TOP 10 SHREDDERS
In two interviews, with Guitarist and Classicrock, the virtuoso talked gear and guitars, revealed the secrets of his creative process, and discussed the art of shredding...
1. Steve Vai
2. Yngwie Malmsteen 3. Joe Satriani
4. Paul Gilbert
5. John Petrucci 6. Buckethead
7. Guthrie Govan
8. Jason Becker
9. Eric Johnson
10. Michael Angelo Batio
MY FIRST LOVE
“Once I saw a guitar for the first time at the age of five, I immediately knew the infinite nature of the guitar’s ability to be expressive. It was this beautiful thing.”
INSPIRATION
“If I have to sit down and write a new song I’m usually not very good at it, but when I pick up the instrument, something will always come out and I’ll document it. I’ve got thousands of ideas and thousands of boxes of DATS. Sometimes you just know that something’s coming and there are many different ways in which I’ll catch an idea. Sometimes I’ll do it by just singing straight into a microphone, or I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a piece of paper and a guitar; if you don’t document those moments of inspiration you’ll never remember them!”
PERSPIRATION
“The song Oooo (from the 1999 album The Ultra Zone) was one of those where I felt I had to get to a guitar real quick. So I picked up the first guitar I saw – a Bad Horsie JEM that was tuned down to C – and I just started playing that song. I got through it fairly cryptically by just playing and hearing a melody – it’s all ear – and I ran to the nearest cassette player, which was playing all weird, and got it down. Then I put it on the shelf and I didn’t come back to it until two years later. You see, every Christmas, I document all the little ideas. I heard that again and I thought, ‘I have to do this song now or I’m gonna explode’. It took me four weeks of 16 hours a day to complete it.
“Whenever I use the Whammy, I try to do so creatively. Most people just go ‘weee-wahhhweee-wahhh’. I’ve been experimenting a lot with stompboxes, but it’s funny – you get one of those boxes, and for a time it’s one of the greatest sounds you’ve ever heard, but after a while it’s like, ‘Whatever...’”
MYIBANEZJEMS
“I pick up on other guitars and I try to play them, and it’s like, urgh, you know? Ialways go back to Evo, which is my main JEM, but I did use a Strat-type guitar that Ibanez built me. I went out looking for Fenders but nothing excited me, and the thing is you can spend a fortune on an old guitar, but it’s not necessarily gonna sound good. So they made three of them and we worked on it until it sounded great: more Stratty than a Strat... Oops!”
SHREDDING
“I’m having a blast on the track Jibboom (also from The Ultra Zone), and being able to play the guitar like that is so liberating. I piss myself when I play that song! Sometimes I like the idea of the guitar being handed to you on a silver platter; there’s nothing in its way, there it is, balls to the wall.”
MYTRADEMARK SOUND
“I know what it’ll sound like if I put eight guitars on a melody in the treble pickup position with an amp that’s in the closet, and if they all hold out certain notes, mixed with vocals that are pitched along with a synthesizer sound. I mean, there is an element of experimenting – I’ll futz around with some sounds here and there – but I pretty much approach my music as a build: it’ll start out simple and just evolve. Often I’m surprised how it comes out because it’s better than I thought. That said, nothing’s off the cuff, absolutely nothing. I’ll know exactly what it’s going to sound like before recording and the torture is knowing it and being inundated with the pressure of making it real.”
LYDIAN FLAVOURS ATTHE HEART OF THE VAI SOUND
“The most important thing to remember when you’re playing modally is what the atmosphere of the mode feels like to you. What it sounds like is one thing, but what it feels like – the quality of that mode, that’s when you’re owning that mode. Look at it as an open field. One thing I like to do in Lydian is play every note in the scale except that raised 4th until the last note or close to! That will change the whole atmosphere.”
Bringing in the #4( F #) from C Lydian( C DE F# GAB) at the end of the tabbed phrase below adds an extra dimension. Until you hit this atmospheric note, you could – in theory – still be in the plainer sounding major scale( CDE F GA B ).
03 JOE SATRIANI
Satch outlines one of his many trademarks: pitch axis
“On Not Of This Earth, the E bass note comes in and puts the first chord in either E major or E Lydian. The next chord moves to E minor. The third chord moves it back to E major/lydian and the fourth chord moves to E Mixolydian. The melody over the top reflects the changing keys. All the time the bass note is just playing an E note and it creates this funny vibe. You can also do it with a bassline that changes slightly. With Jupiter In Mind [ Crystal Planet, 1998] shifts between E Dorian and E Lydian. The bass riff stays basically the same, but the intervals are adjusted to reflect the change in key. It’s pitch axis, but stepping up the quantity of notes.”