Hi this is Chris here for Music Radar and we're here with Joe Satriani backstage at
Frankfurt Musikmesse 2009 and Joe obviously you've just done a press conference where you've been
talking about your new pedals and taking a Q&A from fans and things like that. You sort of seemed
to suggest that there were more pedals on the way, maybe different colours and things
can you give us any sneak previews as to what they might be?
>>Well you know we embarked on this idea of having a whole pedal line a few years ago
and it's been non stop pedal development so as soon as we've get one put to bed the next
one comes up on the drawing board. We have 2 that are in the demo process right now and we're
making fantastic headway I'm hoping maybe in the next 6 months we might have the next pedal
out and I've been told not to say too many things about it!
>>Ok. >>But I am continuing in the theme that these should be exciting
but thoroughly useful and I don't want to really get into the esoteric pedals until
much later, I'm really keen on making sure that these pedals are really solid tools that number
one I use, I can use and I want to use and that other players will find extremely useful.
>>And affordable as well because I think the pricing you know I think the average guitar can actually pick them up without
it being too much for them. >>It's extremely important.
>>Obviously the chickenfoot record is imminent and I think you alluded earlier on to the
fact that some of the Vox pedals are all over the record in various points, is there anything,
a particular track that people should listen out for where you can really hear the sound
of maybe the delay or more of a saturate? >>Well there's a wah wah in a couple of spots
that's pretty overt and that's all the Big Bad Wah, which is great, that worked out great
in a variety of amps with a bunch of guitars you know I had my usual Ibanez guitars make
up 90% of the record but every once in a while I pick up a vintage 59 335 or a 55 Les Paul
that a friend lent me and you know it would be great to hear the vintage guitars into
the big bad wah going out into our new Peavy 50 watt which is a very vintage sounding amp
and it sounded just like 1968 or something it was just fantastic how that wah wah sounds.
You can hear that and you'll hear the saturator on quite a few songs and sounding very different
and the other cool thing is that quite a few songs had, were from our rehearsals/demo
period where we didn't know if we were doing the best take that was coming out of us so
we used them, and so some of them had the main guitar recorded not only with the saturator
but also printed with a time machine delay which is something you really wouldn't do, usually
you'd hold back on effects until later but because we thought it was a scratch track we weren't
thinking about that. So it's great to hear it come back and hear it as we mixed the record, hearing
it blend in with all the overtones, it did what it was supposed to do, it didn't get
in the way, it created atmosphere and I think that's what you want out of these pedals,
you need them to be pliable and not to always overshadow the sound of the guitar, the style
of the song or the vibe of the mix. >>Obviously you're a guy who's done a hell
of a lot of solo records and this is a different situation with the band, have you had to do
anything to change your style or rethink certain things to lock in the different rhythms?
>>Well every musician you play with is a different thing, it's always a give and take it's really
a gold mine. You have all this wonderful energy coming from players and your idea should really
be to always be interacting every second and players like Chad Mike are just unbelievable, they
just give, that's what they do, every measure they're giving something interesting. We recorded
this stuff without a click so everything succeeded purely on the personality of everybody locking
together every time we did a take and that was fun. It does change the way that you play, most people
out there play in bands with singers so it's not very, they're used to it, I guess I'm
the one with the odd gig doing the solo stuff so often but you've got to think of the song
and the melody and in this case how Sam is going to be singing over it, hopefully Sam, with all
the takes that we did for the background tracks, Sam always sang, he would sit there and sing
for 6 hours, that's how long it took. Very often we used his actual vocal from the live
cut to be the main vocal. So you can hear us reacting to him during that and I think
what it is that the main difference is that the main guitar has to be supportive but at the
same time I think it can be a little crazier than if you're doing instrumental or sometimes
the rhythm guitars need to be a little more stream of consciousness so that the melody
guitars can be a little bit more adventurous. >>Ok, well thanks very much for your time
today Joe, that's great and enjoy the rest of the show.
>>Thank you.