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Djent


amd241997

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So I’ve been playing for about 12 years with a little 2 year break due to life happening. Recently just got back into it and bought a brand new Schecter Hellraiser C-7 and a Focusrite Scarlett’s Solo for direct recording.

 

Punk rock and metalcore have been my biggest influences, but I’ve been listening to a lot of djent bands like Aviana and Crystal Lake and started to get the itch to write some riffs and songs in that style.

 

I’m 100% self taught and by self taught I mean I learned by covering songs, never really dived into theory or took actual lessons. I know scales a bit and I know a little theory, but I was wondering what is really needed to learn djent? Is there a lot of theory involved? What exactly should I be learning? Most of the music I covered before to learn was bands like Blink-182, some Parkway Drive, The Devil Wears Prada, A Day To Remember, and some old school Asking Alexandria which originally got me into metalcore.

 

I’m basically looking to learn some skills like guitarists Angel Vivaldi and Tosin Abasi (Animals As Leaders). I see guys like this and I always wonder where they started and the journey they took to play the way they do. Some things I’ve discovered to learn are legato, more in depth look at scales, arpeggios, sweep picking, and more in depth tapping. Anything else I should be learning based on my current experience with learning guitar? I can’t solo either and I don’t know if that’s just because I can’t move my fingers that way or I just don’t know where to start. Anyways thanks for the help!

 

 

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Really hard to say without knowing more about your playing, but you should be able to find some tabs for that stuff if it would help you get your head around the style. How's your ear? Can you identify intervals and figure out chords? If you're just starting on leads, learn some blues licks and start stringing them together over basic chord progressions. Then try running scales up and down - both picked and with hammer-ons/pull-offs - as well as making up scale-based and chord-based patterns for yourself. Also check out whole tone and half tone/whole tone scales. You'll build up muscle memory along with a vocabulary of phrases, and it'll all make more sense as you go along. As far as whether there's "theory" involved, I'd say that kind of stuff is better when there's more understanding, whether that means sitting down with a guitar or a textbook.

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