ALTHOUGH HE HAS RELEASED
roughly one album per year over the past
23 years, Joe Satriani’s 1987 blockbuster
Surfing with the Alien—reissued in August,
2007, as a remastered and expanded
anniversary edition—remains the ultimate
primer for anyone interested in copping
some of Satch’s trend-setting musical
mojo. I had the honor of transcribing the
entire album (with the exception of “Satch
Boogie”) that same year, so naturally that’s
the one I’m gonna zone in on!
Satriani’s virtuosic-playing-with-soul,
incredibly cool tunes, and licensed Silver
Surfer cover art culminated in Surfing’s
perfect package, which forced open the
elusive crack in time that seems to occur
every dozen years or so when guitar instrumentals
once again achieve popularity.
The certified platinum album, which
followed on the heels of Satriani’s 1986
full-length debut, Not of This Earth (which
he had the cojones to finance with a credit
card he unexpectedly received in the mail), quickly rose to number 29 on Billboard’s
Top 200 Album Chart and spawned three
hit singles. Since then, Satriani has
recorded a slew of solo albums, including
Flying in a Blue Dream (1989), The
Extremist (1992), Time Machine (1993), Joe
Satriani (1995), Crystal Planet (1998; see
the May 1998 GP for my in-depth, sitdown
with Satch), Engines of Creation
(2000), Live in San Francisco (2001), Strange
Beautiful Music (2002), Is There Love in
Space? (2004), Super Colossal (2006), Professor
Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of
Rock (2008), and Live in Paris: I Just Wanna
Rock (2010), toured as a sideman with
Mick Jagger (1988), founded and continues
to spearhead G3 with cohorts Steve
Vai, Eric Johnson, Yngwie Malmsteen,
Robert Fripp, and John Petrucci, guested
on Pat Martino’s All Sides Now (1997),
composed music for NASCAR, and most
recently, joined Chickenfoot (featured in
the September ’09 issue of GP.)
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
First, you’ve gotta...
1 TEACH
Whoever coined the
phrase “those who can’t
do, teach” obviously never
ran into anyone like Joe
Satriani, a doer, teacher,
and New Yorker of the
highest order. It’s well known that Satriani—
who studied with jazz pianist Lennie
Tristano and remains an avid Hendrix
disciple—counts Steve Vai, Kirk Hammett,
Larry LaLonde, and Charlie Hunter among
his roster of former pupils, but he equally
inspired and enlightened dozens of students
who never achieved that degree of
success, and I’m betting that, like any good
teacher, Satch benefited as much from the
experience as every one of his pupils did.
“It doesn’t matter if your student is Kirk
Hammett or an eight-year-old kid with an
action figure sitting on the amp—teaching
makes you get your sh*t together,”
Satriani told GP’s Darrin Fox in 2007. “As
a teacher, your job is to—using the fewest
possible words, and with the most musical
economy you can muster—give the
student what they need to move forward.
You learn to be succinct, and to put forth
ideas without alienating the student. You
also learn to remove any of your stylistic
tendencies or qualities from the information
so as not to adversely affect them.”
Teachers take note. Now, dig deep, and...
2 PUSH YOUR GEAR
(AND YOUR CREDIT
CARD) TO ITS LIMITS
Over the past two decades,
Satriani’s physical “engines
of creation” have evolved
from a few basic guitars,
amps, and effects to a series of signature
lines that include everything from soup to
nuts. Satch recorded the monstrous tones
on Surfing armed only with a white Kramer
Pacer (loaded with an original Floyd Rose
vibrato and two Seymour Duncan pickups—
a ’59 in the neck position and one of the
first JBs in the bridge), a pair of homemade
Strat copies, a Roland JC-120, a ’68 Marshall
half-stack modded with a master
volume, an original Chandler Tube Driver,
a Boss DS-1 and an SD-1, a Scholz Rockman,
a Nomad amplifier, plus a borrowed
Fender Precision Bass and bass amp. Soon
after, Satriani began an ongoing relationship
with Ibanez, a fruitful collaboration
that started with Satch’s favorite JS-1,
Chrome Boy, and which has since spawned
at least a dozen different JS models. He
also began using low-wattage Wells and
Cornford amps in the studio. Nowadays
you can outfit your entire rig—from guitars
and amps (the aforementioned Ibanez
JS signature series and Peavey’s JSX
amps), to pickups and effects pedals
(DiMarzio Mo’ Joe pickups, and Vox’s
Satchurator Distortion, Time Machine
Delay, and Big Bad Wah), to picks and
straps decorated with Satriani artwork—
by visiting satriani.com. As far as financing
your solo album on a credit card goes, I’m
not sure you could pull this off in our current
economy, but you’ll never know until
you try. Until then, you’ve gotta...
