Top 40 Synyster Gates Quotes

In a studio situation, I’m able to dig deep and come up with stuff that all the guys think fits the vibe of the song. And I think that’s partly due to the fact that I grew up listening to just about everything under the sun. I’m very open to music, and I like to do things in a traditional and musical way.

I think if you go to ‘Strength of the World,’ a song like that, the chorus isn’t that great, but you go into the bridge and other things and the catchier parts and the better melodies we were really focused on.

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.

Maybe we’ll do some fun stuff here and there, but I don’t want to record any more songs.

Everybody‘s lost somebody, and I think they all miss them incredibly.

I’m a huge Weezer fan, and ‘Pinkerton’ is just a crazy, crazy neurotic album.

If I’m proud of one thing in my playing, it’s being able to slow it down and focus on the melody.

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.

We don’t ever spread ourselves too thin. And sometimes it’s a little bit to the chagrin of our fans; they don’t get albums… I mean, The Beatles were doing two albums a year at one point.

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.

If you want to do things right, you have to dig deep for that inspiration.

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.

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.

Breaking Benjamin, they’re such incredible songwriters.

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’m not a big-effects sort of guy – I like to keep it simple.

All of my solos were improvised initially – I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

We spend a lot of time with MIDI keyboards and various processors, and we just figure it out. And all those things you hear in our songs work as submelodies and countermelodies, and everything has to fit.

Everything from the lyrics to the production, solos to the writing – it’s all democratic. At the end of the day, you know, when you’re all done with the grind – which it is always an incredible grind for us to write records – I think it makes it that much more special to hear the final product.

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.

We’re happier when we’re with friends on tour.

Our music is being played on MTV and the radio. That’s something that still blows us away. And we did it our way.

I can’t imagine doing anything cooler or better than what we did on ‘The Stage‘ and felt like we’re firing on all cylinders.

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.

I find that drummers are the coolest people in the world. I play a little bit of drums.

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.

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.

Bullet for My Valentine, we’re bros. We’ve been in the trenches with those guys.

We’re not gonna write a fusion song for Avenged Sevenfold, obviously, but I love having those elements and blending it in, and having the eclectic arrangements and stuff like that.

Some people will basically just shred all over everything, even a ballad. I’m glad I wasn’t born with that genetic chip – the need to just wheedle-whee all over the place.

We tried our best for so long to make the heaviest record we could make.

Sometimes, with more progressive songs, you lose that feel somewhere along the line, but ‘This Means War’ never quits – the energy is always there.

I wouldn’t be one-third of the player I am today if it wasn’t for Avenged. They’re an inspiring group of guys, and I’m constantly challenged to write things beyond my ability and then figure out how to play them.

We’re fans of stuff like Maiden, but I think we generally get it from weirder places. For me, the Eagles‘ ‘Hotel California‘ represents one of the most brilliant harmony approaches to music. Boston did it very well, too.

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’re fortunate that our fans worldwide have really embraced our evolution. We know how lucky we are. We want to change people’s lives. I’m not saying we’re God‘s gift, but we’re trying to make a difference.

Lyrically, ‘Planets‘ is the precursor to ‘Acid Rain‘; it’s about a meteoric, intergalactic war that results in an apocalypse and the human species aligning together to go fight something much better than us, our individual trials and tribulations.

When we try and blend the two together, the songwriting and the touring like we did before, it doesn’t really work. We tend to become very focused on what we are doing. And we tend to be a little bit one-track-minded.

I learned sweep picking from a variety of sources. One was a Frank Gambale instructional video, but he executes his sweeps a little differently.

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.