Ace's guitar licks and style were the first ones I obsessively learned inside and out. By the time I got around to liking Kiss and such (early 90's after finding a VHS of Headbanger's Ball that my sister had and seeing the live/Kiss Exposed video for RNRAN), and learning a bunch of Ace stuff, Satriani and Vai were popular. The Audience is Listening was starting to make waves at the time and on the strength of that, I got Passion and Warfare and the whole world changed for me. That and Surfing with the Alien were like BIBLICAL to me.
Also, oddly enough, Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my guitar idols as well. I learned how to improvise because of SRV. I had the sheet music to Crossfire. So I went and bought the In Step album it was on (it came with the traditional CD longbox that was popular at the time). As I'm playing along with the song, I notice that the solo follows the standard pentatonic box pattern I'd seen in the guitar magazines and such. I'd seen it and read about it, but it never connected to me. Here, I was seeing it on paper, in a song I was learning, and could see and hear how it worked in the context of the key the song was in.
So I skipped forward to the next song, Tightrope. I didn't know what key that was in, but figured I'd play this pattern in several places on the neck until none of the notes sounded dissonant. Found it to be B minor. Played the notes in that pattern in different variations over top of the whole song. Hmph. That worked. Next song - Let Me Love You Baby. Same thing. Eventually found it to be F minor position. Over and over with that album for hours. A door had opened that night. A door to a much larger world, wherein I could let inspiration express itself through my hands in any way it chose to. Now it took a while before I commanded any sort of facility in doing so (I am still learning to do so even now), but once that light bulb came on and I "got it", it was pretty fucking awesome.
Also, yeah, the Erin story is excellent. I can't imagine saying that name to any adult and have them NOT know who I'm talking about. Ouch.
Topic: The Ask twosuitsluke Thread (Read 111413 times)
