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Guitarist Synyster Gates opens Avenged Sevenfold’s hit song “Hail to The King” with an interesting little economy picked lick that makes a great exercise.
In this Hail to The King intro guitar lesson I will break down that lick for you so you will know exactly how to perform it.
The picking hand is essential here because if you are thinking of using straight alternate picking to play this lick, you will be doing pretty much 5 times as much work than if you used economy picking. Synyster Gates uses economy picking to play this lick so you should as well.
Many players, especially if they have never done any economy picking, find it quite awkward at first. Don’t let that stop you! This lick is a great introduction into the art of economy picking. And once you begin to master economy picking you will begin to see so many technical hurdles simply disappear. It can be quite a dramatic shift in how you play the guitar. I know it was for me. 🙂 By the way, if you want a complete video course on economy picking check out my “Economy Picking Mastery For Guitar” course in the Premium section.
Besides the economy picking we have some other technical issues to deal with as well. The most challenging aspect is probably the fact that we are playing fretted notes high up the fretboard and alternating between them and the high E open string. This can create a bit of a challenging since the open string and fretted notes have a completely different string tension.
But, after a while of practicing the lick, your picking hand should start to adjust for that change in string tension. Just take your time getting there. This lick if definitely one to practice slow at first.
For those of you who are fans of Avenged Sevenfold or more specifically “Hail to The King”, I would be happy to teach the entire song note-for-note. I just need to make sure people would like to see that lesson by setting a goal of 600 YouTube “likes”. Once this video gets that many “likes” on YouTube I will come back here and teach the entire song.
So I hope you guys enjoy practicing this great economy picking workout. I will see you back here soon with the full song. 🙂
Carl…
