Photo by Flávio Columbini
01 - Hello Ciro, how are you doing?
First of all, we would like to thank you for the opportunity! We would like to start knowing how you got interested by guitar and what were the most important reasons to you become a professional musician.
Actually, I started listening to music at late 70´s , but the first band I started listening to was a band named Queen. It happened in the early 80´s and actually I had just a single including two songs of the band that I couldn´t listen to it more than I did. I got totally addicted to he band´s sound, so due to an incredible lucky hit Queen came down to perform in Brazil and I watched to the concert in 1981 and it´s changed my mind , I started playing guitar years after but I started listening very strongly since then. I have a funny history, because when I played an electric guitar for the first time my life I decide that I wanted to be a guitarist. I have never wondered if my profession was the right choice, I have always been focused.
Have you never been through hard moments?
Tons of them! I have been, I am and I will be through several hard moments, but I think if you quit in this moment is because you shouldn´t be in that profession. One of them was when I had tendonitis and I stayed out of business for such a long time what resulted in a money problem so I had to work in a bank for five years, but I´ve never left music. I had to stop the college for several year because I didn´t have money to pay it, and these are the kind of thing that happen in reflex the country we live. It is really difficult to do a living by music in Brazil as well as it is hard to make a living by any profession. I have always been aware that any profession has its difficulties, so that is the reason I have never given up.
02 - Who were guitar teachers? And how do you compare guitar education from that time to today? How do you face all these enharmonic notes which people believe to be the same thing?
My very first Teacher was Aldo Landi, but I had already studied by my own. After I studied with several teachers like Heraldo do Monte, Joe Moghabri and Mozart Mello. Actually, the teacher I most studied was Aldo and the biggest difference of that time to nowadays, is that today we have much more information all over the Internet or in Instructional videos which were rare to be found in that time.
There were some advantage such as people don´t use tablature, I learnt tablature when I started teaching and due to the students. The guitar study has gotten more professional and it is really god, even with the problems that it can come up with.
Talking about this enharmonic stuff, to understand that enharmonic sounds are different is fundamental to understand the tonal system. For example: C and Eb are a minor third resulting in a consonance, but C and D# are an augmmented second which is a dissonant interval. If you pick up a music in the key of C minor, and you play C and Eb you will notice a feeling stability and if you pick up a music in E minor, using the harmonic minor scale, and listen to the interval between the sixth and the seventh note, C and D#, you will notice a sound totally different and dissonant.
Several people talk to me:"so, can you just prove it if you play these notes into a context?" and I reply "That´s true, but the sound context is called Music" So Eb and D# are different in the music, which is the activity I study. It is funny because every situation which the note Eb is consonance, D# is dissonant and vice-versa and it happens with all enharmonic sounds.
If we do not get this it is almost impossible to understand the tonal system, in my harmony and guitar classes and I show this to the student with a lot of attention because from this we can understand the difference between a diatonic half-step and a chromatic half-step, since the diatonic half-step can be a leading note, therefore it is able to create a tonality, and a chromatic half-step is not able to do that.
That is true because If were going to sing in a choir with the anciet tunning, they would be totally different!
Yes.But in this case we´re talking about a difference of frequency. But I prefer to discuss the Eb and D# from the tempered system, which has the same frequency. Meanwhile frequency is not sound; it is just its propriety. Do a statement that they are the same because they have the same frequency is very simpleton, we should say:" They are different sound, but the they have the same frequency by any chance".
03 - You studied composition and regency at FAAM changing you course to guitar in the middle of it, and you finished your course as guitar at music college Carlos Gomes. What was the mood of being in a place totally focused in classical music being a rock fan like?Did you have to the deal with teacher full of pre opinion about this kind of music? And were you into classical music before the college?
No, I wasn´t interested in classical music before the colllege and my teachers showed me all the greastest composers. I had a environment totally against the one you described, since my classical teachers were really open minded persons and I still remember my biggest discussion between me and my greatest master, RIcardo Rizek, was that he used to say that Led Zepellin was cooler than Deep Purple and I used to say the opposite.
What is something really difficult to happen, isn't it?
I don't think so, in my experience people from popular music were much more closed to other styles.So for example: Someone who plays Jazz had much more prejudice against who plays Rock and vice-versa, and people from classical music didn't have this kind of feeling.This time when I was going to play in some little Pubs I used to invite my college mates and who reallt used to was the people which played piano, violin and etc.
The popular musicians were in that time much more segmented and the teachers of classical music and traditional harmony were very open minded. For example: I started listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer because of the teachers from the college, since I didn't know the stuff of this band because honestly they didn't have guitarist , but through these teacher I started listening to it.
I have never had any kind of bad experience with classical music teacher and the opposite I have bad experiences with teachers from popular music.
Maybe something different from today's context.
Maybe!Off course this is something kind of generalized, you will never have the same people dealing with the same subject, since they are different and there better and wrose people.Thanks to god, I have great experiences with Ricardo Rizek who was one of the most excellent musician who I study for several years.He was a great master and I owe him everything I know
and maybe I haven't learnt 10% he could teach me.
04 - Do you think this definetely helped you with subjects such as Traditional Harmony and Counterpoint, which nowadays are really bad explored by guitar players?
It was fundamental! If there is something that I learned in the college were these subjects, because they were the subjects I didn't know that much when I got in the college and during the course were the subjects I studied the most and my favourite subjects.Today not by chance these are the subjects I teach here at Souza Lima.Off course in the college you just get an introduction of these subjects because is almost impossible to study them complete in 4,5 ir 6 years of college, but it was fundamental because I keep studying nowadays with the books recomended by the teachers in the college. I do not regret one second for going to the school, because it was a very big gain.
Talking about this, do you think college is Fundamental for a musician nowadays?
I don't think this is the only way, I think there are several ways to you become a great musician.There are musician who are not majored in music and not for that are worse or better than people who are majored in.For me it was fundamental, because I wouldn't have acess to determinate knowledges if I hadn't joined in the college, but people are different I can think what worked for will always work to the others.I don't think it is fundamental, but I think it is a cool way.
05 - Please, tell us about your previous projects before Diafanes.
I played in several bands and with one of these bands I had the experience of living in Japan for some months playing brazillian music.My very first guitar project with a little bigger repercussion was the Quadrivium which was a guitar quartet playing classical songs by Mozart, Vivaldi among other and As long as I know it was the first group in this format.
Have you guys been to Jô Soares program with this group, haven't you?
Yes, we have been to the program by the time it was on SBT channel.It was the first project with more expression in guitar world, but the band ended up and together with some members of this band I formed Quartour, which was similar to the first idea, and I played in this kind of project from 1997 to 2000 sharing Quadrivium (until 1999) and Quartuor (until 2000).After I was invited to join a Deep Purple Cover named Perpendicular, which was something really incredible for me because I listened to this band a lot when I was a kid but I have never learned the songs.So When I started learning, I was already crazy by Blackmore, I had a kind of second passion because I remembered and had to learn all those riffs and guitar solos which I hadn't listened to it for such a long time.The whole stuff was really for me! The result was excellent and we did lots of gigs with this band which ended up in a new band with own songs changing the name to Duna. Duna recorded an album, but after it was totally done everyone in the band had a terrible fight and the album has never came out. Lol
There's no band with no fight, is there? Lol
It is like a marriage with no sex, there is not the good part. Lol
06 - There is a quartet in homage to your name, do you believe this is the result with all the work of electric guitar orchestra?
The Visconti Quartet is formed by some Souza Lima students which belong to the Souza Lima Electric Guitar Orchestra which is an evolved idea of Quadrivium.This students decided to form a quartet and homaged me naming it with my name which is something to be proud of because they are just kids, they play very well. It is formed by Leandro de César, Eric Matern, Guilherme da Matta and Thiago Lima and to be honest they are better than Quadrivium.I am really proud of having my name in this project.
07 - You work for Guitar Player Magazine, have already worked for Cover Guitarra and Guitar Class which is out of business. And have you always worked as transcripter?
I have been working with transcription since 1997. I worked as a transcriber for cover guitarra from 1997 to 2000 , but I had to stop due to some personal treoubles so I had to leave. In 2001 when Guitar Class came out I as invited to take a part in the magazine, but it was a little differente, beside the transcription there was some issues named "Cem Por Cento" (100%) which was really cool to do, because I had to analyse the whole style o certain guitarist by his songs. I did it with Blackmore, Clapton, Brian May, Iron Maiden, David Gilmour among others.When Guitar Class closed,I was invited to join Guitar Player because they are from the same publishing house and from that moment own I have been working in the magazine doing transcriptions, but mainly cover issue such as improvisation, harmony...
Were you on a cover, weren't you?
Yes, on the cover of Guitar Player number 130 , february 2007 , with my issue about harmony. I have already done several issues about technique and other subjects too., I love working at Guitar Player, and it is really pleasure fot me but it is always a hard work and very tense, not that much about the transcription but for the issues because I need to write them thinking that who is going to read this can't ask me questions or solve doubts as in the class room, so I have to explain this in a really clear way in a written text and give a lot of examples.
08 - How did the invitation to join Diafanes come up?Analising the Diafanes we can see that it is a band totally experimental out of all the concepts, was it the idea since the beginning?
Actually , Lorena Hollander formed Diafanes with Rafael in 2002 with another guitar player.Even with no bassist they did some concerts and recorded some songs in the studio. At the beginning of 2003 the original guitar player left the band and I joined the band bringing the bassist Pietro Bérgamo. I believe that since the beginning there was this experimental ideal, but when Pietro and me joined we also had our craziest ideas, because we had played together for such a long time, and it really did fit in.I am so proud of Diafanes, because the band is experimental not only in the musical structures such as harmony, melody and rhythm , but because we also use different instruments and mix sonority from other ethnic groups. I really like this experimental stuff.
With all the voice melodies using dissonant notes.
That is it, one of the characteristics of the bands which has tons of dissonant harmonies and it is what takes the voice melody in the same way.
If someone who is totally laic can think it is out of tune.
It happens sometimes, but I believe when someone like this listen to Schoenberg or Bartok for the first time can think the same, not comparing ourselves to this composers (for god's sake) and leaving behind all the huge quality difference, There are bands that you can not listen to it just once time, if you listen to it just once you can get a wrong impression and I believe Diafanes is a band like Radio Head or Emerson,Lake Palmer. Our lucky is that our sound kind of incommodes people, then they come back to listen more times.
09 - How the idea of using different instruments like theremin came out?
Actually I think this different instruments shows in Diafanes exactly because of this tendency more experimental which the bands has, in the first album we had already the snuj and debark in Shrub, we had already the theremin in Mistaken and castanholas in Inside Me etc. This new album we went a little further, mainly because of the "Koto" which is a traditional japanese instrument like an horizontal harp with 13 strings,and that is the reason to the cover itself og the album which has a reference to japan, because we had a huge influence of this culture (scales structures and etc.) with Lorena's studies about the instrument.This was the most difficult instrument to fit in the band, because it is acoustic and hard to capture the sound using a microphone, but after all it was what sounded cooler when we mixed it with the heavy band. Obviously Clear,the music featuring the koto, is in my opinion our best moment so far. In the same album we again use theremin in High Heels,Snuj and Debark in Hymn to Selene, cuica in In Your Pockets, a baritone guitar (which has 5 frets more than the normal one and it is tunned in B) in Seedless Watermelon. I always look for different sonorities, I used even a Lap Steel in Storm, that I have never used before. We took all these instruments to the concerts.
What a work... even in the american tour?
.
We did, and the Koto is 2 meters of length.
It takes a big stage....lol
so does a car...lol
But how you guys took it by plane?
We bought a koto there, and the tour we did by car.
10 - what was the process of recording and writing for the first album like?And what was the respose for this?
It was really cool! The first album was different if compared to the second, because the first album you spend all your ideas. Brian May talk about this once, and it is true. Everything you imagined in your own life you put in your first album and after you have a hard work to write the second one.
As I joined in 2003 at Diafanes and we just recorded See Through in 2004 , we stayed on year writing, doing concerts and getting prepared, so when we went to the studio we were really ready.
It was cool! I love "See through" , I think the new album is a great evolution , but I still love the first album. The responde of the public was great, as I told you before everyone who listen to our sound can get a little confused or strange, but it is cool because it makes people listen to it again.
As we didn't have a lot of divulgation from the press mainly here in Brazil, it was an album that didn't see too much over here. As outside Brazil we had the american record labels, that beside the album released two singles (Love in and Inside Me), there the responde was much better and quicker if added to the fact that was really easy to get in the press there than here.
11 - Diafanes did a tour by the USA recently, what is something really difficult for a brazillian band, because the american marketing is the most competitive in the world. How did you guys played in so many concerts and what's the feeling of having this tour done?
It was incredible!Actually, the tour was going to be in 2006. In 2005 we got signed by Digitone Records which is a record label im Virginia in the USA, which released our album and singles and also had the plan to take the band there. Everything was more or less right to go there in the middle of 2006. but little by little we realized that the record label was really small and wouldn't be able to create a way to bring a band from outsite to do more than a month of concerts and walk through so many states.So we decided to break up with the record label, because it was easier to do the tour by our own and much more lucrative. But we didn't go in 2006, because had this problem with the record label and in the sequence Pietro left the band being replaced by Samuel Denicol in his place. So we had to rehearsal all the set list to make the band the united sound again what took some time, so we decided to postpone this to 2007. We inverted the sequence, instead of going to the tour and record the album, we decided to record first taking the opportunity of their winter in the same moment and going there to june 2007 backing in August.At the total 46 dias, more than 17.000 km and we had been by 25 states doing 24 concerts.
It was incredible! The biggest experience of my entire life and it was something really intense , because we did the whole tour by car. We bought a Van there and we did tons of tiring trips, sometimes we get to the place by the time the show is going to start and we had alread to play, after we went to another long trip with a little rest just to eat. It was really hard to stand, mainly because I was the only driver all the tour.But it was really cool...
To ask some information there, each one with a different accent must be difficult... lol
Mainly in the south was most difficult.But we had a GPS and without it nothing would have been possible.
The response of the public was much bigger than I could expect, it was amazing, because we played in big cities such as New York, Chicado and a some a little smaller.We have our page in Myspace which we take very serious, our main tool of promotion, and through this we got in touch with the city audience where we were going to play and with this we were able to promote the concerts. We played with such nice bands, we sold a lot of records, many T-shirts and etc.
We intend to come back now in 2008.;=
12 - What's the main difference between "See Through" and "Obviously clear"?
It is a tough question. The first biggest difference that everyone is going to notice as soon as they listen to the album is that the second album is much heavier than the first one and this was something that naturally happened. I really enjoy the first abum, but this new album was better produce , and a clue of this is that it costed 3 times more than the first one.I think the sound of this new album is superior if compared to the first one which I already enjoyed a lot. We also grew up as composers and as instrumentalists.In the first album the songs were much more diversified and in this new one the music also are but they are more into Diafanes style. In See through there were songs like Love In which was more classic moric, and more experimental like Mistaken and there was also all this ethnic idea and the heavy of songs like Inside Me. In the second we have variatons such as japanese music, brazillian, but everything in Diafanes style.There was also a new member in the band which ended up changing a little bit the sound of the band.
13 - What was the recording process and writing process of this album like?And what is the response so far?
There is fugue in the beginning of the album, what is not very usual in a rock band, how did the idea for this come out?
Starting by the fugue: In the fist album there's a song called Inside Me, which was written by Lorena, where I wrote a counterpoint using two voices by the interlude.After I listening to this interlude recorded I thought the result was incredible and it ended up with my favourite part of the album.And since then I decided that I would write more voice lines in counterpoint.For this new album we had the idea of starting and ending the album with Lorena's voice with no background band, as I was studying counterpoint, because I was starting to lecture this subject in Souza Lima, I decide to write this fugge for two voices. I think it is interesting the phrase which was used in the theme of this fugue, Clearly Obvious, which is the opposite of the title of the album , Obviously Clear.
We wrote this album in a different way than the first one, because we recorded in two different times. Four songs in 2006 with Pietro, and after we got back ot the studio with Samuel only in February of 2007 finishing our process in June.
Actually, the songs came out like in the first album, because the principal composers of the band are Lorena and me. We brought ideas, developed it in the rehearsals, recorded all the rehearsals and everyone couldn't forget the songs. The respond is very cool so far, we haven't officially released the album we are waiting the year really start to do that, problably we will do a special show to release the album.Beside all this, the album is selling reasonably well in our sites and the news song in myspace got nice comments and lots of "plays" and "downloads".
14 - What are Diafanes plans to the future?
We are finishing the editing process of our new clip, of the music Unity, to release together with the album.We also want to subscribe in some movie contests, since our first videoclipe, of the song Love In, placed second place in a movie contest of Alabama named George Lindsey UNA Film Festival. We intend to do several shows in SESCs and a new tour in the USA which is problably going to be in March, but we are still waiting some answers from some festival and because of that we can postpone a little bit. We also are trying to get in the japanese and european marketing. We have got a really great responde in Germany and England, now we are going to try to sign with some record label to release our album on these countries, and in the Japan due to the fact our music is into this oriental stuff, we would like to try to do a tour over there. But a tour in Japan would have to get a logistics much more sophisticated , since no one in the bands knows who to speak japanese.
and how you lived there?
The band had an interpreter.
How long did you stay there?
8 Months..
And haven't you learned how to speak?
ISKOCHI? lol
People say that Paul Gilbert does...
People say he does. Pietro speaks fluently, but he left the band...lol
lol
You guys are really close to Japan?
This Bond is much more due to the fact Lorena has started to learn how to play Koto than my old life experience there, after all it was many years ago!
15 - Thank you a lot for the opportunity!Be aware that you definetely were one of the best teachers I ever had if not the best, leave a message to Guitar Clinic's viewers.
Well , I thank you for the compliment! I adore to teach interested students, so I am happy it helped you anyway.As it is a guitar website my sugesstion goes for the guitar players, I think the guitarist has the tendency of being a little closer in the style that you listen to and play, and it is always important to make an inverse way and to open your min to new styles of music and different musicians. The most good information you habe from different good quality songs the most your sound will get enriched. You can see this from all guitar master in any style, Scott Henderson perfomed here at Souza Lima, and askwed him who were the best guitarist and he answered Jeff Beck and Richie Blackmore, and people asked about what album was he listening to in the moment and he answered it was Beyonce's album.
Greg howe said the same for mein the interview.
Do you see? This is a clue. Great masters of the guitar do not just listen to what they play. Then I think that to be a open minded person is very important.
Website: www.diafanes.com