3 SUBVERT THE
ORDINARY
One of Satriani’s most
brilliant early strategies
was to subvert, re-energize,
and recast common
blues-rock licks as catchy
and memorable instrumental “verse”
melodies played over irresistible rhythmic
grooves. Check out how familiar melodic
snippetts like the Beck-ish runs in Ex. 1a
and Ex. 1b take on a whole new life when
injected into a high-octane, eighth-note
surf beat punctuated with root-5 power
chords a la “Surfing with the Alien.” You can transpose these licks to their respective
adjacent higher strings, but they sound
throatier as written. Ex. 1c bears an unmistakable
Hendrix imprint—that kind of
heavy-blues-meets-Native-American-chant
vibe—which can be enjoyed with or without
the optional harmonies, and Ex. 1d
follows suit, incorporating a dose of traditional
call-and-response phrasing. Cool
enough, but that’s just a part of the big
picture. You’ve also gotta...
4 BE STRANGE
& BEAUTIFUL
Exotic melodies, shifting
modalities, and intriguing
song structures are
also key to the Satriani
oeuvre. Wet your feet
with the stock, arpeggiated A5 figure
shown in Ex. 2a, apply its rhythmic motif
and picking pattern to the A5#11 and
A13sus4 voicings from Ex. 2b, and you’ll
hear a pretty convincing approximation
of Satriani’s other-worldly Vincent Bell
Coral electric sitar intro to “Lords of
Karma.” Ex. 2c simulates the bass groove
that defines the song’s shifting A Lydian
and A Mixolydian modalities. Play it as
is for A5#11 and lower all G#s a halfstep
to G over A13sus4. (Tip: For total
authenticity, tie the and of beat two to
beat three.) When Satch’s exotic
melody joins the mix, it emphasizes key
chord and scale tones that define each
mode. Notated in half-time to conserve
space, Examples 2d and 2f both feature
precise grace-note slurs and outline the
raw melodic materials Satriani used to
sculpt A Lydian lines over A5#11—the
3 (C#), the #4/#11(D#), the 5 (E), and
the 6 (F#)—while Examples 2e and 2g
illustrate the shift to A Mixolydian via
G (the b7) and D (the 4/11), plus the
A, B, E, and F# inherent to both modes.
Check out the recording for Satch’s
exact rhythms and phrasing, and then
get ready to...
5 SURF THE ’BOARD
The fretboard, that is.
Satriani’s extremely fluid
legato technique, and its
application to what he
calls his “pitch axis”
theory—essentially the
organization of modalities or chord progressions
around a common tone (A, in
this case)—has thrilled many a 6-string
surfer, and here’s how you can ride along. Utilizing the A5#11-A13sus4 progression
from our previous examples, Ex. 3a
illustrates how to make a short, repetitive
legato line fit both chords with the
least amount of fuss. The only difference
between A Lydian and A Mixolydian
involves the 4 and 7, so these are
the only tones that need adjustment
when switching between modalities.
Thus, we only have to change D# (the
#4/#11) to D (the 4/11) to make the
transition. The elongated run in Ex. 3b
requires similar adjustments, plus
changing all G#s to Gs to fit the progression,
and the same principle applies to
both the tapped legato runs depicted in
Ex. 3c, and the wild, quarter-note-tripletbased,
hammer-on/pull-off excursion
shown in Ex. 3d. Try applying this concept
to any combination of scales,
modes, and/or chords. Just remember,
you’ve also gotta...
6 ROMANCE THE
WOOD AND PLAY
SOME SHWEET
SHTUFF
“Always with Me, Always
with You,” perhaps Satriani’s
most recognized
composition outside of the immediate
guitar community, confirms how much
beauty can be coaxed from a basic B major
scale. The melody and accompaniment
may sound simple at first, but don’t be
fooled—closer scrutiny reveals Satriani’s
obsessive attention to detail. The fourbar
excerpt transcribed in Ex. 4 shows the opening melody and rhythm figure, and
reveals not only how nearly every note has
some sort of physical “Joe stuff” smeared
on it (slurs, vibrato, pick harmonic, palm
muting, etc.), but also how he imposes a
unique harmonic imprint on an otherwise
pedestrian chord progression. “It’s a simple
I-IV-V progression, but I subverted it a
bit by giving every chord a suspended tonality,”
Satch recalled in 2007. “I would add,
say a 4 to one chord, and a 13 to another.”
(Tip: Be sure to “play” those rests—they’re
just as important as the notes.) Ready to
trip out? Let’s...
7 TAKE TAPPING
INTO THE FOURTH
DIMENSION
Satriani’s “Midnight”
(which was composed on
manuscript before making
its way to the fretboard)
was an epiphany for two-hand tappers.
