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Well when caught with your pants down it's better to tell the truth. I never considered myself a really good guitarist but just today I was driving home from rehearsal with my bass player (who's also my younger brother) riding shotgun and we had Nightranger on the radio and I went "I could play that." to which my brother replied: "No, you and Jack (Jack T. "Ripper" our second guitarplayer) could blow these guys out of the water."
So how did it come to this? Well my first love of the heavier genre of music were Iron Maiden and their music required shredding and I still consider Dave Murray one of the biggest influences on my own style. Add Guns N Roses later in my early teens and you'll find my cutting my teeth on Slash' licks on the "Use your Illusions" albums for many hours when I was 17 and my uncooparative fingers just would have nothing of it.
And here I am 16 years later, having discovered eighties metal bands like Nightranger and L.A. Guns thanks to VH1 (in the Netherlands, bands like that never got that big as they got in the USA) and with the desire to be in a band like that I joined what eventually turned out to be Slavantas and finally all that wood shedding is paying off. I actually consider what Brad Gillis is playing as something that wouldn't be too hard for me to pull off. The 17-year old boy inside me is finally getting to the point he always wanted to be.
I'm not there yet though, I don't have the articulate picking and intonation down yet and I'm just yet discovering how I can make the most of a double locking trem, it's still a steep learning curve. Sweep picking is another thing that's still daunting. But with each rehearsal I get my solos down, I no longer play a different thing each time like I used to, I feel the patrens becoming second nature and I'm almost to the level where I can just close my eyes and wail away.
I'm sorry if this comes across as a self endulgent post but I'm pretty excited about my progress.
So how did it come to this? Well my first love of the heavier genre of music were Iron Maiden and their music required shredding and I still consider Dave Murray one of the biggest influences on my own style. Add Guns N Roses later in my early teens and you'll find my cutting my teeth on Slash' licks on the "Use your Illusions" albums for many hours when I was 17 and my uncooparative fingers just would have nothing of it.
And here I am 16 years later, having discovered eighties metal bands like Nightranger and L.A. Guns thanks to VH1 (in the Netherlands, bands like that never got that big as they got in the USA) and with the desire to be in a band like that I joined what eventually turned out to be Slavantas and finally all that wood shedding is paying off. I actually consider what Brad Gillis is playing as something that wouldn't be too hard for me to pull off. The 17-year old boy inside me is finally getting to the point he always wanted to be.
I'm not there yet though, I don't have the articulate picking and intonation down yet and I'm just yet discovering how I can make the most of a double locking trem, it's still a steep learning curve. Sweep picking is another thing that's still daunting. But with each rehearsal I get my solos down, I no longer play a different thing each time like I used to, I feel the patrens becoming second nature and I'm almost to the level where I can just close my eyes and wail away.
I'm sorry if this comes across as a self endulgent post but I'm pretty excited about my progress.
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