Strange Beautiful Music

by Joe Satriani

  "Lifestyle," the other vocal track on the record, goes back to '85 for me. I recorded a demo of the song at Jeff Holt’s Likewise Productions with the idea of "placing" it. Specifically, I thought it would be a great song for Steve Miller. It featured me singing in harmony, imitating Steve’s cool way of triple tracking himself, and a crazy, vibrato-bar, multitrack riff that was the song’s instrumental hook. I never did get it to Steve, but I always thought it was worth a second look. As I write this I'm thinking, "I wonder if Steve would consider doing a version of this now?"

  Jeff Campitelli and his drums, The Plant, '03

  PHOTO BY JON LUINI

  I thought that as an engineer, John would appreciate the creative approach to this album. He liked the variety of stuff I would bring in, such as something live like "Searching" followed by something unusual like "Bamboo." I think he liked the outrageous nature of some of the songs and was really up to trying to capture me getting more and more creative. I knew this was a project he would really enjoy sonically as well. Like all engineers, he would have preferred it if I did everything in the studio, with him in control, but by this point in time most engineers were used to artists bringing in projects where half of the album or more was already recorded. That’s just where the world was going.

  John Cuniberti: At heart, I wanted to do a live analog record. Instead we ended up doing the record in digital because by this point, Joe was doing a lot of recording himself at home on Pro Tools. This was a new process. On our first day of recording, Joe walked through the front door with a hard drive filled with hundreds of guitar parts! Is There Love in Space? was recorded in digital, but I decided to go retro on Joe for the song "Searching." To try to keep the live vibe going with the band, I rented a 16-track head stack for a Studer 2-inch tape recorder, and we recorded analog. I told them I didn't need more than 16 tracks to record the three of them. Since this was live, I allowed a couple of overdubs. I wanted Joe, Jeff, and Matt to go out there, practice this song, and then I'd record it, and we'd just keep recording it till we had something really wonderful. And that’s what happened. My hands were full just handling the engineering chores and making sure everything was recorded properly. Joe, as a producer, was really guiding Matt and Jeff through the process of getting good takes. When we were done recording the album, Joe decided to bring in Mike Fraser to mix it. There was a trend at that time for records to be recorded by one guy and mixed by another guy. Mike did a perfectly fine job mixing this record.

  When principal tracking was over, we decided to bring in Mike Fraser to mix the album. We had a feeling that Mike would add a big, round quality to the sound, along with some new ideas. John and I had talked about bringing in a mix engineer for just about every other record we'd ever done, but we'd avoided it because we didn't want other people to "screw up" our records. Sometimes, though, you want what another mix engineer might add to a project. Such was the case with this record.

  Mike mixed that album at The Plant, in the same room we recorded it in. When it was finished, John and Mike together produced a really beautiful-sounding album for me.

  Mike Fraser: John and I got along great, and I don't think on either side of us there’s ever any jealousy or competition or anything like that. Joe will do a record with me, then a record or two with John, then be back working with me again. It’s whatever personality is going to help him create what he’s looking for on that specific project.

  With some songs, it’s very difficult to unlock their secrets in the studio, while with others it’s like an unlocked door opening up into a whole new world. "Searching" was one of those "whole new world" experiences for us. I had never before presented an opportunity to the band like that: go in with a song in mind, show it to the band, improvise the arrangement on the fly, and record it as a trio, live to 2-inch tape. They all wanted eight more songs like that! I liked the way the material on Is There Love in Space? was balanced. It was similar to Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, where you had some songs that were meticulously worked out, and then you had others that were obviously jams in the studio. I like that kind of variety on a record. From "Gnaahh" to "Lifestyle" to "If I Could Fly" to "Searching" to "Bamboo," we achieved a creative mix of songwriting, recording techniques, and performances that gave the record its own unique balance.

  Matt Bissonette and his bass, The Plant, '03

  PHOTO BY JON LUINI

  A while after the album’s release, it gained new notice because it contained the song "If I Could Fly." I had started writing that song on 1990's Flying tour, and it had taken me over ten years to finish it! I felt it was the most lyrical-sounding message of love I had ever written up to that point. The recording captured an innocence, too, an honest, straight-from-the-heart quality. The song also achieved quite a bit of attention for an unintended reason, about which I can only say, "No comment." It remains a fan favorite and always brings a smile to my face when I hear it.

  CHAPTER 18 * *

  Super Colossal— 2006

  "Some of the most technically accomplished guitar music ever written."

  —BBC News

  When I'm writing for a new record, I write freely without my inner critic getting in the way. For instance, I don't start writing a slow song, then stop myself and say, "This should be an up-tempo number like 'Summer Song.'" I just write until I'm finished with a piece and then I start writing another one. So I keep an artist’s point of view right to the end. There’s usually a month or two where I know that I've got some kind of a deadline to demo up. That’s when I gather together all the new song ideas on little scraps of paper written in hotel rooms, tour buses, backstage, and all around the house. I put those together with the full songs I've written in manuscript, on Pro Tools, on my laptop, or on my phone. I usually take between forty and fifty songs into this review period. Then I decide which songs I'm going to pursue and which I'll save for a future record. I usually end up with twelve to sixteen cuts that I think will be fun, challenging, cohesive, and interesting to work on.

  Once I have those tracks, I look to see if there’s a trend that ties certain songs together. Early on I realized that "A Cool New Way," "One Robot’s Dream," "The Meaning of Love," and "Made of Tears" were a group that could be tied together, almost like their own separate chapter. I approached drummer Simon Phillips with an idea: "I'll send you four tracks, sans drums, and you record yourself at your own studio playing whatever you feel like playing." It turned out great. He gave me memorable performances that swung and grooved just like they needed to, and his recording technique was very hip, too. The rest of the album’s tracks would feature Jeff Campitelli’s drumming, which we recorded up at Armoury Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia.

  Once I had written the title track, it gave me a direction for the album as a whole. I felt like this album’s cornerstone was going to be this daydream about a 100-foot-tall guitar player. The song hinged on a simple riff turned gigantic by way of an Electro-Harmonix POG pedal. I ordered it online from Musictoyz.com, got it in two days, opened the box, plugged it in, and wrote "Super Colossal" in about ten minutes! Sometimes it’s just that easy and fun.

  Writing music for the record, I was getting really excited about using my JS1200, too. It has such a unique sound to it, and there’s a lot of it on the album. We had just put in this new DiMarzio PAF Joe pickup in the neck position, and as for the guitar itself, I could swear that the sound on it was different just based on the candy-apple-red paint job it had! I was really getting into the sound of using the neck pickup and was also getting a good DI sound with Pro Tools. By this time I was using a "real" HD Pro Tools rig, which was a big improvement from my earlier home studio setups. I also had the Marshall SE100 speaker simulator, which improved the signal path from my amp to Pro Tools as well.

  I had a better, more balanced-sounding environment now, so when it came, for instance, to recording "Made of Tears," it inspired me to play harmonics on two electric twelve-strings with delays paired with a bass guitar to create a n
ew atmosphere for my melodies. The tone of the album’s songs, like the title track or "Redshift Riders"—where there have to be about eight guitars—was really big, but the clarity in my studio allowed me to stack those things up and still get a really powerful sound. So when I brought those tracks up to Mike Fraser in Vancouver, it was easy for him to incorporate live drums and make the guitar, bass, and synth tracks all work together.

  Mike’s strength, aside from his being completely unflappable, is that he can be creative and bring all his technical knowledge into play no matter where or when you bring him into a project. It could be something where he’s involved from the ground up, like Chickenfoot III, or something that’s halfway finished, like Super Colossal. Nothing fazes him. He always excels!

