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Introducing My First Stream! - Solo Over Sidewinder - Video Premiere

Hey guys!

So I'm beyond ecstatic announce that I'll be Premiering my New Video Series entitled 'Solo Over Sidewinder' ***1 WEEK TODAY*** LIVE ON STREAM! (6pm EST) 😍

I'll be showing all 3 videos back to back with some discussion time in between & at the end. (I won't be personally speaking live as I'm very camera shy - but I'll be there in the comments answering any questions you may have)

Here's some info on the stream:

The idea with this series is to hopefully help those struggling with Fretboard/Interval Visualisation/Improvisation, begin to be able to improvise in D minor and in particular - the Acoustic Solo section of Avenged Sevenfold's song 'Sidewinder'.

This series is designed to be suitable for all players - Beginner all the way to Advanced - as you do not need any Music Theory background to start to tackle anything in the videos. (A disclaimer for the intermediate/advanced guys - the first few videos may seem quite basic/slow moving in terms of the actual soloing - but trust the process, there's useful info from the start!)

The 3 videos will aim to teach you:

- 3 Easy to play Triad Shapes
- 3 Easy to play finger patterns
- 3 'Jazz Upgrades' to decorate your ideas


You'll also learn about Chord Tones & Inversions, so that you have more of an 'under the hood' understanding of how all of these above ideas work.

The Triad based method that I teach in this series is something that can be used in any Minor, Major, Modal, Scaler etc context, once you understand how it works. So it should hopefully give some food for thought for other musical situations!

This method is something that has personally transformed my playing the the way I view & teach the Guitar Fretboard and It's even been helping some of my student's confidently improvise in any key (even the one's who didn't have an interest before!)

So that's my sales pitch - I'll hopefully catch some of you next Thursday! 😁


Also a massive thanks to @Radu-Cristian Perde for proposing this idea to me & to @alexj for helping keep me right with planning 😊 Thanks for always looking out for us on here!

Cheers,
Chris J

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Sound of a blackhole

Good evening everyone... couldn't sleep tonight so decided to just explore the internet and I stumbled upon this: the sound of a black hole.

I have always loved the mysteries of outer space and to have this little bit of sound just blows my mind to be honest. It's sort of haunting which fits with the whole concept of a black hole. Anyways, take a quick listen and let me know what you think.

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Just a thought to share

I have done it! I made an unpopular Reddit post I got a lot of negativity for so thought I’d share it here. 😂I know it’s not unpopular here because people here give actual answers to questions.

“Telling people to practice is bad, lazy advice

Yes, practice is important to improve but whenever I see that as an answer to someone asking for advice it’s just actually not an answer at all. I’ve had that answer many times before when I asked how to do something. Practice was always the answer, no elaboration ever. Practice, practice. Okay, but practice what? People hardly ever seem to want to answer that. If you see someone play an improv on an instrument and you ask how they do that, big chance that all you get to hear is “practice” and you have to figure it out by yourself. No one HAS to give an answer, but if you do give an actual answer. For the improv example you could say “I mixed arpeggios with scales” “I used this technique”. You don’t have to write a book as an answer, just give some tag words for people to look further. Beginners need to know where to start looking and may not know those words, that way they’ll eventually find out what to practice, and how.

Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice make permanent. Practice doesn’t improve, efficient practice improves.”

Getting better isn’t about the amount of hours you put into it, but it’s about the effort. It’s about what you practice. If a beginner wants to learn a specific technique, but doesn’t know the name of it the answer “practice” doesn’t get them anywhere. If you’d tell them what the technique is however, they know what to look for and what to practice. Just a one word answer would be good enough. You can’t practice something if you don’t know it exists.

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🚨 REMINDER FOR TOMORROW 🚨

It's Friday! Congratulations you made it to the end of the week!!

And as an extra treat for the weekend, I wanna remind you that PG will be going live tomorrow and yes, it's still free!
So take your boyfriend/girlfriend or Cat or dog or all of the above and come join us for a great time, you don't wanna miss that!


- Rad

A few of the big things holding me back

Ive wanted to make this post for a few days since there are a few things (albeit a little different) that have been things that I feel I need advice on. The first is more of a personal thing and the other two is to do with playing but they do all link.

The first thing, which a few of you will be aware of if you have seen my last posts is that I am very hard on myself. Its something that doesn't just happen in my guitar playing but in nearly all aspects of my life. I usually find that everything I play just sounds bad, it sounds bland, uninspired and sloppy. I have had people tell me in the past that I am a good player and I can admit that there are some aspects that I am fairly good at such as technique and inflection but overall I hate the sound of everything I play and it makes me want to practice and practice to the point where I am happy with it but I feel like I don't know when that will be since I have lost sight of where I want to be.

The second thing holding me back is that I dont know how to set myself goals to achieve. I dont know what I want to achieve anymore because I feel like I dont know where I want to be in my playing. I feel quite lost in my journey since I havent had a big ounce of motivation for a while so I end up saying stuff like "I want to sound like Petrucci" or "I want to be able to have feel like Steve Vai" and other generalised statements which dont have any steps to achieving.

