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This is the choice for the biggest Van Halen fans around. At less than $2 per episode this is the most affordable and complete package around! Every single episode from The Early Years and Right Here, Right Now plus way more!
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Oh yes. The Alex/Ryan episode is so great! Guitarists that study Edward cannot avoid studying Alex…or they avoid it at their own peril.
The legendary “swing time” of Alex and Edward is so often where guitarists throw up their hands and give up…especially on the boogie tunes like “I’m the One”, “Source of Infection”, “Hot For Teacher” etc. Some of this frustration comes from guitar players who sit at home and practice with metronomes or with their own internal time rather than playing with an actual drummer.
And I wasn’t immune to the frustration. It wasn’t until I really started examining the tempo changes in things like “I’m the One” through studying Alex’s isolated drum track and Edward’s isolated guitar track that I realized that the tempo changes within that song were pretty drastic and that they were quantifiable or at least able to be closely estimated.
I saw a recent interview with Joe Satriani in which he totally nails what is going on in “I’m the One” in terms of tempo changes between Ed and Al and he really ends up putting his finger on a big part of that rhythmic relationship between the brothers in general. At the same time I watched and listened to this interview, I started creating a tempo map through the user website for Peterson tuners. By listening to Al’s iso drum track and Ed’s iso guitar, I’ve been able to map out where the tempo starts with Ed by himself and where you can hear Alex slow down that tempo and reign in his brother…EXACTLY as Satriani describes. The bpm notations I found are approximate of course, but I believe they are pretty darned close.
This way, as you work through a proper note-for-note study of “I’m the One” on guitar, you can learn the tempo changed of the album version with exact bpm guideposts throughout the piece. You can use the tempo map I’ve created to practice with through playing it all back with the click from the metronome feature playing through the tempo map, or you can also just learn to play along with Alex’s iso drum track to really get the feel and timing down. It was always difficult to start the song in time when playing along with the record because Ed starts by himself at a very fast speed and then it gets slowed down as Alex enters and the band enters and as the song progresses. This was always jarring to me and it was difficult to comprehend. But now that I can quantify these tempo changes with fairly accurate bpm notations, it all makes more sense to me. The “unknowable swing” became very knowable and “executable” as a result.
https://youtu.be/aVT7EAV7iCE?si=rGFtm8wfE-hdmLLj
I love how Dweezil and Ryan address that wild 5-stroke roll thing that happens between Ed and Al during the second solo from “Outta Love Again”…that is a great example of their telepathy which isn’t to do with tempo changes at all-it is just two guys that play together so much that a moment like that pops out every so often and it is sublime! Well spotted!
I’m finishing up my new transcription of “Hot For Teacher” and my engraver and I have come up with a slightly different way of notating some passages to try to reflect some things that happen out of straight time during that recording. I’ll share it here when we are finished which should be soon! That whole drum intro is a labyrinth in itself and it was fun to hear Dweezil and Ryan try to figure out how it was recorded. It is a discussion that me and my drummer friends have talked about for years and it is still not cracked completely!
Anyway, BRAVO! It was really exciting to hear that Ryan is as into the extreme details of the drum parts as I am on the guitar parts…it reminds me of why I love drummers! And also why they drive me insane when they throw a crazy fill in that I’m not sophisticated enough as a musician to comprehend and react to…those “you’re fired!” fills have been the bane of my existence all too often. But that says more about me and my level of proficiency than it does about the drummers who throw ridiculous fills in that throw me and the entire band off! Drummers…love them and try not to hate them! I still wish there was a mute switch for a drum kit!!!
Super fun and very informative episode…loved it!!!
Having been privileged to have seen Shane at some of his first gigs with The Neville Brothers and with our local Lafayette, LA legend Zachary Richard, I was already a fan of Shane. I became even more of a fan when he joined H&O and Darryl’s band. This was a cool episode for me…it was the most constructive one for me personally because of Shane’s specific demos and articulate responses to Dweezil’s pointed questions.
I’ve long struggled with how to integrate nearly any part of Edward’s playing into my own playing or into other non Van Halen contexts. And I know I’m not alone in this. I never thought of infusing things with the “attitude” and “between the cracks” fills and stinging wide bend/vibrato one-noters that Ed certainly used along with those little voice leading triad things a la “Women In Love” that Shane demoed. These are the very things that really can be integrated into almost any situation.
This seems simple, but something clicked with me only through this interview. I think I’ve always been so caught up in thinking (pretty correctly) that Ed’s visual fingerboard lead patterns don’t work in the music that I’ve played…it is pretty grating and atonal because of the lack of regard for reference to harmony when it gets applied in non Van Halen music. And even the pentatonic Ed stuff that I sometimes tried to integrate into blues standards worked only with varying degrees of success. But the stuff that Dweezil asked to hear Shane demonstrate…the “finger grease” stuff that is aptly named throughout the conversation for instance…THAT type of ATTITUDE stuff is really useful because you can put that stuff in until the cows come home and still play in key and follow the chords!
I know many might say “Duh!” and I’m saying it to myself! But it took hearing a great player demonstrate potential answers to the questions that I couldn’t answer about how to integrate Ed influenced things into a broader range of material to really make the light bulb go on! Thanks Dweezil and Shane!
