I don’t compose before recording typically because I think improvising smaller studio settings strikes a note on your style of music instrumentation.
I do compose before the recording session if it is usually a tighter list to go into the studio with.

For example: graphic design for music is usually the first thing before either composing or recording, and even samples. So I’ll go with those first before laying out any thing worth recording or bulks of notes and writings.

Got really familiar with guitar pro. Programming your own drums is the way to go if you are a solo artist. GarageBand has a decent drummer and you can even makes simple progressions.

So for style I’ll lay it out with either samples or graphics then pick which instrument is best for harboring a tone for either going all the way down the set list or maybe for a really tasty solo being planned to be spawned out for my heavier stuff.

Never like to have a project not being used for more than a month usually.

Post your writing tricks, tone setters, or even striking styles you’ve learned over the course of being in the fam.
I’ll post some examples later just trying to start the thread rn.

Example: I’ll do a solo first for the graphic I posted below…

other examples, if it’s a tasty solo I’ll do it last after the instrumental is done

So recently I’ve been saving for his custom-s but I want to know is it that much better then just to the basic signature model?

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to put the spotlight on my boy @Christian Schulze AKA CJ! I chose him as the spotlight student simply because he always comes in and brings his positive attitude, advice, knowledge, wisdom and always brightens our days with it! He has been a longtime member and we hope he knows how much we fucking appreciate him.

I'm half assuming he's sleeping right now so hopefully this will be a cool surprise for him when he wakes up tomorrow morning but yeah! I just wanted to show my appreciation for him and I invite you all to join me in that!

- Rad Synner

Hey fam!

I'm gonna spend an hour or so working on the homework Papa Gates recommended for Lesson 42 tomorrow around 1 EST. Bring your guitars and spend time practicing with me, or just stop by and hit up the chat - whatever works. See you tomorrow!

xoxox ML

So with Covid and all, things have been all sorts of fucked up. Plagued with delays and lack of production in everything. From my career side in the automotive world to my passion in music.
I ordered this beauty about 5 months ago and today is finally the day! New guitar day!
introducing my new Schecter E-1 Special Edition

I’ve entered and watched some videos in here a couple months ago. I used VPN to load all these videos. And it worked. But now I tried to load these videos and it didn’t work. Could you help me to get through this ? Thanks.

Hello everyone! I hope y'all have a great day so far!

So I come with not 1 but 2 announcement for streams that I have cooking for y'all...

First, for those who like to travel to a Galaxy far far away from a long time ago... @megalizzie, @Jeremy Healey and myself decided to discuss the recently released ''Book of Boba Fett'' on stream with y'all to share some thoughts, what we loved and what we didn't and just discuss Star Wars as a whole! So get up to the date with it and come join the discussion with us!!!

This will be Friday February 18th at 17h (EST)



Secondly, I am also announcing my second instalment of ''The Rad Synner Show''!

My special guest will be none other than our very own @Dominik Gräber!!! We'll be having a nice discussion about him, his leather work at Gräber Leather, how he does it and much more! When I had the idea for the show, to me it was always important to also highlight members of the community and their different talents and what Dom does with leather is just absolutely incredible and I just definitely wanted to know more about it!

Tune in Sunday February 20th at 13h (EST)!




I'll see y'all on SynTv!!!

- Rad Synner

I'm beginner and taking short classes at school... But we were all taught songs right from the start- and frets, chords, ect. Only along the way.

Guys, can someone tell me why this happens= when i play two notes together on the guitar with distortion it sounds very strange. Not when doing unison bends. For example, if i bend the 14th fret of g string by a whole step and play the 15th fret of b and e strings, it sounds strange. I can't think of another word

So my new custom will be arriving soon.my question is. Does any of you who have synyster gates custom gold/black stripes. Does your gold hardver start to get off? Or is it still as the first day you got it?

I am in a metal band. I have searched myself but I don't have so much experience with chosing a new guitar. I am thinking of a guitar with high gain pickups within the price range of 900 dollars. Any suggestions?

