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Let's Pump Up The Jams!

J

Jak Angelescu

Guest
Alright guys, happy Sunday! I tried to make my “practice tips” video yesterday and somehow, it got deleted. So I’m going to try to redo it again today.
But I’d like to discuss some things I’ve noticed on the school that I’d like to address. Maybe Keymaster Syn and Keymaster PG may think I’m stepping out of line (which I hope not!) but I only mean this in the best intentions for everyone. And I mean this with all love, encouragement and support for my peers on here.
First thing: I keep getting messages of people asking me to help them with learning Avenged Sevenfold songs. And then I look on the guitar riffs page and it seems to me that roughly 90% of the content on there are people doing A7X covers. And then of those 90% of the A7X content, most students are just attempting the solos. There are SO many things I’d like to address here. As much as we all love Synyster Gates and Avenged Sevenfold, I feel that a lot of players are rushing to learn A7X songs (among other covers) and post them up instead of showing us what they’re learning on the school. The reason why I feel this is counterproductive is that the ONLY person who can give proper and legit feedback on these covers is Synyster Gates himself, and this is a community where we are trying to reach out and help EVERYONE in ways we actually can. So I personally feel that we are all posting up our covers and no one can entirely give 100% accurate feedback. Now, I WILL admit, there IS a positive to this. For example, when I post up Hail To The King, I’m trying to showcase “Hey! I think I got this economy picking part down because I’m learning economy picking. Am I doing this TECHNIQUE right?” I feel if we were to post up covers and say, “Hey, I wanted to post this up because I’m working on arpeggios that I learned in the school. How am I doing?” It would give us, as your fellow students, more room to help and offer suggestions. But posting up covers solely doesn’t really show us much other than you like the song and we honestly can’t say whether or not you’re playing it accurately because well, we didn’t write the song. Also, when you DO do a cover (which I’m not condemning in any way) I think the students should really try to showcase learning the ENTIRE song because you miss out on a lot of crucial keypoints that can show you why the solo is played the way it’s played. For example, you’ll learn the key signature of the song and get a good rhythmic feel.­­ Learning covers and posting them up is great. It’s a good way for all of us to showcase our improvements and goals. But let’s not faulter away from the original purpose of this school – to help others learn the material that’s been given us and improve as musicians.
Thing two: I’d like to see a LOT more beginners posting up their videos. I’m seeing a limited number of the same students (with the occasional exception) posting up their videos and I ALWAYS love watching them. But out of tens of thousands of players on here, I feel there should be more. I’d like to encourage you to post up a video of yourself and show us what you’re working on so we can support you and help you out. I have noticed a lot of people on here have severe camera shy behaviors and that’s totally fine! Don’t feel nervous about messing up. We are here to help you improve, not to demean you!
Thing three: Like I say, let’s “pump up the jams” (referencing a corny 90’s song that I personally loved to dance to). I really would love to see more “progression” videos or topics started. When I keep getting messages and seeing things about “How to play Afterlife” or “please teach me God Hates Us” I keep wanting to tell everyone: The knowledge is RIGHT here. Everything you need to know to play these songs is here in the school. It’s great to learn songs, but as the saying goes; “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime”. Synyster Gates didn’t get as good as he is by practicing and learning a bunch of other people’s songs. I’d like to challenge people to start taking these lessons seriously (and not just the etudes) and really utilize them. Like I keep telling people, I started playing along to a solo part in This Means War without actually learning the solo because the CAGED system helped me so much, and I KNEW the melody of the solo so much, I literally was able to play along to the song without needing to stop it, slow it down, and rewind it a hundred times.
Thing four: Let’s get some more video comments going! It breaks my heart SO badly when I see someone finally stepping out of their comfort zone and posting up their FIRST video, and I see the video has 89 views and no likes, and no comments. That really can get someone’s confidence down and we’re suppose to be encouraging each other and building one another up! So if you take the time to watch someone’s video, please be kind enough to like it and give support. Even if it’s just something simple like “Wow you look like you’re having fun! Great job!” Or even, “I see you’re having struggles with the two-finger tapping part, try referring to lesson 97 and see if maybe you’re leaving out a concept!” The more we reach out and help, the more we learn ourselves because we can only teach something if we really know the subject matter.
So in conclusion, let’s “pump up the jams” and start posting our progress videos and what we’re learning! Because ultimately, you can only teach something if you really know it. So when you post up your videos on what you’re learning and what you need help with, it will enable the rest of us players/students to make sure we REALLY know what we’re talking about before we lend a helping hand. As I also said, I learned a LOT about the Hail To The King intro by teaching it. I didn’t realize how much I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t UNDERSTAND it until I had to TEACH it.
So like I said, this is only meant to encourage others to go as far as they can! I love seeing covers, but let’s step it up a notch and start challenging ourselves with actually learning the guitar, posting up our progress videos and really truly commenting on videos! Also, we’ve been given the gift of $100,000 worth of conservatory knowledge from top musicians in the world for free, let’s take advantage of it!
Happy playing everyone and enjoy your relaxing Sunday!
 

Josh Wright

New Student
Nov 11, 2019
175
0
I completely agree with this, all I ever really see is covers, and while that’s what I mainly posted, I’m also making videos of originals, and I’m about to make one for an improv. I get really nervous in front of cameras, behind them I’m just fine (I direct/ do audio for some short films), but in front I tend to get really awkward.
 

