Back in pre-internet Panama, it was pretty difficult trying out new music that wasn’t mainstream. There was a store that let you do special orders, but that could get very expensive, very fast.

Luckily, my family had access to the library in one of the U.S. Military bases, which had a relatively small but eclectic music selection. Everytime I ran into something I had read about in a guitar magazine or somewhere else, I’d check it out.

One of these was Michael Hedges’ Taproot, which I loved from the minute I pressed play and heard this gorgeous tune:

And when I heard The Rootwitch, I was sold:

A few years later, right before I was going to start my studies at Berklee, I got the very shocking news that he had died in a car accident. This only made me delve deeper into his music.

As soon as I got to Boston, the first thing I did was go to Tower Records and buy Aerial Boundaries. Pretty soon I had his entire discography along with Stropes’ book, and was learning as much of his music as I could. Needless to say, it’s a huge part of my musical DNA and the reason why I got seriously into acoustic guitar and fingerstyle playing.

To this day, Michael is unique among other acoustic guitarists. Few come close to the emotional deepness of his music (among them Stefano Barone and Jon Gomm).

It’s a shame that his musical legacy hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Thankfully there is now a ton of unreleased concert footage to be found on Youtube, and a new generation of guitarists are being influenced by him.

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.

Emphasis on trying.

But…with the unexpected slew of ideas comes the hard part: knowing when to accept that an idea just isn’t all that great. Sometimes, you know right away. Other times, and this is what’s been happening to me a lot lately, you come to realize it when you’ve already been working on a song for weeks, if not months.

I used to be quite ruthless about this, letting go of ideas no matter how hard I’d worked on them, confident that new and better ones would come along. But wanting to have a certain number of songs by a certain time made me lose focus. I kept fighting with ideas to make them work, even though I knew in my gut it was a hopeless battle…or worse, I tried to finish songs before they were ready, just so I would have “more songs.”

But enough of that. I’ve been playing and composing music long enough that I know when an idea isn’t working. When it’s good enough, I know because I have no doubt that it is. I know because I can practice and play it for hours without getting bored and still feel an emotional connection.

So from the new songs I’m working on, I have one or two that are definitely going into the trash bin, and a few others that need a closer look. And to tell you the truth, it’s actually quite a relief to let those songs go. Sure, there’s a small part of me that goes “but that chord change in that one song was soooo cool!”, but I’ve come to the conclusion that if those parts are really that cool, then they’ll surface again in the future. At least I hope so…

By itself it’s not that big a deal, really. It’s only 5 bucks and 15 minutes of your life. But having to do it regularly can get quite…annoying. Sometimes I envy our bass-playing brethren, who can go years without changing strings.

We aren’t so lucky. At most I can go a month without suffering too much. But if you’re gigging or recording on a regular basis, then changing at least every week is the norm. Otherwise the tone starts to suffer.

I don’t even want to think about how much money and time I’ve spent on strings in the 20 years I’ve been playing. But what really gets me is that every time I change them, I hurt myself in some way…a poke, a cut, a scrape. Look closely at that picture, it was taken this morning. Notice the band-aid?

But after the blood, pain and time wasted, I’m left with the guitar sounding better than ever, full of life and resonance. Is it worth all the hassle?

Totally.

Back in the late 90′s I bought a Line6 DL-4 and was promptly introduced to the wonderful world of looping. The idea of recording loops on the fly and using them to accompany myself seemed very enticing, especially since I was band-less at the time.

Soon, ideas came to life and I started to work on what would eventually become my first album, Wood. At the same time, I was starting to run into limitations within looping: I was constantly having to compromise my muse in order to be able to play the music with a looper.

At first, I thought the answer was to get a bigger device with more options and buttons, and thus, I bought the now defunct Electrix Repeater. I could now have many loops at the same time, and mangle them in all sorts of fun ways. But eventually I ran into the same wall: the device was limiting my compositional choices.

So I got tired of the whole thing, sold my Repeater, and finished Wood without worrying about being able to play it live. I then entered a renassaince of unbridled creativity…sort of.

Fast-forward seven years later, and a funny thing happened. I was working on a tune for solo guitar, and I was trying to play a melody over a repeating riff. It proved way too difficult to play, so the obvious solution was to loop the riff.

So I plugged my Boss Giga-Delay and did just that. And soon, other uses for it where popping up in other songs. The difference now, is that instead of turning on the looper and seeing what I come up with, I’m letting the music dictate when and where I should use the looper. The results are way more integrated and organic, and I don’t feel like I am compromising anything.

Now, the Giga-Delay is a very basic looper, and when you stop the loop, it’s gone. Forever. So I naturally started thinking about upgrading, and all the cool things I could do with a better looper.

But I stopped myself, because if there’s something I’ve learned from all this, it’s that I shouldn’t buy a toy based on what I could do with all its new features. Rather, I should get it because the music is asking for something, and that toy does exactly what is needed. (Maybe I should’ve called this piece “How I Beat G.A.S.“)

So my Giga-Delay is doing just fine. I’m actually having fun finding how much I can squeeze out of it. I imagine I’ll eventually buy a bigger and badder looper, but if I do, It’ll only be because the music asks for it.

Case in point, I have a little tune called “Mountain Song.” Not that I don’t like it, but let’s just say I never thought it to be much of a stand-out.

Well, in the last year or so, it’s been one of the most listened tunes of mine on Last.fm. And just now, it won the #1 spot in its category at Ourstage.

This really caught me by surprise and I started listening to the song with new ears. Like I said, it’s not that I didn’t like it, I just thought it wasn’t my best work. Now I realize it actually has a really good melody and is in fact quite catchy. It’s also straight-to-the-point with no filler; something I appreciate a lot more now than I did back when I wrote it.

So in the end, all we can do as composers is try our best and get the music out there. After that, it’s up to the audience to decide what they like and what they don’t like.