Hello everyone! I recently downloaded this app and I am currently a Synyster Gates School student (I enrolled a long while back but only did the first few lessons, and then stopped). This is also my very first post on this platform. So, I’m still getting used to some of the features. I would love to connect with you guys here, so hopefully making my first thread and engaging with others will push me in that direction. Here is what I want to say briefly: I have always played guitar, but only chords to my favorite songs; I never really considered myself that good, but I am changing that. I understand that everyone here has gone through some form of blockage when it comes to doing some routine. I’ve come to a point in my life where I really want to express what I feel about certain topics to the world. I feel this course will push me to a point where I will gladly call myself a Synner when I have completed the course. I have to put myself in the ring and discipline myself to get better at guitar so I can start making music and the like. I hope to talk to whoever reads this. I also hope you Synners share your stories; I’ll be searching. Let’s get it.

Olá, sou Bruno Daniel, moro no Brasil.
Emsou muito fã do Synyster Gates. Queria saber a possibilidade de deixar uma legenda nas aulas. Gostaria de aprender com este grande mestre, mas infelizmente não falo o idioma inglês.

It there a simple way to remember which Caged scale shape belongs to which chord?

Like a mnemonic. I used this for the order of modes for example:
I don't particularly like modes a lot.
The first letter stand for the mode name.

Chords are more than just a shape, and there's a lot of them.
Once you've passed the cowboy chords, the 7ths, 6th, the whole number of pi, and perhaps more random chord shapes the possibilities of combining them are endless. You need to learn how to use them too, which can be pretty difficult.

Most articles you'll find about learning chords are focussed at beginners. They talk about learing caged, triads, and understanding chordstructure. I'm talking about learning chords after understanding the basic theory behind it, and actually using them.

So back to the title; in your experience, what's the best way to learn chords?
Is there a recommended order? Do you prefer to learn them one by one (one chord in all shapes), or per shape (one shape with chord variations)? Don't hold back on the details

On my journey of nurturing my ear I decided to do something I did back in my days of university (I’m dating myself….):

I wrote down a bunch of bands of which I liked a couple of songs of and wanted to explore their entire studio catalog or discography. I wanted to hear the artists evolution of over time and thus I did with a bunch of bands.

After doing that during University I stopped for years and occasionally heard an album here and there, but I mostly stuck to songs.

For a year now I have been compiling artists that I want to listen to, amongst them suggestions of fellow Synners, PG (The blues masterclass “homework”) and of course Syn’s Album’s of the month Artists.

After hearing about the passing of THE Guitar God that was Edward Lodewijk Van Halen I knew that I needed to pay my respects.

I tried learning a song…but I was quickly reminded that I was trying to learn an EVH song…..so mission failed.

Then I thought of other ways to pay tribute and I noticed that I only heard the hits of Van Halen, but never their discography like I used to do. And thus, here we are!

Over the last couple of weeks, I listened to Van Halen’s Discography during work and would like to give my 2 Cents on it.

***Disclaimer***

Mind you that I was listening to the albums during work, which is the worst way to listen to an album since you cannot appreciate the music the entire way and as a musicophile I need to say that. Music should never be background noise and if you use it as that…you are not fully listening. But as modern life is…there never seems to be time to fully devote yourself to the listening of an entire album or our attention span never allows us (talking about myself as well here) to fully listen to it as our main activity. Yet, while listening to the discography in the background, certain songs stand out to me and it’s those songs that I would like to highlight.

**Disclaimer over***


So, the mighty Van Halen’s discography…..where to begin? First Album of course….duh!

1978 Van Halen

You press play and immediately get hit by one of the most Iconic songs ever….Running with the Devil…followed by arguably the most famous guitar song, a song that blew the mind of the masses and guitarist to come. I’m talking about the mighty Eruption, trademark of Eddies guitar acrobatic skills.

To sum it up, this album is a Masterpiece, rarely have I heard a first album by a band that has as many iconic songs as this one. I would like to highlight:

Ain’t talking about love; Jamie’s Cryin’ and my special favorite of this album Little dreamer.

1979 Van Halen II

How do you follow up such a heavy hitter?

I must say, Van Halen II has several songs that stood out to me, and considering that they made their second album only a year after the first one that is a huge plus.

Songs that really stood out to me where:

Dance the Night away (I mean just listen to the “solo” part those harmonics….god); Spanish fly an instrumental spiritual successor to Eruption I would say; D.O.A a heavy hitter!

