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ApocalypseApocalypse Now!Now! A journey that started from the Edge of Insanity has seen Tony MacAlpine return to his roots with his self-titled offering. The pianist, virtuoso, and producer talks shop about Steve Vai, practicing, lessons learned, and hopes for the future. The Sound: Let us get straight to the new stuff! Tell us about your latest record simply entitled Tony MacAlpine and what, after ten years since Chromaticity, in- spired you once again to record an instrumental album? Tony MacAlpine: Well the new record is a self-titled album. It is a really heavy instrumental re- cord that I had the pleasure of re- cording with Marco Minnemann, Virgil Donati and Phillip Bynoe. I really had a lot of fun doing this record and was so involved doing many other things over the years that this just really felt like the time was right to come back and write this record over the course of last year and record it. TS: Over the years you’ve played © Alex Solca six, seven, and now eight string guitars. What drives you to con- tinue to explore extended range instruments and how do you feel these different types of guitars persuade your stylistic tenden- the live performances. With TS: You’re guitar tone has cies? the eight string you’re able to changed over your twenty-five play in much fuller registers year career and yet still retains TM: Guitars, amplifies, elec- and you can really experiment a very clear signature sound. tronics and the like have come with different chord substitu- Most will agree that tone ul- so far and the waiting time is tions and enhance the sonic timately resides in the hands, very short and the progress bass lows depending on how but what is your approach to is very tense. The stuff they you string the eight string. setting up an amp to achieve come up with between ev- Some people string them a your sound? ery other quarter amp show little higher, some people use and yearly amp show is pretty the lower string, some people TM: My amplification is very, amazing. These guitars that go to a low E. I’m using a stan- very simple. It’s always been I’m using now are really just dard guitar tuning so the low- and it’s always going to be. another example of the inno- est string on the instrument is In the studio I use Hughes & vation and where the instru- an F#. Basically that is the idea Kettner Triamps which are re- ments are at. What they do of the seven and the eight. It ally just three stage hundred is create the tonal capabilities is really just to add another full watt tube heads. There are no of all the recordings especially range to the instrument. effects involved or anything. It‘s just straight into the amp and then we record the tracks © Alex Solca and mix them. This record was mixed by Ulrich Wild. He’s a Grammy award winning engi- neer and is very skilled at get- ting and achieving really good tones. I use different things to achieve different sounds. Sometimes I work with plug- ins with different things in the studio and enhance the track that way which is noth- ing new. It’s pretty standard fare. In a live situation, I also use Hughes & Kettners but I don’t use Triamps. I use the Coreblades. The Coreblade is a hundred watt head. It’s a fully tube head also but it’s got all the effects and gating built inside the head. So there are no external effects I’m using. I’m really just using the head on stage and it’s a very pure sound. Again you have these independent effects chains that are bi-products of the am- plifier itself so there is no tone degradation. On the floor I use and Ernie Ball volume and an Ernie Ball wah pedal and a Multiwave Source Audio ped- al. And that’s about all I got going on. TS: How do you feel the eight string locking tremolo system compares to for seven and six string guitars? TM: It’s the same thing. My guitar has a Gotoh in the bridge and it is the same thing as the six string or anything. There’s no difference. They’re all lock- ing systems in the guitars. TS: Rock guitar and classical piano are not worlds apart but appear to share an influential relationship in your music. How have you found your clas- sical piano studies and endeav- ors to influence the seemingly infinite depth of your rock song writing? TM: Instrumental music to me started with classical music. I began listening to symphonies and I began a five playing in- strumental piano music which is from the classical genre. Anything from Beethoven to List and Chopin and all kinds of stuff. I do that today and record it. That’s what I was doing and that was my first ex- © Alex Solca posure to music so my compo- sition is driven by the fact that, from what I understand it to be, it’s based on classical writ- ing except it’s with drums, tar or some bass lines or I can guitar and bass. I wasn’t re- write just in my head. I’m hap- ally influenced only through py if I don’t have anything be- rock music or Johnny Win- cause that means that I might ter’s music or George Benson have something the next day. who I credit as being some For me it’s really just a matter of the highest influences for of sitting down and trying to me. That was the start of it get your thoughts into the stu- for me; the classical. And to dio and make it musical. me that is just a continuation of it now. TS: Having deeply explored many different styles of guitar TS: You’ve said once in an playing, do you find that you interview that most every- can compartmentalize each or thing you’ve written has do you find that they blend to- been recorded and released gether during improvisation? at one point in time. This point speaks volumes about TM: For instance if I was play- the quality of music that you ing with CAB, which I haven’t write. Do you find the writing done in a long time, it’s a com- process ever to be frustrating pletely different style of gui- or do you find that the music tar playing. I’m always doing frequently writes itself? something with Planet X and it would be something com- TM: No, I don’t find it to be pletely different. So I have frustrating at all. What I was definitive styles that I can call really trying to say was the upon to play. I also do some exploration of different har- situations where I might just monies and many things have play a setting where; for in- been recorded and tried. Cer- stance I just did That Metal tainly if we do research and Show and sat in and played listen to great classical works in the perch there and played and obscure fusion works and primarily with more of a rock different things from differ- and blues approach. So there ent artists, you can find a lot are all kinds of styles that I’m of things that are similar to really fascinated with and have a lot of people. The writing my hands on and enjoy that. process for me is a very work It all depends on what I want ethic type of thing. I’m ok if to do, how I want to play, and © Alex Solca I’m not creative for a day or how I want to be heard, what if I happen to have something I really want to say in the par- that evening, I can record it ticular environment that I’m the next day. There is no one playing in. real process for me so I can write on keyboards or gui- TS: What is your current prac- tice routine like? TM: I don’t have a current pursuit of music. What drives take her on the tour further practice routine. I was talking your inspiration? in the year and later, Europe. with Steve (Vai) about this and And so just being around these TM: It’s the love of music, it is kind of funny. We started incredible players like her and it’s the love of playing and it’s playing music so young and it Tosin Abasi and Guthrie Govan the love of working with other is almost like English. When and seeing where guitar is go- musicians that’s always driven you’re speaking the language, ing is something that is very in- me and also the joy of seeing a you don’t go back and start spirational. It’s very good for creation come to life in a final studying grammar again. You the movement of what is going mix and hearing what it takes definitely don’t do that. You on with guitar. to make that sound like some- just continue on learning and thing wilder than your furthest broadening your vocabulary. TS: What drove you to pursue imaginations. That’s the drive That’s really what we do. We a career as a guitarist rather for me: a love for music. continue broadening. I defi- than a pianist? nitely don’t sit home and prac- TS: Which of your contem- TM: I can’t say it was really tice scales or anything like poraries currently inspire your one or the other.

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