Zone Recording: Satch

Hello readers and welcome to yet another installment of Zone Recording.

I have been busy, busy, busy doing sessions for Island Def Jam Records for a new group called Jet Black Stare. Watch for them on the radio and TV in the near future.

The new album is completed except for the last track with a very special guest. I have to re-do all the guitars on that song and will tackle that tomorrow!

I have just finished a successful trip to San Francisco working with no other than Joe Satriani. We were working for Workshop Live at the Plant doing new video lessons for "The Satch Zone"

Check out the new Martone Parker Fly from the "When the Aliens Come" album along with the Satch "Surfing" guitar.

My duties were to, first off, roughly come up with the idea of 30 lessons under 7 categories for this video shoot.

Many topics I picked were things that Joe does so wickedly. Topics ranged from legato techniques, tapping, picking and effects to songwriting and interview type questions, along with many more topics.The plan is to release a lesson every two weeks starting May 1st, 2008

This was a huge undertaking to make it all happen in the short amount of time we had to pull it all together. We started on March 18th with production meetings in the evening and a meeting with just Joe and myself to hammer out ideas that we were to converse on. We wrapped on Friday night the 21st of March. I think we got around 20 main lessons done and they turned out wicked!

Here is a shot of the studio.

Joe's setup is on the left and mine is on the right. Notice that his tech Mike had his setup much neater than my tech... who was me!

Joe was running through his Peavey amp and I was running through a Vox and a Fishman acoustic amp for the Parker guitar.

In this picture we see a few of the cameras for the shoot with Mike (one of the engineers) showing me where my volume settings are on the headphone cue system.

I had an ear bud in so the producers could talk to me while I was working with Joe in the studio. That was always interesting.

A shot of some more Star Trek camera stuff.

Yet more camera space control things...

All of this was shot in HD for the clearest picture possible.

I have to say this was one of the cooler things I have done in my life. It was very humbling to work with a mentor of mine, side by side, jamming, cracking jokes, making stupid things up about camera Jibs and the list goes on and on.

Joe is one unique amazing person, above even his talents on the guitar, and my respect for the man is just awesome. Such a cool dude and wickedly talented in all regards to his personality. A true inspiration for so many people!

Yes, the guitar faces come again... It is just something that goes with playing the damn things!

Joe's manager Mick was on site also and it was very cool to hang with him as well!

Us trying out opposite guitars.

Joe's rig was recorded using a special cab that had a direct out with a few cool settings on it. His sound was huge, round, sharp and well... it sounded just like Joe. They decided to go with two Shure SM 57s on the Vox and a direct out from the Fishman amp. All the audio was recorded into protocols from Mr. Monk. Camera info went to millions of tapes and also backed up to hard drives.

I can't imagine the editing that has to be done on this project and I have a huge respect for the people that will be doing that.

Watch out for the first episode May 1st, 2008.

May the tone be with you!