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Joe Satriani talks Chickenfoot

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

So the word is out now apparently, Sammy Hagar revealed that barring last minute objections, the next Chickenfoot album will be called Chickenfoot IV. Yep that’s how fun that band is. But there are more revelations in store, MusicRadar (them lucky guys again) have caught up with out favourite bald alien guitar player and squeezed a few more juicy news related to the upcoming Chickenfoot record. Here’s an except:

At what stage are you with the album? Have you finished tracking?

“Last week, we finished 99 percent of the drums, bass and guitars. Because we’re not always in the same room together – or the same town – there’s always a little bit of hesitation of where to go with the finishing touches. In this particular case, Sammy and I have been watching each other as to how we’re developing our parts over what the entire band did when they were together. So the songs are still developing lyrically and vocally, and I don’t want to commit 100 percent what the guitars will do until I hear Sammy’s finished vocals.

“We’re at a very exciting point in the development of the record. I think I can definitively say that the album sounds heavier and that it sounds like Chickenfoot. [laughs] I can’t say too much about the lyrical aspect because I haven’t heard everything Sammy’s going to do – he wanted to come back from the book tour he’s on before he made up his mind on a couple of songs.

“But I can tell you right now that the sound of the album is tremendous. The guitars are out of this world, and we haven’t even done the real mixes yet.”

Wait, aren’t Joe’s guitar parts usually out of this world anyway? In any case the next Chickenfoot album will be out some time in the autumn. (umm, and then you’re gonna tour and come to Scotland right? Right? … Please?)

Meanwhile, head over to MusicRadar for the full interview

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Guitar Practice Log – Hair Ballad

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the things I want to learn and the way I organise my practice. I’m now on week 17 of the Guitar Aerobics “programme” and a few things are starting to emerge as a result. Only there’s so much of it I’m not sure where to begin.

I guess the main thing is really identifying what I’m not terribly fond of, and it’s normally the arpeggios and sweep picking exercises. For the former, I think the main reason is just being tired of always playing along a Am C G Em chord progression, all the time. It just gets old. I get the point of the exercises and they’re very good warming up exercises (the last couple of weeks were anyway). But it’s previously been a pain to practice (literally), mostly because of awkward barred chords digging in my nerves. The sweep picking, I’ve ranted about it before. It’s my weakest point, I never manage to really practice it right and again, maybe it’s how it’s presented in the programme, but all you get to do is sequences devided in chunks of 7 weeks, where you do a chord progression in triads, first down, then up, then down adding either an octave or a 7th depending on the type of chord progression, then up again, then same again except you use legato and finally you put it all together in an impossible sequence of sextuplets. I’m not Rusty Cooley, this isn’t the sort of thing I want to play. So I do as much as I feel like doing, for the sake of doing it and then move on.

(more…)

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Guitar Practice Log – Boogie man

Monday, February 14th, 2011

Not terribly inspired to write much about anything going on just now. This week has been taken by so many other worries that I’ve been struggling to catch up with my daily routine. Thankfully most exercises were either easy or not terribly inspiring which meant I didn’t really need to spend an awful lot of time on them.

Still, I’m still liking the hybrid picking exercises and this week we introduced what I can only call a “metal run” on the legato exercise. While you think it might be easy to play sequences of the same triplet over and over again, once you start gaining speed what you have to really work on is the hand to hand coordination and that can really go out of the window even if the picking is just fine. The exercise was supposed to stop at 120bpm but as with previous exercises, that’s where I started, only I could only take it as far as 144bpm before  I lost the plot.

Over the last couple of weeks, there’s been interesting boogie patterns to work on in the rhythm section. I certainly wouldn’t have known to change the rhythm to a “triplet feel” if it wasn’t for guitar pro. Certainly some interesting stretches and patterns to find there.

Finally I’ve been playing a bit of Gary Moore again recently, I wonder why…

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Chickenfoot – back in the studio

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

Ok so it’s not like they went back in the studio today, more like a couple of weeks ago, err, if I wasn’t so lazy i’d check out on Twitter (or, you know, the official website) when (31 Jan, there). So it looks like it’s going to be another big year with interesting releases, meanwhile, Joe, Sammy, Chad and Mike just wanted to say hi:

“It’s my new diet, just walk by the food” … Yeah ok so nothing much musically ;)

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Guitar.com’s 10 questions to Paul Gilbert

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Ever the gentleman, Paul Gilbert in between 2 tours, has answered 10 questions from the guitar.com website, thus giving us yet a little bit more insight into the man. Here’s an excerpt:

Guitar.com: Guitar music has taken a bit of a back seat as of late. Where do you see the future of guitar heading?

Gilbert: Well, as much as technology might advance and gear might have more complex sounds to offer, it’s very comforting to me that the E-chord that I learned when I was 11 years old STILL WORKS. I don’t have to discard my old playing like an old laptop. Everything that I have ever learned to play is still valuable and valid. So I think that the true advances in guitar playing have to be made by players rather than by the gear. We just have to keep playing with strong rhythmic and melodic intention. We have to play in bands that have good singers and good songs. We have to make the girls dance and the guys headbang. There is no single future. It’s the individual future of every one of us who steps onstage and makes people want to listen.

for the whole interview, check out guitar.com

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