-
01- Hello Heraldo, how are you? First of all thank you for the interview!
I am the one to thank you for the interview!!!
I would like to start by knowing who are your main influences and what was the biggest reason for you to start playing?
There’s no doubt about my biggest influence: Jimmy Page! For several reasons, he turned out to be a reference of a pragmatic musician and an unique guitar player , because he took functions which wasn’t usual for a guitar player by the end of 60’s, as a producer, composer, guitarplayer and a creator of visual and esthetic concepts which no band has gotten except for Led Zeppelin.
As the most incredible it can sound, I started playing in a band due to the Punk Rock movement, obviously I took the end of english punk phase, but here it got here stronger by the 80’s, before that I had played the drums since I was a kid, more exactly I got my drums by the age of 7 and by the age of 12 I started my rock band with a friend which just played the guitar on the low E string (Sidney) Lol , We stick together with this line up for somet ime, until that a guy teamed up and just played the rhythym parts, he knew how to play a lot of musics and sang a lot of them too. Whereas it was happening , my father (Gerson, my great supporter and musical advicer) asked me about how I would write songs as a drummer, he put me in an embarrissing situation and decided to give me an acoustic guitar to see as what the result would be like, the learning process was happening until someday I asked the Low E player to take the drums and let the guitar solo for me, I taught him what I knew and I focused myself on learning the guitar , it all happened in 1981.
02- What’s the difference of taking up an instrument by the time you start if compared to nowadays?
The biggest difference was the lack of information, there were no specific electric guitar lessons as my generation wish, there were courses in conservatories for electric guitar focused on Jazz and Bossa Nova, rock not even in our dreams!!! So we kind of learned by attempt and mistake, by ears, I learned listening to it and trying to make it sound on my hand what I listened on the vynil records. But the will of learning was so big that I did surrender to the conservatory and I went to learn something beyond the records, there I learned how to have a good posture, a good principle of scales study and of course Bossa Nova. I stayed there for 6 months and those exercises helped a lot, They were really important and I thank the lessons of teacher Wagner at Santana conservatory in 1983. Today I watch the learning process, this explosion of tablatures, programs, youtube and so many ways of learning can’t supply what was done 28 years ago, which was to play, to make music by the sonority, by the whole thing, the guitarist world has became a competitive way of virtuosity which everyone believes whic is going to give a “status” which in my point of view is an illusion, this whole thing passes and another one takes his/her place and there’s no music.Guitar’s valorizartion has lost itself, because what should be a musical instrument has becamse more tha an instrumento of rebellion against the repression, it became a formula 1 car with tons of changes , the consumerism can already be consired a psychological disturbance which people think that material is superior to the knowlegement and over all the instrumentis have become athletes. Without mentioning that the good sense is disfigured, I see other kind of guitar player who has no idea how he is not ready to get an exposure around saying that he is incredible. There are some problems which we can find on these new times, but I believe that the natural selection still works pretty good.
03- You took lessons with high profiled teachers such was Mozart Mello and Ricardo Ryzek, Have they changed your way of thinking?
Totally, let’s say it was a sequence of happenings, Ryzek was a master which I studied musical esthetic for years, 7 years. I have been always interested on the philosophic side of music, on the history to understand what we have today, due to Ryzek I got the encouragement to subscribe for a test in the music colleges and for this he pointed me Marisa Ramires (Faam Teacher, master at Unesp).I studied musical structuring with her to join the college of music in 1994. By the time I started the college, I started having lessons with Marcelo Gomes and on the second yeard I got a spot to have the dreams lessons with Mozart Mellos, I did the last two years of college with him and it was simply amazing , he is a great teacher and a wonderful person, I learned to understand a lot of things on the guitar and by his guindance the Jazz.Mozart Mello is much more popular and Ricardo was from the classical music, how do you face that?
After all I have always believed that music is something beyond the generes, they are derivated from something much bigger which is the music itself. Mozart and Ryzek had this thought, Mozart is an electric guitar classical musician, a researcher of the guitarristic universe and Rizek was an “universer” of what music can be under stood in several areas specially scientific, but I will add Marisa Ramires which is the person who gave me the tools to connect all these informations and she is my master, I keep having lessons with her.
04- You majored in Electric Guitar at FAAM and now you are coursing Pos graduation at the same. Do you think college is really i ndispensable for musicians nowadays?We all know that is no t indispensable taking up a college to make music, to play popular music, to play rock’nd roll, or something else, but college shows you ways, tools, concepts, ideas, sounds, and it explains like more than two millenniums of musical development can generate what we call music, specially classical music.To sutdy and to knoe a little doesn’t take that space in your brain, to learn about something we love shoud be something natural, nowadays several musicians are choosing going to the college, maybe some of them not for the right reasons, but we have got something. I love teaching, I have been teaching guitar since 1984 and even because of that I am doing the pos graduation about teaching music at FMU-SP to get more information and to have a good guindance to be the best teacher I can.
How did this change your way of playing?
The reason why I decided to join the college was because I was so tired about the guitarist sight, in 1994 I felt the need of leraning something which could take me further and not to the same place which was the electric guitar, I wanted to escape a little of it, try to see music on the guitar and not only throught it. The college changed my musical concepts up to that moment, I have never be the same since that moment.
05- What was the experience of playing with Ultraje Rigor like? What was the feeling of joining a band that big?
It was amazing, to be in that moment playing for a brazilian rock’n roll band and being that popular was a huge break in my like. I have just completely 21 years when I head the advertisement on Rádio Brasil 2000 (in São Paulo) saying that Ultrage a Rigor wanted a guitar player, I took note of the phone and called. At the beginning I talked to the trip producer (Kékas) and I went through a short interview by phone, so I kept waiting for Roger to call me in case he was interested on my informartion, about one month after he called me and we set up a meeting on the studio where he was producing a band named Korzus which the vocalist Marcelo Pompeu was a friend of mine for such a long time, anyway, he gave me the set list to the test rehearsal. A week later the rehearsal and it was ok, but I didn’t feel I was coming back there, but I was already happy about taking part of all the selections, some weeks later Roger called me again to tell that he was in a doubt between me and another guy, we did another rehearsal (this time recorded and I have this recording up to know) and one week later I got the great news I was the new guitar player for Ultraje a Rigor it in february-1991. I stayed in the band up to 2002 and I just got to thank for all this years in the band!
06- You played in Rock in Rio 3 with the same band for an audience of 250 thousand people, what was this experience like?
It was an emotion which no one can describe, you are not afraid of commiting a mistake because we were playing together since 1991, in other words 10 years doing concerts, you feel something extremely strenght emotionally and feel completely accomplished with all the people having fun with your music.
07- How did the idea for Quadrivium came out and how it turned out to be Kroma?
In a certain way it was a fruit from the unconscious times from the college, In 1997 (my senior year at college), my friend Ciro Visconti has just arrived from Japan and phoned me to ask me about recording at my studio a CD with his themes for an electric guitar quartet and after that I asked him about how he was going to do this alive, he said he was going to use a playback with 3 electric guitars and would play the fourth guitar live, as soon as I heard this I suggested him to use a real guitar quartet, he thought it was a complicated idea at first, but I made him sure that I knew the right guitar players for it who were Márcio Alvez and Maurício Cailet. We started playing Ciro’s themes, soon we tried to play some simple pieces from classical music and then we got Eine Kline Natchmusik by Mozart,At this moment we were sure what we would do from that moment own, we called the quartet Quadrivium and started a research for some repertoire of chamber groups which would fit an electric guitar quartet which up to that moment was completely new, at least on our researches there were no one doing the same thing. In 1999 we started to have some problems about our ideals , because my idea was to have a chamber group which could play themes from several generes and it wasn’t the ideal of Quadrivium which was focused only on the classical musical, before being a problem I left Quadrivium and I started Kroma with Igor de Bruyn, Alexandre Spiga, Fabiano Rodrigues, we left the usage of distortion behind and we recorded our first cd released in 2001 by the no longer existed Abril Music, at this same year Fabiano left due to some works and he was replaced by Alexandre Ório, we have been with the same line up since then. Kroma has grown up a lot about this concepts and has been working in a new repertoire for years, including acoustic instruments such as: “Viola Caipiria”, we have become an experimental string instruments quartet, but we will always be focused on guitar, soon we are going to release our second cd probably in 2009. Videos and songs are avaliable on www.myspace.com/kromaquarte or www.kroma.palcomp3.com.br
08- Talk about your gear for live and studio situations and please talk about your sponsors.
After I left Utraje I changed all my gear, actually I just reduced the cabinets which were 2 4 x 12 cabinets, today I use a simple kit: pedal Crybaby Dunlop connect into a GT5 by Boss ,Crate PowerBlock 150w RMS amplifier and a cabinet 1x12 with selenium speakers of 200w RMS, to bigger concerts I can usa a 4x12 cabinet or I take my Staner Tube One combo 2x12,when it comes about guitars I basicly use an Ibanez 540R 1990 and a japanese Fender 1990.
Althought my set can be differente depensding on the situation, when it comes about Kroma I use only a Japanese Ibanez 7 strings 2000. I use Wave box peldas to several concerts, the delay I use on the Ledness (Tribute to Led Zepellin) concerts and I really like to use togethe r with the GT5 a pedal W/TO which the same takes my signature, I am technical consultant of this company, I am endorsee of Giannini 0,09 7 strings and 0,09 6 strings since 2001, Audix microphones and who takes cares of my instruments is a luthier named Josino de Cast.
When it comes about recording I use several drive pedals: POD Line 6 2.0, Argos Wavebox, Rockman Rack and the amazing Amplitube which I have been using a lot recently, practically I left “micing amplifiers” behind. I was anxious about the amplifiers simulatoes and they have finally come, I have never recorded with microphones anymore since the releasing of POD Line 6 , it doesn’t mean I will not do this again, but I am enjoying the result and the practical side of it.
09- You have released several álbums, is there any funning story from some recording session?
I think the funniest situation was the recording session for the álbum Ó! By Ultraje a rigor, we recorded at the end of 1992 and it was the first album by the new line up and unfortanelly it wasn’t that promoted on the press, but the subjects of the album were so funny, each rehearsal we did freak out in our ideas and we used to have a great time from our jokes, I will not remember any special sitatuion because it was interne jokes and I would have to write a book to make them to get a sense, but just listen to the album which is easily found on the internet skid rows and you will understand how hilarious it was.
What it helped on your improvement?
It helped a lot, to be in a professional mood supported by a Record label structure, a high profiled studio, time and the possibility of trying is na evolving process when it is well utilized, you take a look on all your values and compare to stories with other bands and you see that there’s a common line between all of them in any place of the planet and the biggest learning topic is to understand what should win is the music, the musical result has to be above any other useless idea, the act of doing a good job is the key to any quality, in other words the instrumentist musician is the difference.
10- Talk about your new project named Over C and your plans for the future?
Over C is a project which started only for me to produce and Record, Alexandre Puga is the founder of the band and he had formed this band to feature on the sound track of the movie No Pain No Gain (USA) with the song Shok me Baby, after that the band ended and he decided to move on and there’s when we met each other, I liked the idea of being part of a band with female vocies and english lyrics, then we started looking for vocalist, drummer and we have to Fred Barion and Bia Lombardi and we finally recorded the CD in 2007. I confess I am pretty much happy with th result, I had the oportunitty to make a production dream to come true, there are 12 english songs which 9 were written by Roney Giah and Alexandre Puga (Bassist of Over C), I invited Roney to join the band on the writing process to “music” and lyrics of the incredible Alexandre and this team is awesome, it as a stuff pretty good! And to finish the cicle, Fred Barion on the drums playing with all that feeling that only he has ,the beauty voice of Bia Lombardi and the extremely right bass of Alexandre Puga. Bia and I wrote Ego wars and Alexandre Puga did an english version for a song I wrote back in 1983 Called Missing Link. We two version of the song Gone for Good, one of them being a bonus track to end the CD. We are starting the promotional process of the CD, recently pressed which can be checked out on www.myspace.com/thisoverc or www.overc.palcomp3.com.br. I consider Over C like a celebration of rock and roll which we use our ifluences and try to sound the more nature we can, on this cd you are going to hear Folk Music, Blues, Rock and Roll, Hard Rock including a little of modern elements and we love chorus... hehehehe
The plans for the future are always to keep playing, to compose, to record, to perform and to keep producing band at my studio. Obviously to keep teaching, for new students which are interested on my guitar or hamony/theory music lessons , my e-mail is heraldoaulas@terra.com.br. At these last 5 years , I opened extra courses such as: Musical production, Musical direction for bands, Gear and stuff, Drums up to the middle level and electric bass. It can sound a little smatterer to have so many courses, but as the years gone by some people showed up interested on this kind of information and I decided to do that.That’s exactly why I call them extra courses .
11- Thanks a lot for the interview! Please a message to our viewers!
I would like to thank you, Rafael, for the amazing space you’ve created here (Guitar Clinic) for us guitar players to show our opinion about this universe and I hope that all the guitar community can reflect about what is really doing music for a difference in this world full of same on, same on!!!
Hugs!
Heraldo Paarmann