And finally, my favorite track of the album and I believe my favorite Van Halen song Beautiful Girls, it is just such a fun song that picks up my spirit, and the Chorus I guess:

Here I am, ain't no man of the world, no
All I need is a beautiful girl
Ah, yeah beautiful girls!

I love the riff (Like I literally headbang to it; my god what a mighty Riff) and the lyrics…what a Spirit booster!!!!


1980 Women and Children First

1981 Fair Warning

1982 Diver Down

These 3 albums were release in a span of 3 consecutive years, and considering that Van Halen made their debut album in 1979 I sounded to me that the band was running out of steam. Not to knock these albums, I am just being honest with my opinion.

Very few songs stood out to me, it sounded very much uninspired to me and remember this is me passively listening I most certainly can be wrong, I probably would like more songs if I took the time to attentively listen to them. Of the three albums I got few highlights:

Mean Street and Unchained from Fair Warning

Cathedral of Diver down, again a spiritual successor of Eruption and very lovely, Eddie made the guitar sound like a Violin and in a beautiful way too.

Since so many people made wonderful post about me when I was the admin on the school, I am now doing the same thing for my girl @Alicia Willis . She has worked with so many people now and has made wonderful posts and has even taken a mighty stance against online bullying. I just want to openly thank her for really taking my spot and taking it even further than I could. She has asked me many questions to make sure that she can do this the best she can. Also, she has taken care of the backline work that you all don't see in the wee hours of the night when she could be spending time with her family.

While I write my music, she writes emails.

While she is answering all of the questions about the contest, I am able to dig into my guitar with Holly for hours a day to make my dreams come true now. It has been amazing with the transition that she and I have worked on together. I am very glad to see that so many people have accepted her so well and I hope they continue to do so and give her the respect she deserves.

It is not an easy role to fill. I will let you all know that all of the stuff she does, you only see about 20% of it here. Alicia, my dearest peach. You have no idea what gift you gave me taking over this role. While you answer questions in your private messages and you help students get on board, I am having meetings with Bill about our next song. I can live my dreams because of you. And I just wanted to let you know that I am so proud of you and I knew more than ever I was going to make the right choice . I made the right choice for sure.

I have already seen how hard you are working especially with all the questions that you have asked me to make sure things run smoothly. I just wanted to let you know publicly that you are doing a damn good job, and even better than I did. I just wanted to say that I love you.

Your Midwest Cat Queen

Hello, I’m a full time transcriber and wanted to share these tips on transcribing that helped me when learning. This was authored by Russ Elton (Trivium’s official transcriber) and he helped train me until I was ready to transcribe on my own. I‘ll also answer any questions any of you might have regarding it. I’d figured this would be better as a new thread as it is pretty long.

1. You need Amazing Slow Downer and/or RiffStation. These apps let you slow songs down w/o affecting pitch, add vocal remover, separate the audio by channel, change pitch to whatever you want [so you don't have to retune your guitar], etc. They are fundamental and will help you a lot.
2. This may seem obvious but when you're trying to find a note, play along with the note until the two notes blend into each other. Just like when you're tuning your guitar and you hit the 5th fret on low E and open A ... if they aren't matching, you'll hear the in/out sound of the dissonance. Once they're both in tune, you hear it blend into each other perfect. The same will happen when you tab. I wasn't kidding when I said I started out by slowing songs down note for note ... I had them VERY slow so I could do this trick.
3. If you think you have the riff down but it doesn't sound exactly like the studio when you play it, then you're probably missing something. In the past I would think maybe it's the tone, or maybe another instrument is making it sound different .... but I'd eventually find the mistake and then it would sound perfect. With few exceptions, if what you're playing doesn't sound quite right then it's probably not.
4. Search for videos of the original guitarist playing the riff/solo. The closer to the date of the studio album the better because even pros will forget or play things a little differently as time goes by. Keep in mind things could be different live due to positioning if the guitarist is also singing or something. AND, some guitarists do multiple takes in the studio so when in doubt, go with the studio if you definitely hear an open string or slide, etc.
5. Until you get the ability to pick out separate notes in a chord, first try to find the main sound [root] of the chord. If the chord is x54, you should be able to hunt around and hear that x57 sounds pretty good. But then, as I mentioned in point #3, try different chords based on that D note until it sounds perfect. Try x53, x54, x55, x58, etc. Over time you'll be able to hear that higher note and not have to guess as much.
6. After you've figured a riff out, listen to it again near full speed and follow along with your tab. Sometimes when you listen slow you may miss things that are obvious when they're near full speed. One example for me was in Metallica's "Dyers Eve". There's a part between riffs where, because I had it very slow, I heard 5-6 notes descending in a scale pattern. After speeding it up, it was just a slide down the A string. Usually this trick will help you with positioning though. Something like a 3-4 note pattern that repeats sounds more obvious fast.
7. It can be harder to distinguish notes as they get pretty low, like the first few frets on a 7-string. Sometimes it helps to change the pitch +5 semi-tones and listen again.
8. For positioning, listen for things like a note ringing over the next few notes or little shift sounds/slide noises/quick pull-offs, etc. A lot of times that helps lock something in position and then you can work backwards from there (i.e. if this is definitely in the 15th fret position, then previous lick is probably close to that).

