Synyster Gates
We wanted to do something really, really different, something next level, and use new technology and things.Collection: Technology
I hope we're not the last of the Mohicans when it comes to putting on a big, crazy, over-the-top theatrical rock show.
When kids invest their time and money in coming to see us, we owe it to them to give them the best night of their lives.
My fans, they know my dad as Guitar Guy or whatever, and he's kind of just this shredder that plays on my records sometimes. But they don't know his ear and how rich his harmonic scope is.
Breaking Benjamin, they're such incredible songwriters.
Breaking Benjamin, talk about songwriting, I mean, some of the greatest songwriters of the modern era. And, obviously, it's a little heavier.
We're happier when we're with friends on tour.
We spent a lot of time in the studio. I mean, we've spent a lot of time on tour, too.
He happens to be my father and an incredible musician. When he gets lucky, we let him into the studio for 20 minutes to hear a song which has been previously written for him.
During our formative years, it was all about, 'What did Metallica do?' and 'How do we do that?' and then you try and find an identity of your own, but they're still... They were the pioneers and the trailblazers.
It's really fun to just get on a bike and just go and, I guess in a way, to be able to leave the tour and not be confined and all that kind of stuff.
We tried our best for so long to make the heaviest record we could make.
For the first two weeks after he passed, we were done as a band. We were just done. And because of the fans and Jimmy's parents and relatives and stuff like that, they just demanded that we continue on and spread the legacy that is, you know, the crazy James 'The Rev' Sullivan.
I use Bogner amps and custom-designed Schecter guitars with Seymour Duncan Invader pickups. I beef up my tone with a Boss CS- 3 Compression Sustainer. It's kinda like my secret weapon.
I don't like using fourths and fifths. Instead, I'll come up with a harmony line made up of major and minor thirds above the melody, then I'll drop it down an octave so that the melody is on top and the harmony line is major and minor sixths below it.
I learned sweep picking from a variety of sources. One was a Frank Gambale instructional video, but he executes his sweeps a little differently.
I was living out of my truck for a short while. My dad wanted to emancipate me at 16 and send me to music college.
If you write a country song, and it's the best song you've ever written but throw it out because you're a metal band, you'd be an idiot.
We make sure we have total artistic control with our albums. We were working with Interscope Records, and they had a hard time with us having all the control. So when we signed with Warner Bros., we told them we would be working hands-on with our producer, and they were cool with it.
There are those people who try to change what you're doing. We don't like that. When we went into the studio for 'City of Evil,' we had 99 percent of the songs finished and ready to record.
When we do find someone we trust, like our tour manager, they become an official part of the band. We take our time to make sure whoever we trust has our best interest in mind.
Our music is being played on MTV and the radio. That's something that still blows us away. And we did it our way.
If you want to do things right, you have to dig deep for that inspiration.
As you get a little older and start drinking a bit more coffee, you start talking about big-boy things a little more.
Bullet for My Valentine, we're bros. We've been in the trenches with those guys.
Everybody's lost somebody, and I think they all miss them incredibly.
My little brother played drums, so we had a drum set over at my house.
I'm not a big-effects sort of guy - I like to keep it simple.
We really wanted to circumvent that online learning curve, where it's virtually impossible to use words to explain music.
There is no doubt in my mind that I was going to do what my father did, but it wasn't kind of a family-business thing.
There's nothing like having some healthy competition. We really strive to think outside the box by taking the standard approach the then twisting it a little, all the while trying something new.
Maybe we'll do some fun stuff here and there, but I don't want to record any more songs.
When practicing, it's great to break a part down into its different elements, start slowly, and then try to build up the speed until you're playing as fast as you possibly can.
We've had some huge moments. But we've always been on a steady, gentle, upward slope, and I think that keeps us grounded. There's been no overnight success here, and we haven't dealt with a whole lot of hot and cold.
I don't like being locked in a cage on the creative scale. I need an outlet.
Our singer, Matt, was reading Stephen Hawking and other physics-related books, and I was reading entrepreneurial books, and we all started discussing the new technologies that were taking over the world, from 3-D printing to space travel. These conversations starting leading us to think of how we could portray these things in a musical way.
We listen to a lot of hip hop. They're the ones that are trailblazing. It used to be rock, but it's really turned to hip hop, and they're doing really unique and cool things, and we wanted to do that, too.
My favorite punk rock song is 'Linoleum' by NOFX. That's pure harmony, the coolest chord changes.
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.
Korn is great friends of ours, so to be on tour with friends is usually our number one. We've been very blessed to meet a lot of great bands, successful bands, that we can go tour with.
I find that drummers are the coolest people in the world. I play a little bit of drums.
Just based on the primary adage of the necessity breeding innovation, it was just like 'Well, what makes me the guitar player that I am?' and I feel like I listen to so much different music, and I'm a student of so many genres of music, and I feel like it's fun to apply those things and anything super applicable to any type of music.
I am a product of an amalgamation of different teachers. If it was just one teacher, even just my father, I would be half the player that I am today.
The thing about me is that I'm very fortunate to have had the opportunities with Avenged Sevenfold in songwriting. I really think it's helped to bolster my guitar playing as well.
I try to, at least, think very melodically, and my band forces me to think very melodically.
We kinda were a radio-rock band. We were still pretty technical, but I think the prog people hated us because we didn't do a bunch of weird time signatures... which are cool at times, but I'm more interested in progressive harmony.
We're more about other things over odd timings: orchestration, composition, horn/vocal arrangements - that's where we get super weird.
We interact with the crowd, turn it into a party.
We listen to a lot of classical and a lot of jazz, and so you get some funky notes here and there. And we get a little experimental in some of the deeper tracks.
We have a lot of fun. There are no holds barred when it comes to writing music for us.