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Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Feb 9 2013, 10:24 PM

Hi Geoffrey198!! Welcome to your Gab's Army thread!!

Could you please tell me a bit about you, your musical tastes, influences, strengths and weaknesses? I would need some videos of you playing rhythm and solo guitar, so please post your best material here. If you have some music or ideas of your own, also post them here. Also let me know how you think that I can help you and what are your expectations for our job. You can check the other Army's thread to discover the different modalities of this project.


The principles of our Army are:

+ Improve your technique
+ Make music and solos
+ Have fun
+ Destroy the enemy (hahaha not really just kidding... )

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Feb 11 2013, 12:39 AM

Hi Gab !

I essentially play and listen metal. I love artists like Animals as Leaders, Adagio, Dream Theater, Tesseract, Joe Satriani, Iron Maiden, Trivium, Rise to Remain, Meshuggah, Avenged Sevenfold, Buckethead...

I think that my main weakness is my ignorance of music theory... I know the basics but I don't know anything about scales, modes and stuff like that (and I don't know where the notes are on the neck)... But my technique needs drastic improvements too !

According to what I've seen on the other posts I think that our job could help me developing myself in both musical and technical sides.
By the way, I fell very uncomfortable with songwritting. On one hand, I love my ideas (I guess that's logical)... but on the other hand I feel very frustrated when I try to turn these ideas into an actual piece of music. It always sounds different than the stuff I "hear" in my head.

Here are two videos of me playing the guitar. The second one is some kind of "semi-improvisation" over a backing track (it doesn't really matches with my tastes but I had no other recordings).

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Feb 11 2013, 04:24 AM

Hi mate! Thanks for your info! So we have a long list of things to do! We have to work on technique (your alternate picking is really good!), theory, composition and ear training. We have lots of lessons for technique here at the site so I will suggest you weekly some of them to work on technique, there is also a section about theory that will be our guide for studying the concepts behind triads, chords, scales and tonalities, but at the same time learn these things on your guitar. For composing we will start to analyzing your favourite songs to write down the most used structures, tonalities, progressions, and arranging ideas. This will also help you with your ear training since you will have to learn by ear the chords from the songs...

"but on the other hand I feel very frustrated when I try to turn these ideas into an actual piece of music. It always sounds different than the stuff I "hear" in my head. "

Two things about this... the first one, the connection between mind/fingers/guitar gets better and more precise with ear training... there are many methods to develop your ear... but you must do any type of ear training every day... the second thing is how do you record your demos? Sometimes you imagine a full band songs sounding killer and then when you record the demo it doesn't sound like you imagined and you feel frustrated... what do you use for it?

There is a lot of cool stuff coming!

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Feb 11 2013, 01:38 PM

"Sometimes you imagine a full band songs sounding killer and then when you record the demo it doesn't sound like you imagined and you feel frustrated... what do you use for it?"
I usually carry a computer and a guitar with me. So, most of time, when I have an idea I pick up my guitar and try to find the notes on the neck... Then a open Guitar Pro and a DAW to tab and record a part of the song.
I tried to record myself "singing" an idea with a cell-phone, but I then it's even harder to recover the original idea ^^

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Feb 12 2013, 11:09 AM

Ok! Thanks again for the info. Let's start working. Please post here 5 of your favourite songs to start analyzing it. We will start with "structure" which means that you will write down the different sections of a song to understand how your favourite songs are built.

Regarding scales & theory, let me ask you to check if you know this: http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=47641

and also if you know how to play Pentatonic minor scale in 5 positions, and also with the addition of the blue note.

There is a nice spoken video in part 1 of this lesson about the connection between mind and fingers: http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/solo-guitar/playing-from-the-heart/

And for technique let's start with this warming up & endurance exercises, and let me know what other lessons are you working.

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=42825

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Feb 12 2013, 08:17 PM

Thank's for the exercices

"Regarding scales & theory, let me ask you to check if you know this: http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...showtopic=47641"
I definitely don't know this ^^

And the only thing I Know about Pentatonic stuff is this :

-----------------------------------------------5---8----------
--------------------------------------5---8-------------------
----------------------------5----7----------------------------
-------------------5---7--------------------------------------
----------5---7-----------------------------------------------
-5---8--------------------------------------------------------
(of course, we could have started from an other fret)


Here are five songs I like :











ps: i'm working on these two lessons:
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/solo-guitar/willpower-solo/
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/ls/Extreme_Metal_Riffing_2/

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Feb 13 2013, 03:47 PM

Ok mate. To summarize the things for this week. Read the thread about Major scale, start working on the Warming up exercises and continue with the two lesson that you are already working. Ok?

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Feb 21 2013, 11:49 AM

I totally forgot to tell you this program is absolutely ok (was, actually, since I worked hard during this week ^^).
I started working on this exercice: http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/solo-guitar/tapping-and-legato-lesson/ and some drop C riffing stuff (including your lesson).