I've been trying to make space on my laptop and phone. Was thinking about what I should keep and could do without, cause like maybe some things are nice to keep for different reasons. Maybe you guys could suggest some reasons

Right now I just have one folder where I put everything and most are unnamed and I think there are many doubles by mistake, it's really chaotic.

Recently I deleted my old YouTube account and restarted it with the same name, kind of a mistake cause I had a lot of favorited videos that I'll probably forget and not come across again.

Also I deleted my super cool Cinder Gates SoundCloud page too I wanted that to be like my band name with a Post-Hardcore type genre vibe whatever that is, but this idea was from awhile back.

Deleted all my GarageBand files too. I'm thinking now that I have some experience I could do things better like straight away name a file and stuff.

So I guess the question is "what kind of things should I keep?" Aside from tips on organizing. Some files are like 2-3gbs.

Might be a lot of rubbish I got saved up

Thanks in advance!

I saw that metaverse would do all things that we could already do in real life including concerts
I am going to ask directely, do you think that metaverse would make disapear the live concerts ?
Because honestly, I am afraid that we have to enjoy all activities only in metaverse and honestly it scares me
I need to see concerts in real life, I need to hang out with friends in real life
And I feel that all things in real you could in metaverse would not have the same feeling you could have than in real life
Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against NFT, some projects are really cool and even there is no utility, in art side some projects are beautiful
I am simply sceptical about metaverse thing
Maybe I am exaggereting, you can disaggre with me (we are not in Reddit lmao)
I just needed to say that because it's been a few days that this question is in my mind and stressed me and I didn't know how to say or to start what I mean

Thank you for watching my thread
Take care of you

Hey guys I've been playing guitar for at least 4-5 years. I'm don't know much about amps or effects pedals or pickups, I usually just buy what sounds good to me lol. Any tips on how to keep sustain on your guitar. Thanks! And keep on shredding

I'll be live on SynTV this Tuesday, February 8, at 4pm MST/AZT talking about guitar tone, getting to know your gear and what it can do, why is tone important, etc. We will workshop a blank preset on the AxeFX and build the start of a tone together as we go.

This is being demonstrated on an AxeFX, but the tools we will cover are useful regardless of your equipment - physical modelers, software modelers, tube or solid state amps, and hybrid goodies like the Boss Katana.


See you there!

So I picked up a Marshall Code 50 earlier this week. I wanted to upgrade from what I had before. I can say that this thing is amazing. Has anybody else messed with this amp?

Hey everyone!

So little change in program today, Iris decided to cancel her stream due to personal circumstances and I decided that I could jump on stream and chat a little bit!

The subject of this stream will be covers! More specifically, I want to get into a sort of ''breakdown'' of some well known covers by different popular artist and how some can reinvent a song in their own style and still make it super interesting! I've had this idea because I've been listening to Retrovertigo by Mr Bungle a lot and I was just fascinated by both the original and the Avenged version. After, I went in just went into a spiral of listening to different covers of song that I liked who really took the concept and did something special and different!

In other words, I just want to get into a nice chill conversation about music, being creative in the process of songwriting and how some artists have been able to readapt a song they loved to be closer to them!

I'll see y'all today on SynTv at 15hEST!!!

- Rad Synner

any A7x fan, in a car with friends: puts on an avenged sevenfold station

station: starts playing dual clarinets.

A7x fan: