“It is lighter,” says Satriani. “I used to have my tech Gary Brawer cut my regular bars shorter in length, and when he did, I noticed my floating trems had less boing when I flicked or suddenly released the bar. I began to realize that the more mass a bar has, the more it acts as a counterweight against the bridge, which contributes to that boing. These new bars I’m developing are light enough that they keep a trem from making that warbling sound.”

Of course, that boing—that “trem gurgle,” as it’s sometimes called—is the signature warble you hear in classic Satch themes such as “Surfing with the Alien,” as well as in the soon-to-be-classic melody to “Musterion,” off Satriani’s new album Professor Satchifunkilus and the Musterion of Rock [Epic]. The San Francisco-based guitar hero doesn’t necessarily want his world to be boing-less all the time, but this latest gizmo, whether it goes to market or not, is just another example of how Satch’s creativity has in recent years begun to extend beyond music. More and more often, Professor Satchifunkilus is donning his inventor’s cap to bring guitarists cool gear—offerings that so far have included Planet Waves Chrome Dome metal picks (“They’re great for scrape-y sounds”), custom Planet Waves straps featuring Satch’s artwork, the versatile Peavey JSX head, and, most recently, the Satchurator, the first pedal Satriani has designed in partnership with Vox.

With an upcoming world tour and a potential supergroup forming with Sammy Hagar, bassist Michael Anthony, and drummer Chad Smith, 2008 is looking to be pretty busy for Satriani. We caught up with the composer/inventor/rock star in his home studio to investigate that intriguing corner of his psyche where the technical and artistic halves of his creative process overlap.

Where did you record the new album?
Ninety percent of the guitar parts were done right here in my home studio. I often start songs with the Roland V-Drums—I play them myself, despite complaints from my bandmates [laughs]—and then I stick the bass on there and do all the keyboards. I try to finish the guitars and other things before I bring in the other players [including drummer Jeff Campitelli and bassist Matt Bissonette], although I know some of my parts may need to change once I hear how the guys interpret the stuff.

Do you quantize each drum performance after you lay it down?
Absolutely. Plus, because it arrives 11 milliseconds late as the MIDI information goes around the room, I nudge the performance around until I find where I want the pocket to sit against the click. I do that early on in a session, because, as we learned from when we used take the ol’ Pete Townshend/Who approach of bringing in elaborate guitar demos and then adding the drums last, the first thing a pro drummer is going to say is, “Well, how do you want me to do this? Do you want me to lean back or push forward? Do I follow that piano that’s leaning ahead of the beat? Which guy do I play to?” 

How did the “Musterion” chord progression arise? Those two chords have a hypnotic sound, and are a great way to kick off the album.
I sat down at the piano with a cup of coffee, and I just started playing ’em. I played the progression once or twice and then I went, “Whoa!” So I got out a little piece of paper, wrote down the notes, and then just kept going, and the song revealed itself to me. I’ve always done a lot of writing on the piano. I grew up with a piano in the house.  

How do you play the two chords on guitar?
Like this [Ex. 1]. They’re not as comfortable to play on guitar, but I felt that this sound  [plays chords with both humbuckers engaged] was important, so I recorded them on guitar. Halfway through the song, I re-voiced the chords [Ex. 2], because I figured other songs I’ve done that had recurring voicings throughout, like “Not of This Earth,” were very rigid. I wanted “Musterion” to sound dirtier—a little bit spookier and more organic. The basic harmony’s the same for the song’s chords and melody—it’s the Hungarian minor scale, which goes root, 2, b3, #4, 5, b6, 7 [or C, D, Eb, F#, G, Ab, B, in the key of C].

Did your demos evolve into the actual album tracks?
Yeah. For instance, on “Musterion,” all the guitars were recorded here, and that’s me playing bass and keyboards as well. Jeff even liked my original drum fill—that’s about the extent of drum-fill abilities [laughs]—so he kept that in his drum part.

So whenever you record, then, you never let any random, sub-par guitar tone get through, because you might end up wanting to use the performance on the album.
Yeah. It may look a bit chaotic in here, but in a way this room is very audiophile. For instance, there’s no patch bay, because I’m superstitious about sending my signal through unnecessary jacks and cables. The signal path is pretty straightforward. First, I go out of the amp into a speaker emulator. On this record, I used a Marshall SE 100 speaker emulator about 65 percent of the time—I finally found one on eBay! They’re really hard to get. I also used Palmer and SPL/Tonehunter simulators as well. Everything I do here is direct, so having three different simulators to choose from is kind of nice.

From there, I sometimes went into a Mercury EQ-P1 equalizer and then maybe into a Mercury 66—which is Fairchild-style tube limiter—or a Universal Audio Teletronix

LA-2A leveler. Then it’s straight into a Pro Tools HD 2 system. The system runs really tight, though once I get more than about six or seven tracks of guitars going, I can detect a tiny amount of latency. The room is tuned for my Genelex 1030A monitors. I picked up some Meyer HD-1 monitors before we headed into to the studio [the Plant, in Sausalito, California] to add drums and stuff and mix the album.

Do you have any safeguards to ensure a pristine track?
I usually say two things to myself: “Make sure you’ve got a good signal by checking all your LEDs and level meters to make sure nothing’s clipping,” and, “You’re probably going to use this, so label things carefully.”

You mean that you describe the signal chain in Pro Tools in the notes section of each track?
Yeah. I put everything in there. It might say “JS1000, Satchurator prototype, JSX clean channel, SE 100, Millennia STT-1 mic pre, LA-2A,” etc. It’s all there in case I forget anything and want to recreate the tone later. I should mention that the compression I record with is very subtle. Whenever I track, I’m trying to get clean, transparent performances, so that if we decide to use them in the final mix, the engineer won’t go, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I have to work with this!” [Producer/engineer] John Cuniberti has taught me over the years how to record things straightforward and clean so that they’re malleable later on in a big studio against a real drum kit. I remind myself of this stuff, because with a home studio, there are no restraints. You can record all day long—you can do 300 guitar solos if you want—but it won’t be worth anything if the sound isn’t good.

Isn’t having unlimited studio time both a blessing and a curse? How do you keep yourself from doing 300 takes?
It’s a discipline. That’s all it is—a discipline to sit back and really listen to what you just played. One thing I’ve learned from working with a lot of different producers is that the main problem artists face when they’re trying to produce themselves is that they lose the ability to listen to what’s actually happening and really take stock of the situation. That’s usually because they’re too involved in the concept, not the performance. They do a take, and then judgment creeps in: “Did I do what I wanted to do?” You may go in thinking, “I’m going to do a bluesy solo, and I’ll make sure I land on the 6 every once in a while so it sounds extra funky.” Then you do a take and you don’t hit the 6 and you go, “I f**ked up. I need to do it again.” Meanwhile, the guy next to you goes, “That was the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. What was that?” That’s because he’s thinking about what you did, while you’re thinking about what you didn’t do.

How does one get more disciplined at listening?
Working with other people helps. Of all the albums I’ve done, I think the ones that really worked did so because there had been more than one person I trust standing right next to me, tapping me on the shoulder, saying, “No, no, no. Do that again,” or, “You haven’t seen why this is good yet, but it is, and I’m not going to record you again.”

I suppose really it’s a state of mind that you enter into. Very often, I think of things that people have said to me over the years that made a lot of sense, like [pianist] Lennie Tristano saying, “Never judge yourself while you’re playing,” and [producer] Glyn Johns saying, “It’s not your job to decide what people will like, it’s your job simply to play. And once you’re done playing, get out of the room.” That state of mind is a way of getting you to simply be natural and pour out a performance and then respect it.

Whether you initially think it sucks or not, you have to say, “That’s what I did.” Then when you go back later and listen to it, you may realize that it’s actually really credible—that what you had in your head as being the true concept of the song may actually have been wrong, and a new concept has emerged. The old concept might have been the mood you were in one day, but it may not actually be the right move for the song. Very often what you just played is the right move. It’s subtle like that. Maybe getting a good take is a game of catching yourself off guard or something, I’m not sure. All I know is the more you think about it, the worse it gets.  Developing Pro Tools chops has helped me get things rolling as soon as possible. I’ve got a signal path going now that I know is very credible, so that when I go into the Plant and John brings up my track, he goes, “This sounds great. I have no problem working with this.” There are no pops and sizzles or other degradations of sound.

Did you take advantage of the ambience of the Plant’s main live room?
Not for the guitars, so much, but we had drum kits in there, plus one kit in the bass booth for that tight, dry sound on “Satchifunkilus.” We had an old-school set with three microphones on it in the middle of the big room, as well as a big rock kit all miked up in the corner of the room for when we wanted Jeff to be able to hit everything  and be splashy. We also had a crowd in there for the chant on, “I Just Want to Rock.” And I did all the acoustic guitars in the big room, as well—like on “Andalusia.” The electric guitar solo on that song was done in there too, with the Satchurator prototype on.