Determined not to repeat what had already
been done, Satch devised an ingenious way
to bring the piece to life by employing two
different two-hand tapping patterns to play
arpeggios and broken chords. The first
approach is illustrated in bar 2 of Ex. 5a,
which converts the hard-to-play Am voicing
shown in bar 1into two sets of tapped,
arpeggiated intervals—the left hand taps
the first two notes and the right hand taps
the last two. (Tip: Use a string mute or tie
a piece of cloth around the fretboard just
above the nut to eliminate unwanted and
untempered overtones from occurring
behind tapped notes.) Likewise, bar 2 in
Ex. 5b breaks an impossible C chord (bar 1)
into a rhythmic blaze of easy-to-manage,
two-hand, tapped intervals. (Tip: Think
castanets!) Now, here comes the fun part.
First, apply the “voicings” in Ex. 5c to the tapping pattern you learned in Ex. 5a to
approximate the song’s intro. (Note the
variations in left-hand fingering/tapping.)
Check the album for the order of these
chords and their duration, and then follow
the same procedure with the impossible
voicings in Ex. 5d and the tapping pattern
from Ex. 5b to simulate the main theme,
which maintains a constant fingering and
tapping pattern throughout. Giddyap and...
8 GO NUTS
Anyone who has witnessed
his live show can
attest that one of Satriani’s
most endearing
qualities is how the guy
just cuts loose with some
of the craziest licks ‘n’ tricks you never
thought of. From screaming, near-dogwhistle
harmonic dive bombs (that
super-high A harmonic on the 3rdstring/
2nd-fret is a favorite), and the
“lizard-down-the-throat” sound (a warble-
y, whammy effect achieved by sliding
a note up a string while simultaneously
depressing the bar to maintain the same
pitch), to hooking the B or G string under
his ring-fingernail and yanking it off the
side of the neck (a Steve Vai fave), and
using the side of his pick to tap hyperspeed
trills, Satriani always manages to
transcend gimmickry and find truly
astounding musical applications for even
the wackiest sounds and techniques. On
a more note-y level, have fun surfing the
electric hoe-down stylings in the I-IV lick
in Ex. 6a (Tip: Play bar 1 three times, bar
2 four times, and bar 1 once to ride a fourbar
4/4 figure.), and the whammy antics
in Ex. 6b. (Shades of Tommy Bolin!) Pick
every note if you like, or play it as written.
And of course we all know Satch is a
master of deep electric blues a la Hendrix’s
“Red House,” as heard in the busy-buttasty
turnaround notated in Ex. 6c. Read it
and weep, and then...
9 WRITE YOURSELF
A SIGNATURE SONG
“Satch Boogie” isn’t just
a theme song, it’s a riteof-
passage for thousands
of Satriani disciples, and
I’m pleased-as-punch to
finally get my own shot at translating its
sheer power to the printed page. The song
certainly requires chops to spare, but its
primary component is attitude. Ex. 7 lays
out the entire head, from the Buddy Rich
hi-hat intro right up to Satch’s first solo.
Take your time, follow the repeat, D.S.,
and Coda instructions, and the occasional
odd-time measure, and you’ll be navigating
the cosmos before you know it. But
before we split, you gotta...
10 JUST ASK
THE AXIS
The pitch
axis, that is.
When Satch
takes his signature
boogie
to the bridge, all heaven breaks loose in a
fearless cascade of flange-y, tapped arpeggios
played entirely on the A string. “I
started out taking a ZZ Top/Van Halenstyle
boogie, and injecting this warped
two-handed tapping thing in the middle,”
explains Satriani. “But the devil on my
shoulder urged me to do more, so I used
pitch axis theory again. As a result, the
notes that make up the two-handed arpeggios
in that section create some very odd
tonalities that you wouldn’t hear on a ZZ
Top album.” Ex. 8a demonstrates how Satch’s
concept can be applied to an A minor scale
motif, while Ex. 8b spreads it out over an A
major arpeggio. Note how the sixteenthnotes
are grouped six-six-four, and how the
pick-hand tap-points punch out a half-clave
or basic rock-and-roll rhythm (two dottedeighths,
plus a quarter-note), while the fret
hand covers pull-offs and hammer-ons to
and from an open A string. (That’d be your
pitch axis.) Practice these moves until you
feel ready to meld each of the of four-note
arpeggios shown in Ex. 8c to the previous
six-six-four sixteenth-note scheme, and
then have at it, one bar at a time, over and
over until you nail it. Of course you’ll need
to consult the album for the actual chord
progression, as the arpeggios are listed here
only in their order of appearance. Your mission,
should you decide to accept it, is to
take the ball and run with it. Let these ideas
elevate your playing to new realms of creativity
and inspire others to do the same.
Pay it forward, kids!
Finally, I urge everyone to explore
Satriani’s strange, beautiful catalog.
Apologetic note to Joe: Man, I hope you
can forgive my doting on the past, but
it’s just that damn good!!