The third which is a playing thing I noticed, I find that when playing lead lines I struggle to get from point A to B without playing all the notes inbetween. This I think mainly comes from having 0 knowledge of intervals but Im not sure. I could end up playing two notes that don't go together at all and don't sound musical when they are played back and forth. This is the reason why I find myself just slowly working my way up and down the scale playing every note, I will go up and down and add inflections but I never really miss notes or string skip because I don't know what notes Im playing and whether they work and I think it would hep to spice my playing up if I knew this.

I dont really know how half these posts read because Its just me listing all the reasons I hate my playing essentially and just asking for ways to finally be happy with it but honestly I just need any advice. Maybe not even theory/technique based but just someone to talk to about the mental battles that go on when playing/learning.

Starting bits.

Hey lovely helpful and knowledgeable people.
I have been researching (googling, let's face it... googing.. no literature review is going on here) for like a month and I've decided to buy the Synyster Custom S black and gold gloss along with the boss katana 50 amp to start my brand new to guitar adventure. I have a very personal reason for my desire to learn right now and being a ridiculously unashamed Syn fangirl for like 20 years, a Custom S is my weapon of choice and lots of the lovely people here seem to recommend this amp for home playing.
Anyhow... other than a cable for connecting guitar and amp, picks and a protective case and a pair of headphones do I need anything else? Anything at all? It's all in my basket ready to checkout.
I'm learning from scratch via the school here which is pretty awesome. I'm doing it alongside returning to nursing (I'm almost there!!!) and I'm so excited. If not somewhat overwhelmed.
Thank you for your patience and kindness with me. I love it here 😍💙🖤

  • Question
Question on soloing

Hey guys. So I've been trying to better my soloing lately with a lot of Metallica songs. But what keeps throwing me off is technique wise, how do you skip between 2 strings rapidly? For example here I took the tabs I'm referencing for "Wherever I may roam". The highlighted portion. (about 4:50 into the song) demonstrates what's throwing me off. I can't figure out how I'm supposed to place my fingers on the fretboard to be able to play this portion. Nor can I figure out the picking technique used here.

If anyone would be so kind as to show me how you would play this, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

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Question on Modes

So I recently picked up a book that goes over using modes and scales to make your own runs and shred and all that fun stuff. I got through a decent chunk of the first lesson. In the first lesson they use the G Ionian mode to practice with. My question is that if Ionian is just the mode and G is just the key could I use that mode pattern on a different key and get something like B Ionian? I think I’m starting to understand the patterns more but I struggle with the music theory.
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Two Fancy Dudes #1

Weekend is here folks! Hope you had a great week.

My boy @Jamie London and I wanted to start a new show for Syntv. We're still figuring out the kinks but in essence, we just wanna come and talk about some of the news that interest us and just have a nice chill conversation.

Our first show will be tomorrow at 13h PST/16h EST/22h CET/. We will be talking about superhero movies, Warner Bros cancellations and much more so without further ado, we hope to see you tomorrow for the first edition of TWO FANCY DUDES!!!

Link: https://live.audent.io/syntv/channels/rad-synner/streams/fcd7f33b-976e-4382-815a-4a7f50d8f321

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  • Question
Syn's Fingering for Nightmare Intro

Hey I am a new guitarist with a very tiny hand. I can play the intro great when sitting but when standing my hand is so small i can reach the note with my pinky even with my thumb all the way around the fret board. I am using Songsters tabs which might not be perfect but not too bad and it says to do the intro starting at the 12th fret of the D(not the low D string the High one aka string 4) string. Is my trouble simply that my hand is a bit small for this and I need to fgure it out on my own? Or is it a tablature mistake. I notice Syn and Zacky do a lot of sliding during live preformaces.

Football...

Hello lovely people of Synner... so, I'm in the UK and went to watch my football team Bristol Rovers today and Runaway came on by Del Shannon and not Avenged. I almost cried ha ha. So rarely do I prefer covers but I just love everything that Avenged Sevenfold do...

Anyhow... I'm in a jolly mood this evening after our great start to the season and wondered if anyone else was a football fan? I'm lucky that my team are The Pirates so skulls etc are part of the territory 🙂

More guitars

So I purchased another guitar today lol Now I have 3. One of the guitars I don't play at all. It was given to my by the band Issues and it's autographed and everything. The one I have been play is the Schecter Omen. The new guitar is a LTD EC-10 with upgraded pickups from a LTD EC-256. Plays like a dream and super sensitive for being passive. There will be a learning curve but I'm excited for it.
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Roadie Job?

So I absolutely love music, and I love metal most of all. I eventually want to make it big with a band, but not sure where to start, lol. So I was thinking, “What if I somehow got a job as a roadie for a band?” I think it would be a good way to get a little experience in the industry I want to be in, but at the same time, it kinda feels like a bit of a ridiculous idea.

Anyone ever heard of sammy boller on here?

I met this guy Sammy boller last year when my band opened up for him in New Hampshire. He is a phenomenal guitar player and was super nice. We exchanged cds and tshirts. He has a solo project where all his music is instrumental and he also has another band that I can't remember the name of at the moment. Anyways He came out with a new single today and I thought it sounded really cool. Give it a listen.
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