I’ve been thinking a lot about my influences lately. Not only bands or artists, but also very specific moments and songs that have had a strong impact on me.
I haven’t heard many of them in a very long time, completely unaware of what a big influence on my music they’ve become. Going back and listening to those moments/songs/artists really helps put things in perspective…and makes me realize that my musical roots are always present, no matter what kind of music I’m making.
My first subject? Joe Satriani, simply because I was listening to his music yesterday.
When I was around 15, I got my first Satriani album, The Extremist. To this day I still think it’s his best work, great songs all around. Having Andy Johns produce it probably didn’t hurt either.
What sets Joe apart from his shred-peers is that apart from being a crazy-good guitarist, he also writes good melodies. He seems to be genuinely concerned with writing good songs and not showing off how good he is. Well…most of the time.
And yet, there’s a certain weirdness to his music (in a good way). He’s always sneaking some exotic scale or strange guitar technique into his music.
One technique that really caught my attention were those whammy-bar harmonic dives. The one he does on New Blues is particularly awesome. Listen between 2:10 and 2:25. (Urgh, just realized the grooveshark widget doesn’t show the time. Well, it’s about halfway through the song, right where the solo kicks in…)
It sounds eerily human, like somebody screaming. I spent a lot of time trying to recreate it…never succesful. There are other great moments in Satch’s music, but this is the one that’s forever etched in my brain.
I don’t listen to Satriani’s music much at all anymore, but when I was 15 I listened to The Extremist day and night, trying to learn all of the songs on it.
This month I’ll be playing at Manuela Tapas on Saturday the 24th. It’s a nice Spanish restaurant in Neukölln close to the Maybachüfer, gemütlich and with very tasty food. I should have a few new songs to debut…always a bit nerve-wracking to play songs live for the first time.
In the meantime, here are some pictures from SideSeeing last Sunday:
I’ve spent the last few weeks redesiging my website, as you can probably tell.
I decided to go for a really clean look, and to make the music stand out, especially on the home page.
For the web geeks amongst you, I used a lot of CSS3 for the rounded-corners, drop-shadows, and gradients. I’m also using the Fontin Sans font from exljbris, very nice font in my opinion. Clean but with personality to it…of course I’m far from a typography expert, but I disgress.
I’m really happy with how the discography page turned out. I used the new custom post types from WordPress 3 and incorporated the Bandcamp player into the design. I wanted to have something similar to the Bandcamp layout, but with more control of how it looked and what I could add to it.
So there it is. I’ve learned a lot about web-design these past 2 years, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. Now to focus on the music again…
I finished The Single Purpose Room for the solo guitar album. This time I decided to record the different parts seperately to have a bit of fun with the mix. I even brought back the percussion samples I used on Wood to make drum part.
The show this Saturday at Emma T has been cancelled. Sad, but life goes on. I’m waiting to confirm some new gigs very soon.
I also recorded The Single Purpose Room for the solo guitar album, and have been editing and mixing it…but a nasty stomach bug got in the way. Hopefully I’ll have it done by next week.
Matt Stevens recently offered some stems from his track Burning Bandstands to be remixed. I thought it’d be fun, and ended up turning it into Meshuggah-style metal romp. Matt released it as part of his Sunday Free Noodle series, check it out on his blog.
For those that don’t know him, Matt is a phenomanal guitarist from the UK who uses live-looping to create some wonderful music. He has one CD out called Echo, and a new one coming out very soon called Ghost.
