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" 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. "

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" I think it's beneficial to practice with a metronome or drum machine in order to strengthen your sense of time. It will help your concept of time and improve your feel. "

Synyster Gates

Practice

Feel

Will

" 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. "

Synyster Gates

Music

Living

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We're trying to leave no stone unturned, to push forward in every aspect of what it means to be a band. Because this really matters to us. Metal matters to us. And we know exactly how much it means to kids out there, too. "

" Lyrically, 'Nightmare' is an absolute masterpiece to me. "

Synyster Gates

Absolute

Masterpiece

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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 don't like being locked in a cage on the creative scale. I need an outlet. "

Synyster Gates

Creative

Cage

" I'm obsessed with great endings and crazy intros and stuff like that. I think we all are from what we've listened to and stuff, so I've always focused on great bridge melodies that just kind of naturally fit, or like a crazy ending at the end of 'Seize the Day,' something like that. "

" 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. "

Synyster Gates

Think

Guitar

" I hate to debunk the myth - kids don't wanna hear it - but as songwriters, you have to polish your craft a little bit and hone it as much as possible. "

" Breaking Benjamin, talk about songwriting, I mean, some of the greatest songwriters of the modern era. And, obviously, it's a little heavier. "

" My father was a studio musician, played for a lot of people like Frank Zappa and a lot of R&B bands, and was always gone doing that. Then when he was home, he was practicing. And so I always saw it, and I always wanted to do what he did. "

" We interact with the crowd, turn it into a party. "

" 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. "

Synyster Gates

Him

Lucky

" 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. "

" I don't really play a lot of slide in general, but it was fun getting into that style and exploring it. "

" We're very much perfectionists, so when we're putting on a huge show and want to play to the best of ability, we rehearse intensely. And I have a guitar pretty much in my hand for at least five hours before doing a show. I'm just noodling and mucking around and working on some of the songs here and there. "

" 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. "

Synyster Gates

Boss

Weapon

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

Synyster Gates

Get

See

" Breaking Benjamin, they're such incredible songwriters. "

" 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'm a huge Weezer fan, and 'Pinkerton' is just a crazy, crazy neurotic album. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Synyster Gates

Hotel

Music