So last month we checked out the style of Satan's own guitarist, Steve Vai! So where do you go from there? Well- how about the guy who trained him up?
Born Joseph Satriani in Westbury, New York, on July 15 1956 as the youngest of five,“Satch” would go on to become (at the time of writing) the best selling instrumental guitarist of ALL TIME. No mean feat.
Legend has it that the 14 year old Satriani, on hearing the news of Jimi Hendrix's death during football practice, decided right there and then to quit football and take up guitar instead (moving over from his previous instrument, drums). His influences during this period were the classic “British Blues” guitar heroes – Clapton, Beck, Page – as well as Queen's Brian May and British fusion maestro Allan Holdsworth, the last known for his incredibly smooth legato playing, which forms a key part of Satch's style. Far and away his biggest credited influence, however, was Jimi Hendrix. By age 18-19, he was studying with jazz professionals Bill Bauer and Lenny Tristano, who Satriani credited with teaching him the technique of “scat singing” - literally singing what you play – as well as immersing him in advanced theory concepts.
In 1977 aged 21, Satriani made the move to San Francisco, Californina to pursue his own music career, and began by establishing himself as a teacher – notable among his students was the young Italian virtuoso Steve Vai, who Satch recounts as being “just a year or so behind” him in development. It's worth taking a moment to look at his teaching roster, as it reads like a veritable Who's Who of guitar virtuosi – as well as Vai, there's Metallica's Kirk Hammett, Testament's Aex Skolnick, Larry LaLonde of Primus, David Bryson of Counting Crows... I'd have guessed that his Grade 8 pass rate was pretty good!
As the 1980s dawned, Satriani was playing with a band formed with his brother-in-law Neil Sheehan called the Squares, which Satch recounts as playing “Police-style poppy stuff”, before joining the Greg Kihn Band (famous for hits “The Breakup Song” and “Jeopardy”). During this time he had recorded his first album, “Not Of This Earth” funded entirely by credit card – this was a completely solo effort with Satriani programming electronic drums and playing bass and keyboard parts. Playing with Greg Kihn Band allowed him to pay off the dents incurred recording this, and allowed him to raise the money to record his second album in 1987- the now legendary “Surfing With The Alien”.
Interestingly, although this would become Satriani's breakout album, it was recorded on a shoestring - $13000, largely using electronic drums and keyboards to synthesize orchestral sounds, Satriani recording all the guitar parts with a pair of budget Kramer Pacer guitars and a modified Stratocaster! Worth keeping in mind that 35 years later, if you're reading this with a basic DAW and a couple of half decent guitars, you've probably got a more comprehensive set up already... so stop making excuses and get to it! Off the back of “Surfing..” Mick Jagger hired him as lead guitarist for his solo tour in 1988, Satch's first high-profile gig.
“Surfing...” was followed by “Flying In A Blue Dream” in 1989 inspired by the death of his father and in 1992, Satriani released his most successful album to date, “The Extremist” - described by the man himself as a “pretty rock & roll record”. This was hugely successful, “Summer Song”, “Cryin'” and “Friends” all making the Billboard Top 100 – quite a feat for an instrumental guitar album!
In 1996, Satriani & Vai partnered with Eric Johnson for the first G3 tour, and over the years the “third guitarist” position has been filled by Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, John Petrucci and Robert Fripp (who I saw in Nottingham in 2007) – so as you can see, it's a pretty prestigious position to fill!
By this point, Satriani was well established on both sides of the Atlantic as a bona fide guitar hero – so this is where we'll leave the potted history and get to looking at some licks!
We'll start with a couple of “in the style of” licks to get to grips with the concepts Satch uses to navigate the fretboard. This first is in the key of A and looks at how he navigates the fretboard horizontally using 1 and 2 string legato patterns – interestingly, Satriani refers to his legato technique as a “workaround” from not having a particularly strong picking technique. This is a 1 octave run using a sextuplet pattern mapped across the A major scale along the high E string – Satriani would regularly use these legato “cells” as building blocks for his longer licks and runs, describing them as his “liquid mercury” technique.
This second pattern involves the B string as well, Satch beginning in one position but moving to the position above on the E string and below in the B string before finishing right back on the same A root note we began with – students of mine who have gone through my diagonal scales method will recognise the six note mini boxes Satch is utilising for this technique. You see, I'm not making this stuff up!
For the third pattern I took an approach similar to what Satriani takes in is fluid legato opus, “Flying In A Blue Dream” - note that this is not a direct transcription, I've tried to instead pare back his approach so as to better understand it rather than simply give you a mass of notes to learn. What I've done here is to take a legato “cell” and extrapolate it across three octaves. Again, if you're familiar with my “diagonal” scale system you'll recognise the Locrian cell pattern at work here.
Finally, we'll end with a bluesier run that takes familiar Clapton/ Page/ Angus Young pentatonic ideas and dial in a Dorian vibe courtesy of adding the 2nd and 6th degrees of the scale – this is in Bb and taken from the recent (and HUGELY catchy) track”Big Distortion”, toward the end of the final solo. Note the slides and position shifts at the end and how much more melodic the semitone moves sound.
As always, this is just scratching the surface – I could happily spend a year transcribing Satch and still not get close to the detail and effortless fluidity of his playing, but hopefully these ideas are things you can incorporate into your own playing. See you next month for G3's original “Other Guy” - the quietly spoken pentatonic genius of Eric Johnson!