What else ? Hum... major scales have no more secrets for me!
And I now know where the notes from the C major scale are on the 3 first strings of the neck.

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Feb 21 2013, 11:50 AM

Great! Are able to post some videos of you playing the lessons in the next days?

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Feb 27 2013, 06:50 PM

Sorry for the delay, i've been quite busy this week ^^
Here is a video of me playing the solo. I'll try to post more videos within the next days.

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Feb 28 2013, 02:21 PM

Excelent take mate! Your playing is really good on this one! How is the tapping lesson going?

Let's start analyzing one of those songs. Please start with the Avenged Sevenfold song, write down the structure here.

And to continue with the major scale (ionian) please work on this thread's exercises: http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=48048&st=0#entry634876

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Mar 5 2013, 09:22 PM

The tapping lesson is going... much slower than I expected ^^

Here is the structure of buried alive (according to my listenings):

- a 16 bars ternary intro
- an 8 bars kind of "intro solo"
(- an 8 bars verse
- a 4 bars pre-chorus
- an 8 bars chorus with an alternation of binary and ternary rythms
- the "intro solo" again) * 2, exept the solo
- a 32 bars hudge and gorgeous solo
- a 32 bars bridge (I guess)
- the outro riff

Il I had to summarize this I would say something like:

I - S1 - V - PC - C - S2 - V - PC - C - S3 - B - O

I = intro
S1= firt solo
V = verse
PC = pre-chorus
C = chorus
B = bridge
O = outro

I don't if this is clear and precise enough... This is the first time I make this kind of analize.

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Mar 6 2013, 02:46 PM

Good job man! Do you think that you are able to learnt the chord progressions of each section and write it down?

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Mar 6 2013, 05:36 PM

Should I just read the chord progression and post it on this thread ? Or should I read the notes and try to find out the chord they are related with ?
Because I tried the second way, and (if I'm not wrong) this is not a "major triad only" song ^^
So, most of time, I was only able to find the root (witch is quite easy)...

By the way, would you have any lesson to suggest me ?

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Mar 6 2013, 10:54 PM

I was meaning the chord progression of each section, or the scale in the case of guitar riffs.

What about working on this lesson to keep on topic?

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/ls/Avenged-Sevenfold/

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Mar 18 2013, 08:03 PM

I'm back with what coul be the chord progression of the main parts of Buried Alive.

Intro : Am Em D A Em D F

Then when the strings enters : A B C D A B D C

First solo : Am C F

Pre-chorus: F Am G G/F Am G E

Chorus: A E F (E D F E for the part with the ghost notes)

Break: A B C E G

main Solo: A E F G#

Bridge: E

Outr: E G F# F E

Hope that this is clear... And that some of these chords are right
By the way, the sweeping part of the "Avenged Sevenfold" lesson is killing me ^^

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Mar 19 2013, 03:28 PM

Some corrections:

Intro: Am - Em - Dm - Am
Am - Em - Dm - F E

Then when the strings enters: Am - G/B - C - D
Am - G/B - D - C

First solo: Am - C - F E

There are some similar things to fix in the other sections. Play my corrections over the song and pay attention to the sound. Try to hear the difference between your version and my version and review the whole song.


Do you have any video playing Sweep Picking?

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Mar 21 2013, 03:19 PM

Unfortunatelly I don't ...

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Mar 22 2013, 11:58 PM

Ok mate, it would be great if you can record yourself playing some Sweeps to be able to give you some feedback. Is this possible?

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Mar 23 2013, 05:39 PM

I tried to put together some sweeping patterns I feel "comfortable" with. I starts becoming less clean when I try to play faster...



Here is an audio track with the guitar only : https://soundcloud.com/geoffrey-copin/sweeping-guitar-solo

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Mar 23 2013, 08:24 PM

Good video mate! Your sweep picking technique is very promising!! The only thing that you should fix is that it seems that you don't do the sweep motion smooth, it seems that you divide it, or stop a bit on each string... let me know if you notice it. As the name says, your hand must do a sweep over the strings.

Regarding the training, you should have exercises or lessons for 2 strings, 3 strings, 4 string, 5 string. First work on each of them and then start working on combining different ones. We could start with 2 and 3 strings.

We could start with these ones:

2 strings:
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/solo-guitar/Yngwie-Malmsteen-lesson3/

3 strings:
http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/solo-guitar/yngwie-malmsteen-lesson/

What do you think?

Posted by: Geoffrey198 Mar 24 2013, 04:28 PM

QUOTE (Gabriel Leopardi @ Mar 23 2013, 08:24 PM)

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Mar 24 2013, 05:02 PM

QUOTE (Geoffrey198 @ Mar 24 2013, 12:28 PM)