfold’s Synyster Gates, who chose the lucky few from a pool of thousands of applicants to participate in the special event.
For over two hours students of the Master Class were treated to an intimate lesson from Gates, who spoke candidly about his start in Southern California’s punk scene and how he writes some of the most recognizable licks in hard rock and metal. Between his talks on economy picking, arpeggio, and Gypsy Jazz, Synyster indulged the group in a casual Q&A—divulging more about the SoCal native’s start in the music industry and how he is gearing up for the biggest festival season in Avenged’s history.
Here are the interview highlights from the evening’s Master Class:
If you could do one Master Class with any guitar player when you were learning, who would you want it to be?
Probably Dimebag Darrell. That was my guy.
When you were learning guitar and theory, did you learn it on your own or when you were at the Musician’s Institute?
M.I. is incredible, absolutely incredible. If you’re going to go there, go there and do it right. I took the Encore Program, which I’m not not saying is the wrong program, it’s just the one where you can walk in do a bunch of shit—anything you want. You can walk in at 12:00 and leave at 12:30, and I kind of liked that. I went in there and I studied a lot of jazz [and]I was reading a lot of books. I was reading a lot of weird shit at that time. I was just really trying to be all things at once. So, figure out what your passion is and when you go to a school like that, definitely buckle down and do that.
Having said that, I learned my theory from a very eclectic group of individuals. My father helped me learn a lot of cool songs. My cousin helped me with the Greek modes. And then MI definitely helped me a lot with listening to music and understanding what arpeggios do, and basically the importance of writing licks and listening to your ear.
What were you hoping to accomplish with the Master Class?
I just want to be the vessel for those kids. I had a loosely based curriculum I was going in with and I just wanted to answer their questions.
What were you looking for in the winners?
Creativity and technique. I wanted them to be far enough along so l could say all of this Greek horseshit and have them somewhat understand it. But I like the fact they actually did what I requested of them, which was to take an Avenged song and do something a little different.
When Avenged was starting out, were there any inklings that the sound would be so guitar driven or that you and Zacky Vengeance would become such an integral part of the band?
I don’t know if that type of perspective was there at that time, but definitely, it was a guitar driven band. When Matt writes a song, he’s writing on guitar. When Jimmy was alive he was writing for Avenged on the guitar, mainly. We borrowed elements from our old band Pinkly Smooth. We have songs like “Fiction” or “Little Piece of Heaven” are very much him on the piano doing his thing, but songs like “Brompton Cocktail” and “Afterlife” — those are very much Jimmy sitting down on the guitar. Everybody comes from a punk rock band, everybody’s had a guitar in their hand at a certain point [either] leading a band or their own entity. So it made sense. I knew it was going to be guitar oriented.
And you knew it was going to be a dual-guitar oriented band?
Not at very first, when we started writing we all liked the dueling guitars. Everything had to be harmonized. Layers and layers. I mean, if you listen to City of Evil, it’s fucking layers and layers of harmonies at all fucking times. Whether its vocals or guitar or just strings — everything was filled to the brim with harmony. So we’ve smoothed that out and filtered it out. But yeah, we always liked it whether it was Queen doing it, or Mr. Bungle, Matt’s a big Bad Religion fan, NOFX— stuff like that. It was all harmony-based. My favorite punk rock song is “Linoleum” by NOFX. That’s pure harmony, the coolest chord changes… That type of shit was completely awe-inspiring and monumental in the development of Avenged.
What about Iron Maiden or Judas Priest?
We didn’t really know about… We’re starting to get more into Priest at this point but certainly Iron Maiden. Mainly, that was Matt’s thing, which is kind of ironic because we do the whole dual thing. I came from Boston, Queen type of stuff. More punk rock-emulating vocalists and his was very much Iron Maiden, especially when we started getting more metal and especially more melodic metal as opposed to punk or hardcore.
Did you go back even further? Aerosmith, the Stones.
Absolutely. Rolling Stones came later for me. I was a Beatles guy. All of us were pretty much more along the lines of Beatles guys than we were Stones or Elvis. And if we didn’t know it we learned it, and we studied it because we thought it would be best to know of it and hopefully love it, if it was possible. The [more you know] the less your head’s up your own ass and you become less elitist, and you’re just into everything—which is how music should be listened to. It shouldn’t be listened to with disdain, you should embrace it. If it’s not your cup of tea, go somewhere else, listen to something else, but try it because you can find something that pissed you off your whole life but you can come to embrace it and love it. It’s life changing so don’t deny yourself that.
More on Page 2!
