Hail To The King Guitar Lessons – Avenged Sevenfold

In these Hail to The King guitar lesson videos, I will demonstrate how to play all of the modern metal hit by Avenged Sevenfold in it's entirety.

The first video lesson will focus on the intro of the song and it's lick that is instantly recognizable to modern metal fans.

Guitarist Synyster Gates opens "Hail to The King" with an interesting little economy picked lick that makes a great exercise.

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 challenge 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.

In the second video lesson I will demonstrate all of the rhythm guitar parts in addition to all the lead guitar licks that are played with them throughout the entire song. The rhythm and chords are quite basic so you shouldn't have much trouble there. The little guitar licks that are going throughout the song pretty much follow the same patterns the entire time. You will just need to memorize where the notes fall. However, the constant 16th note alternate picking can be a pretty big workout. Try to keep your picking hand as relaxed as possible when performing those 16th notes or you won't be able to last all the way to the end of the song.

In the third and final video of this lesson series, I will show you note-for-note how to play the guitar solo. There are a lot of challenging licks to practice in this one, so it is definitely suited for the more advanced players out there. If you have any trouble with the fast licks in the solo, I suggest isolating them and creating little technique exercises out of them. After you have each individual lick mastered at a moderate tempo you can then try putting them all together into one cohesive unit.

In any case, I hope you guys have fun with this one. Good Luck!

Carl...

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Hail to The King Intro Guitar Lesson - Intro

Hail to The King Guitar Lesson Pt.2 - Riffs

Hail to The King Guitar Lesson Pt.3 - Solo