Music drives you. It wakes you up, it gets you pumping. And, at the end of the day, the correct tune will chill you down.
Dimebag Darrell
Make your heart bleed! Put your soul into that damn thing. And try new things.
Jamming with other people will create energy and excitement that you can feed off, and which will help push you to do things you'd never dream of doing by yourself.
If you wanna get out of a rut bad enough, it'll always happen. It's up to you, though. No one else is ever gonna do it for you.
I'm not gonna say it's all done, 'cause it ain't ever all done.
I'm a spazzer, you know?
Initially, I just used the guitar as a prop. I'd pose with it in front of a mirror in my Kiss makeup when I was skipping school. Then I figured out how to play the main riff to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' on just the E string. Next, my old man showed me how to play barre chords, and that's when things started getting really heavy.
I was mostly influenced by bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest - Metallica's 'Kill 'Em All' was also a hell of an inspiration.
'I'm Broken' was a sound check riff.
I'll sleep anywhere!
I use some pretty radical harmonics at the beginning of 'Heresy.'
Play the pentatonic blues scale, just for fret- and pick-hand dexterity and to mesh them both together.
Man, that first Leppard album really jams, and their original guitarist, Pete Willis, was a great player.
Always have a collection of your favorite CDs with you.
Sometimes it's cool to play major third and minor third diads back-to-back, or a minor third followed by a root/fifth diad - whatever combo sounds good.
I've come to find out everybody loves ol' David Allan Coe, even people like Kid Rock.
The most common power chord in metal is the root/fifth, but root/third diads are also worth checking out.
Spittin' blood, smokin' guitars, fire everywhere - Kiss is where I started.
I'm still the same cat I always was.
To me, a sure-fire way to get in a rut is by sitting around playing by yourself for too long. You've gotta get out there and jam, man! You don't have to necessarily be in a band, all you've gotta have are a couple of buds who play too. They don't have to be guitarists either; jamming with a bassist or a drummer is cool.
Every song is different.
Man, don't get me started on Pat Travers. That dude writes killer blues rock and roll riffs.
I was lucky enough to get to see guys like Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace, all those great Texas blues players.
I do some three-part harmonies on 'Throes of Rejection' and 'Hard Lines, Sunken Cheeks,' but I didn't go overboard with it.
With the right outlook, you can learn to entertain yourself and entertain each other so you can enjoy doing what you're doing. There's obviously gonna be highs and lows, and the trick to it is to be able to maintain composure and stay high even when you're in the lows. That way, when you hit the highs ,it'll be twice as killer.
The easiest place to get a natural harmonic on any string is at the 12th fret. All you do is lightly rest one of your left-hand fingers on a string directly above that fret and then pick it.
As far as I'm concerned, it's no good being able to wail out smokin' leads if your rhythm chops hugg!
I'm not a super blues player, but I was exposed to the Texas blues sound while I was growing up, and that definitely rubbed off on me.
Lessons didn't really work out for me, so I went to the old school, listening to records and learning what I wanted to learn.
My old man was a musician - that's what he did for a living. And like most fathers, occasionally he'd let me visit where he worked. So I started going to his recording studio, and I really dug it.
To make harmonics scream, I first dump my Floyd Rose real quick, hit a harmonic with my left hand while the string is still flapping, and then use the bar to pull it up to the pitch I wanna hit.
When I first started experimenting with harmonics, I'd sometimes hook up two distortion boxes just to get my strings 'frying,' which helped bring out the harmonics.
On our early demos, I was really frustrated with my recorded sound. I'd tell my dad, 'Dude, I want more 'cut' on my guitar - I want more treble.' And he'd say, 'Now, son, you don't want that. It'll hurt your ears.' But my dad just didn't understand.
I love 'Dogman' by King's X and Living Colour's 'Stain.'
Van Halen was a huge influence on me, and 'Eruption' was the song that really leaped off that first Van Halen album.
Towards the end with Pantera - although I was never unhappy with the music we were making - it became one-dimensional, and we wanted to open things back up.
To get my sound in the studio, I double guitar tracks, and when it gets to the lead parts, the rhythm drops out, just like it's live. I'm very conscious of that.
Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it's hard to make a good living nowadays.
When you're on the road, you've got to have your four-track - or some kind of recording device to jam on and have a good time.
The first time I heard 'Crazy Train,' I was crashed out in bed, definitely not wanting to get up and go to school, when my brother Vinnie came in and cranked it up.
Of all the grunge bands to come out of Seattle, Alice in Chains were the greatest.
Losing control of your pick on stage sucks, so I scratch some deep X's into both sides of my pick with something sharp, like a dart.
Using string bends instead of just playing regular, unbent notes can definitely help give certain riffs a cooler, heavier edge.
Whenever I feel my chops are slacking, I'll play some wide-stretch trilling exercises and take them up and down the neck as well as across it.
Washburn built me the guitar that changed my life.
I've become more interested in creating a band sound than trying to outshine the other guys.
Whenever I record more than two or three layers, it starts to get cluttered up, and you can't hear the cut of the guitars as good. It's hard to get four guitars to hit at exactly the same time and keep the attack tight.
It kills me when I see some metal band trying to pass themselves off as an 'alternative band.'
Pantera is the only band I've ever been in, and at the start we used to play covers to make a living.
I can never understand how a solo could ever be 'uncool.' Play something good, and it won't be uncool, you know?