What were you and Vox going for with this pedal?
Well, this is my sound, in a box. All you have to do is step on it, and you get my basic lead sound, and it sounds more like a real amp than other boxes of its type.  It saturates your tone [with distortion], and has an extra button called More, which kicks in more of that saturated sound. It also has a unique little switch that we’ve called Pad, which brings down some of the really intense dynamics of the pedal so that you will never have clipping problems due to a wah-wah pedal or some other hot stompbox placed in front of it. The switch doesn’t change the amount of distortion—just the dynamics coming in and coming out of the pedal.

Do you run the Satchurator straight into the JSX clean channel?
Yeah.

Is that your main full-on rock tone on stage?
It is. My basic signal chain is the guitar into the wah, into some kind of octave generating device—such as the Octavio, which I used on the “Musterion” melody—and then into the Satchurator. From there I go into the front of the amp. The JSX has a pretty dynamic clean channel, so if you want to hear mostly the sound of the pedal, keep the channel somewhere between about 0 and 4. If you want some sag, start pushing the channel towards about 6, and it gives you a barely perceptible amount of distortion. I do that when I really, really want to rock with the band. That sort of warms up the sound of the box and gives it more of a vintage tone.

How often do you kick in the JSX’s Crunch or Ultra channels?
It depends on the tour. On couple of tours, those were all I used.

Do you run digital delay in your effects loop?
Yeah. I’ve been using old Boss delay pedals. They can be a little annoying sometimes, but I’ve found that they are more reliable than some others.

On many of your albums your delay times are synched to the groove. Do you do that in concert, too?
Not very often. I’m just sort of setting up something that feels right, and it’s not always correctly timed. It’s just there to set up a feeling. I’ve got one pedal set short, the other set long, and the beauty of that setup is that when they’re both on, they create a sort of a ping-pong-y reverb sound after about four or five repeats.

Do you often run them both at the same time?
Yeah, if it’s a really dry room. But I’m running two JSX heads and 3 bottom cabinets, and one of those heads is running completely dry into one cabinet, so the front-of-house guy can mix in the wet sound as he sees fit to suit the natural ambience of the room, while I just deal with the sound on stage. He’s also getting the direct out that comes out of the JSX—the simulated cabinet signal—which is a really clean, punchy sound. 

You get a cool, old-AC/DC, Malcolm Young-type sound on “I Just Wanna Rock.”
That comes from my guitar’s high pass filter. If I’m full on—say with the Satchurator on thick—and I pull up on my [push/ pull] volume knob and then lower the volume, it activates the filter and things get clean and more Strat-y sounding. I recorded that song’s main riff in three pieces on three different tracks for a fun, call-and-answer kind of effect. That’s a Framptone talk box on the lead guitar later in the song.

The lead on “Come On Baby” is the most understated, minimalist solo I’ve heard you play in quite a while. It almost has a David Gilmour sound.
I’m certainly heavily influenced by any of those British players that seem to be cruising at 7 yet making it sound like a million bucks. Americans don’t play like that. I notice that country players have a disciplined sound that is similar to that British thing I’m talking about, but for some reason what they do doesn’t come off the same way—it’s completely devoid of danger. But when I hear the British players like Gilmour, it sounds disciplined, yet for some reason still very loose. There’s something about it that has the ethics of rock in it. It doesn’t take off, and yet it’s more effective than hearing somebody going wahhh and shredding.

Are you having fun with Sammy and the boys?
Yeah. A power trio, in a warehouse with a Pro Tools setup, Sammy singing, and everyone overplaying [laughs]. It’s great. It’s kind of a free-for-all. We’ve pretty much got an album worth of material ready, but we’re all still figuring out how we’re going to play it. I’m back to playing mostly rhythm, which is fantastic. In your head, you’re thinking, “Hendrix did it like this, Clapton like this, Page like that, and Van Halen like that”—it’s like you can almost hear all of that in the room with you—because the world has had this power-trio-with-a-singer model for about 50 or 60 years now. It’s fun, because I can play almost anything from all my decades of playing guitar, and it usually fits.

Huh?

“When Joe pulls up on his push/pull volume knob,” says Satriani’s main guitar tech Gary Brawer, “it engages a 330pF capacitor between the volume pot’s input and output that acts as a high pass filter. With this cap engaged, he doesn’t lose highs as he turns the volume control down. If anything, turning the volume down adds a touch of high end.”