Al Di Meola's Educative Words to GP Students (Oct-23-06)

[moved from old forum:]

The best advice on that question I ever received was from Laurence Juber. Practice sight reading music and learning music theory and how to transpose. He said he got more work due to having these skills than most other people. It sustained his studio career quite well. Your killer chops will be pretty useless if the producer throws a sheet music score at you and asks you to play it, and then decides he wants to have it in Bb instead of D.

-Dave Ullenberg

[moved from old forum:]

NEY WROTE:

"I just got back from a long conversation with Al after his
state Theater concert in VA."

AND

"Then I mentioned the completely wrong concensus that
predomintaes in terms of technique developlment and the usage
of books with thousands of unrelated exercises and the
exercise fixation mass mentality, instead of using one's
music as the source of exercises and it was funny because for
a moment we stood there all alone in the dressing room really
thinking very hard and asking the question
"why is it that people think that way?"

I'll take a crack at an answer. It's because that approach is mentally easier. It's a type of snake-oil cure and goes along with numerous typical behaviors. Are you overweight? - follow this diet; need money? - here's a get rich quick scheme; are you unhappy? - take this pill; want to play guitar better? - just do these exercises.

Since some percentage of a population will always report improvement following any of the above, it's easy for others to conclude that the easy fixes were in fact the cure. This is reinforced further by that fact that some tricks or exercises or procedures do actually have some type of result, at least sometimes. But if the goal is true mastery, both committment and a willingness to deal with abstract issues is necessary. The goal of moving a pick at a particular speed is easy to understand. The goal of moving an audience is infinitely more complex.

-Dan Mozell

[moved from old forum:]

Studio musicians know a little bit of everything. Enough to give a flavor or a taste of a few styles.There are very,,very few who transcend this and are master players with a creative vision. Most inspired master players cannot stand to be studio musicians playing the same thing someone else wrote, over and over and eventually quit to play their music like Jimmy Page and John McLaughlin did to prevent the death of their soul as they put it.

Most studio musician situations require just a superficial stylistic veneer for the arrangement. They are not solo guitar albums or bass solo releases. They require lots of chord playing and very short solos or intros idiomatic enough to set the mood. Much of those are left to the player and many others are written down.

As mentioned already, you have to read really well and be easy to work with. Be on time . be reliable.

Tommy tedesco has a great book on this topic called "for guitar players only'"



When you need a really powerful non-generic solo in a given style you call a powerfull player in that given style and it becomes as we know a guest spot with credit.

A typical example is Eddie's solo on "Beat it" by MIchael Jackson. or Paco's solo on Bryan Adam's ''Don Juan De Marco'' or John Mc laughlin's intro on James Taylor's "one man dog" or Steve Stevens solos for Billy Idol. Earl slick is another name who specialises in rock.

-Ney