John Tierney

Free Bird Player
Nov 11, 2019
136
7
Beautiful Jak. I feel the same way in the community riffs that everyone rushes to A7X which is great but ultimately theres so much more out there and Syn is just one person. I noticed that when I was doing a Solo for Slayer that I saw, Hey thats 3 notes per string or thats just CAGED G pattern. If I apply these concepts I learn WAY faster and REMEMBER THEM later.
Also for the comment thing, When I put my first video of me playing up and you and others commented, that actually made me feel amazing because me putting myself out there is actually a HUGE deal for me so it made me feel great.
Teaching stuff: when I have a test for a class and I come to a big picture topic, I teach it to myself and try to do it with detail. Learning is one thing but teaching it is another. My Physiology professor said he’s been doing this for like 8 years and he still learns new stuff.
 

D K

Free Bird Player
Nov 11, 2019
122
0
Belgium
I agree. I feel like most people in the riff section don’t post their videos to get advice in order to get better, but rather to show how good they are for likes. I get it though, I’ve been guilty of that a couple of times as well. And while there’s nothing wrong with that, I think there are better media for guitar covers and we should use the riff section only to post videos to get feedback in order to improve ourselves.
 

Josh Lightner

New Student
Nov 11, 2019
13
0
I come platelet agree Jak, I am relatively new into playing guitar and I haven’t posted a video for a few reasons, one I’m not in my mind good enough to put anything up, and two all the videos I’ve seen are people literally “killing it” to the point where I know I’m not worthy of posting near them. I enjoy the community and I love this idea, I guess I’m waiting to be better to post one, but that is a sad excuse.
 
Synner Endless Summer Collection

Josh Wright

New Student
Nov 11, 2019
175
0
@josh I want to see you post a video, you are good enough, because we all started somewhere. Also those people that are killing it will most likely give you tips, and that’s how you get to where you are killing it. You don’t have to post the most complicated thing, it could be the simplest riff but if it’s something you worked on, then be proud of what you can do. I garuntee you can do more than you think.
 

John Tierney

Free Bird Player
Nov 11, 2019
136
7
@josh Lightner I am the EXACT same way. I feel like if I do a video Ill be disrespecting others by my crappy playing diluting the high quality of others. But when I put up my first video I saw that everyone was supportive and praised my ideas and gave me ideas to spice it up. We are here to help not hurt.
But RIDDLE ME THIS: Why do guitarists get so much hype even though its one of the most played instruments? Answer, because it also has one of the biggest I Quit trends too. Its a hard instrument anyone who says otherwise is either lying to themselves or their full of shit. If everyone who touched it can do everything right away with little to no effort then the skill isn’t that valuable.
 

Lauren Morales

New Student
Nov 11, 2019
84
0
I agree with Jak. Josh, I feel the same way. I am hesitant to post a video because of people’s covers. I get discouraged as a guitar player because I am seeing these amazing guitarists. I am not a beginner, but I still have a lot to learn about guitar techniques and a general knowledge of the instrument.
 
Synner Endless Summer Collection
J

Jak Angelescu

Guest
Everyone who commented who feels not worthy enough to post because of their skill level needs to remember this. I can’t remember who did it, but there was a complete and total beginner female guitar player that posted up her first video of all she did was named the notes on the neck. Papa Gates responded that he had felt so incredibly proud! And Synyster has watched my videos and he has complimented me on my improvements and how my practices are paying off. These are all amazing things! It doesn’t matter that I was playing Hail to the King extremely slow. It didn’t matter that I was playing a slow solo when I relearned the proper picking technique, Papa Gates said that my contact with the strings was a hundred percent better and I sounded like a completely new player! These are very tiny improvements but in the long run they make the biggest impact! If you can post a video, I would really like to challenge every single person who feels too embarrassed to post one to post one up sometime this week. I don’t care what it is even if you’re just learning how to hold the pick properly. Show me what you’re learning 🙂
 

idssdi

Sold-out Crowd Surfer
Nov 11, 2019
5,336
6,754
Groningen
11
I do agree for the most part. I consider playing the whole sog when you do a cover kind of a necesary thing to actually understand what’s going.
As for progression videos. My perfectionist self can’t bear watching myself sucks so I usually do all my practicing off camera and upload the final product. Besides that you are completely right. I do notice that it is generally the same people uploading riffs and commenting on videos. So I really would encourage EVERYONE to upload their videos so we are able to help them with their problems.
 

Calvin Phillips

Music Theory Bragger
Nov 11, 2019
2,588
1,988
I’m guilty of avoiding the riff section, mainly because so much gets uploaded so fast. Weekends are my best time to jam and check things out there. But honestly I’ve spend the past few months rewriting material to match scales thanks to this site showing me how off I was in half my stuff. But now that I have it written, its a matter of getting the play through videos down, and they take hours to edit lol. But I promise I’ll get to em, I’m in the process of moving too so once I’m set up again by June I’ll have my stuff fully uploaded. My issue is my cam cord is like, 3 feet long, and I cant get the guitar fully in the picture.
I did check stuff out today. But, I’m mostly going to focus on original material, covers are sorta eh to me. Some of the jams are pretty neat for sure. There’s some pretty talented people here.
 

Noah Berends

Campfire Attention Holder
  • Nov 11, 2019
    408
    86
    Fort Wayne, IN
    13
    Great post. I totally agree, especially with the videos. I myself have been too lazy lately partly due to outside troubles…but I’m working on getting a more reliable setup to record videos and set up a dedicated practice space. I think part of what set back the riffs section was the barrage of spam, but now that that’s gone it’s a much more pleasant environment. I myself will try to post learning updates and I also would love to hear what everyone’s putting out.
     
    Synner Endless Summer Collection