  Mike Fraser: When Joe and I record, there’s not too many outsiders. There may be a weekend where some of his friends come through with his wife to say hi, but they're brief moments. He’s pretty focused in the studio. If somebody else is in doing keyboard overdubs or something like that, Joe will be sitting on the back couch doing his email or whatever, but he’s always kind of got an ear to what’s going on. He'll give his opinion, so he’s always involved. Even when his parts are done, he doesn't leave: he’s there the whole time. He oversees the production from A to Z.

  Joe was always in the control room for his overdubs and solos, but for rhythm tracks Joe’s out with the band because there’s a lot more energy and more of an eye contact thing that you just can't get with him in the control room—especially for endings and stops. It’s hard to do that without looking at each other. We put him off in a little booth out on the floor, because with the drums, you really have to crank your earphones up to hear anything. So he'll sometimes stand in a little iso-booth area, which at least cuts down on the thunder of the drums, and he can keep his headphones down a little quieter. That said, recording Joe is pretty much the same every time: set it up and turn it up!

  The kind of songs I was putting on this album were a huge leap forward for me artistically, so making Super Colossal was great fun! With "A Cool New Way" specifically, I thought that song was aptly titled because it was a new side of me that I'd never really showed people. The pacing of the song was much longer and more spread out than other pieces of music I'd done on previous albums. It had this structure that was just so open and groove oriented, while on the melodic side, there were these different melodies on top of repeating chord structures that traded off until the song’s chorus. Then there was the use of the harmonies and the unisons, which were quite different than what I'd done before. There’s also a jazz and R&B element at play there, too. I love that song and I love playing it live. It’s very cathartic playing that piece of music live because I'm going all the way back to my bebop lessons with Lennie Tristano and just pulling out music that I heard from my childhood when I was listening to my parents' jazz records.

  My home studio during preproduction in '05

  PHOTO BY JOE SATRIANI

  "Redshift Riders" was another song that I had so much fun recording. The idea of it came from my thinking about the property of redshift. As I understand it, around large, celestial bodies, there’s a warping of space-time because of their gravitational force. From that I came up with my own theory that perhaps people traveling through space, with technology we don't yet have, would be able to use this warping of space-time as a kind of slingshot to travel faster and farther. I envisioned that maybe as part of my sci-fi daydream there would be a select few space travelers who had figured this out. My questions were, "What would their adventures be?" and "How do I represent vast distances and warping of time and space musically?"

  When it came time to compose the melody, I knew that I needed to use large spaces between the notes, big intervals to create that feeling of open space and that slingshot effect I imagined.

  Mike Fraser: Joe’s game for all styles and he’s quite eager to try new things. Even though he’s in a genre and you can tell it’s Joe Satriani right away, he works pretty hard at trying to switch up melodies, do different tones and different effect-y things on his guitars to make each song more interesting, and "Redshift Riders" was a great example of that off of SC. Usually when we're in the studio, we have three or four guitar setups, and once we're finished with drums and everything, you gain a lot of your board back and can use those channels. Among our guitar setups, we had one really loud, rocky setup, one that was sort of a melody-type setup, and a solo sound, and then we'd have cleaner, smaller amp guitar setups. It’s probably about a day’s process for each song to lay some of the overdub guitars down, and maybe even at the end of that day you may or may not have a solo yet.

  "It’s So Good" is a great example of one of those songs where the experience in my studio was so wonderful compared to previous records. That’s got to be the most gorgeous-sounding recording on the album. How Mike Fraser mixed it is amazing and how Jeff played on it was just beyond my expectations. It’s not flashy like "Satch Boogie" and there’s nothing on there that would make a list of the top twenty most outrageous guitar performances, but it feels like a huge step over that hurdle that separates guitar-nerd music from the music that everybody else in the world listens to. When that song comes on, I feel like everybody can enjoy this, because it’s not bogged down by guitar-centric ideas and agendas. Everything about that song sounded perfect. The clean guitar sounds were so beautiful, and I can't remember a bass sound I've liked more on any track I've ever done. I feel the same way about "Just Like Lightnin'," which has got one of Jeff Campitelli’s biggest and fattest grooves.

