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<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nPlaying guitar with his teeth during the final performance of his previous tour, Joe Satriani had an epiphany. \u201cI thought, \u2018What am I doing? What part of me rears its head and starts doing stuff like this?\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201cNormally I\u2019m a shy, retiring type of musician, but when I get onstage, I find myself feeling like that type of thing is perfectly normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Satriani may ponder the motivation behind his showmanship, fans have been dazzled by the musician\u2019s virtuosity for roughly 30 years. With his classic sophomore album, 1987\u2019s Surfing With the Alien<\/i>, Satriani set a new standard for instrumental guitar music, unveiling a distinctive style that combined a shredder\u2019s chops with a soaring sense of melody. Various side projects\u2014like the acclaimed supergroup Chickenfoot\u2014have punctuated Satriani\u2019s career, but his solo work remains his top priority. The recipient of 15 Grammy nominations, he\u2019s also the best-selling rock guitar instrumentalist of all time.<\/p>\n
Satriani\u2019s 15th solo studio album, Shockwave Supernova<\/i>, ratchets up the adventurous spirit. Seizing on his onstage alter ego, the guitarist pumps up his flamboyant side, embracing the onstage extrovert. Satriani stops short of calling the record a concept album, but the idea of portraying an extravagant protagonist provided a unifying premise.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe real reason for the concept was to allow me to make creative decisions song by song,\u201d he says, \u201cexploring unique moods and feelings as they relate to this central character. In that way, it\u2019s both loose and free-form, but there\u2019s an overall tone, one of rebirth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elaborate on the album\u2019s theme.<\/b><\/p>\n
When I perform, it\u2019s like someone else takes over. I felt the songs I was writing represented the different attitudes and memories and aspirations of not only me, but also perhaps this other character. I thought, \u201cWhat if the album was about that guy? What if he goes from being a star through all these different changes, and finally gets to the end and realizes he\u2019s going to evolve into something better?\u201d There\u2019s a bit of melancholy\u2014a fear of the unknown\u2014but eventually he goes with it and becomes reborn. My version of that is in the last song, where the minor-key verses represent him trying to rail for the last time. And then the song has a breakdown, and you hear this high-pitched guitar. That\u2019s him being reborn into something better.<\/p>\n
Did that storyline inform the music?<\/b><\/p>\n
Absolutely. It was an artistic device, to let ideas flourish and be inclusive of a variety of material. But one thing I didn\u2019t want was to require the audience to embrace the concept. I love the story behind Who\u2019s Next<\/i>, how Pete Townshend ultimately relinquished the idea of a concept album and just used the best songs. Glyn Johns, the producer, told him, \u201cThis storyline is crazy, but you have these amazing songs. Why don\u2019t we just make a great album, without burdening the audience with a concept?\u201d My thinking was the same. This album can be viewed simply as 15 very unusual songs.<\/p>\n
Did you have specific sonic goals?<\/b><\/p>\n
I did. I told [co-producer] John Cuniberti, \u201cLet\u2019s forget about preparing the album for radio, TV or video games. Let\u2019s let fans hear what it sounds like to us in the studio.\u201d The short story is, if you want to sell a track for a video game, for instance, then basically all the dynamic range is eliminated. In terms of dynamic range, it goes somewhere between 1db and 0. That\u2019s a useful device when music is played at low volume, but I know my fans like to be able to turn the music up and feel it\u2014and you can\u2019t do that with music that\u2019s been heavily limited, because distortion creeps in. We wanted to make a super-dynamic record where the volume shifts the way it does in real life. The idea was that even with all the distorted guitars I use, we would make a very open, clear album with lots of depth.<\/p>\n
What guitars did you use?<\/b><\/p>\n
I mostly alternated between the Ibanez JS2410 MCO and the MCP. And I probably played a regular Ibanez JS2400. I also used my Ibanez Signature Acoustic on one or two songs. And electric 12-strings\u2014a 1966 Fender and an Epiphone Les Paul that I play slide on. Both those are kind of funky, but they had the tone we were looking for. There are also a couple of songs where I\u2019m playing one of my Ibanez guitars with an EverTune bridge on it.<\/p>\n
Still practice?<\/b><\/p>\n
I no longer do scales and exercises. I went through that tortuous hell when I was in my teens, learning where everything was\u2014every scale and every chord\u2014and came out a better man for it. Now, when I look at the guitar, I see those things, because I put in those many hours. Physically, however, it\u2019s a different story. I\u2019m not the sort of gifted player who can pick up a guitar and play anything technical. It still feels like a struggle. Whenever there\u2019s a tour coming up, I give myself six weeks to practice the show, twice a day. I need that to feel comfortable when I walk onstage for the first show. I prove to myself twice a day that I can pull this off while still feeling relaxed. I\u2019ve been playing more than 40 years and it\u2019s still hard for me.<\/p>\n
Why instrumental music?<\/b><\/p>\n
Part of it was the realization I was working on the wrong thing. In the early \u201980s I was in a band called the Squares. We tried hard to be industrious and professional, and got nowhere. It was demoralizing. And it was the second time I had been through that. In my late teens I had been in a disco band, touring the East Coast, and I remember thinking, \u201cThis is the most demoralizing gig, ever.\u201d So I quit that band and moved to California. Meanwhile, I was teaching in a music store, working with great young players like Charlie Hunter, Kirk Hammett and Larry LaLonde. And they were totally into their generation\u2019s music. I starting thinking, \u201cI go home and play all this instrumental music, mainly to move my musicianship forward. Maybe I\u2019ve got it backward. Maybe I should be public with the stuff I\u2019ve been keeping private\u2014and take this public work I\u2019ve been doing and put it aside.\u201d So I quit the Squares and started trying to show people the avant-garde side of my musicianship.<\/p>\n
Where are today\u2019s interesting guitarists emerging from?<\/b><\/p>\n
Probably from progressive hardcore. Bands like Periphery, Animals as Leaders, and Meshuggah are using the guitar like no one\u2019s used it before. You have to give those guys credit for blazing this new trail. Meanwhile pop, country and hip-hop are sharing the spotlight, with EDM mixed in there as well. There\u2019s not a whole lot of room in those areas for guitar expression. During the last 10 years, the most popular forms of music have used electric guitar as a caricature.<\/p>\n
Are you discouraged by that?<\/b><\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t impact my life at all. There\u2019s always great playing\u2014you just have to seek it out. When I watch an awards show, for instance, I\u2019ll look for the live musicians playing in the background and listen to how good they are. They aren\u2019t the focus of attention, but there are always players out there doing great work.<\/p>\n
\u2013Russell Hall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JOE SATRIANI \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 One of guitar\u2019s greatest instrumentalists unleashes his inner extrovert Playing guitar with his teeth during the final performance of his previous tour, Joe Satriani had an epiphany. \u201cI thought, \u2018What am I doing? What part of me rears its head and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[4195,7625],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15524,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15522\/revisions\/15524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}