  For many years I've tried doing a call-and-response thing with the audience, but the problem seemed to be that they weren't comfortable improvising. I set out to solve this dilemma with the song "Crowd Chant." Whether you're in Spain, India, Sweden, or the U.S.A., audiences like to participate in the show and sing along with whatever you might ask them to. Sometimes, though, you get a lot of empty, blank-looking faces, or people just randomly yelling. The problem, as I saw it, was that these fans didn't know what to sing. I thought if they knew what they were supposed to sing ahead of time, maybe they would really want to participate. I wanted to put a call-and-response song on an album that wasn't a "live" recording from a show, but asked myself, "Could I really do that? Is that too cheesy?" I decided to try and see.

  When I sat down to do it, I combined the elements of an opening riff, a few call-and-response sections, and a deep, melodic section. I'd been playing with the "Pavane" piece written in 1887 by Gabriel Fauré for a few years, and while I'd already written another song around it, I thought this would be a good counterpoint. My idea was to have a very simple, blues-rock call-and-response thing with a big, heavy riff and then shift to this classical piece in the middle, and you could have people sing this beautiful melody at the end. I imagined it would be like a great juxtaposition of music all behind a big, concert pulse that Jeff was going to provide.

  Next, I mapped out the song in sections, and then recorded the main riff. I then recorded between twenty and thirty "calls," then sat back and listened through them all, asking, "If I was in the audience, what would be fun for me to 'respond' to? Which lick has too many notes? Which lick is too simple? Which are the most inspiring licks?" From there I picked what I thought were the winners, and then arranged them until I got to what I thought was an uplifting and powerful song. This is an example of a song that took a lot of listening back to in different environments, because I kept thinking the song would be unconvincing if it was arranged the wrong way. And I also thought, "If I don't put some humor in there to balance out the seriousness of the Faure classical piece, the audience may not get it."

  When I showed the song to Mike, I said, "I've got this unusual song—here’s what it sounds like with a drum machine, here are all the keyboards and all the guitars, now how are we going to get a group of people in a studio to sound like an arena full of people chanting?"

  Mike Fraser: I don't think either of us knew if it was going to w
ork until the night we recorded it. That one was a stand¬out and one of the things coming in that Joe really wanted to establish on this record, so that when he played it live, the crowd would sing along. First we had to authentically pull that off on record in the studio. For the big call and re-sponse, I called up a bunch of singer friends of mine, and we all had a good night at the studio there to track that. I used 87s for that song to record the crowd.

  I still didn't know if it was going to work until we were there that night. After recording the singers on ten consecutive passes, Mike heard the playback and said, "It’s too big. We don't even need half of what we recorded." When we sat back and listened to it, we realized this was going to work. It wasn't corny. It was really powerful. It’s such an important part of my live performances now, because we put it on the record first. The whole concept of it worked, and Mike brought it to a higher level, higher than I ever thought it could go.

  Mike Fraser at Armoury Studios, Vancouver, '05

  PHOTO BY RONN DUNNETT

  You can tell if an album really makes a difference when, years later, any songs from it always have to be on the set list. "Flying in a Blue Dream," which was never picked to be a single, wound up being a song we have to do live. The audience decides for you what songs get played from an album long after it’s released. "Crowd Chant" was a song I wrote specifically with a live audience in mind, and the audience has thankfully decided it’s a track we have to play. Now, every time we play somewhere, we've always got one song where everybody in the audience knows exactly what to do.

  CHAPTER 19 * *

  Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock— 2008

  "Satriani shines in his ability to hold back and write tasteful verse/chorus songs with memorable hooks. Like the majority of his songs in his ever growing catalog, most of these are technically impressive numbers that never go overboard with the showboating and rely on a sense of feeling rather than virtuoso technique."