Joey Tafolla - Systematik Kromatik Statik

Joey Tafolla is an American guitarist. He was a member of Jag Panzer, but started a solo career on Mike Varney's Shrapnel Records label in the 1980s, and emerged alongside other "shred" players such as Marty Friedman, Jason Becker, Paul Gilbert, Richie Kotzen, Tony MacAlpine and Vinnie Moore among others.

He became part of the neoclassical stream with his first studio album Out Of The Sun, released in 1987, featuring Tony MacAlpine on keyboards and Paul Gilbert on guitars. Joey immediately demonstrated to be technically prepared and at the same time showed a lot of personality. Soon he got some collaboration to rock projects and guitar compilations on the shredding scene.

After four years from his first release, in 1991 he totally changed genre with his new studio album Infra-Blue, an almost rock-fusion work by a new and completely different Joey, rich of shuffle ideas on his riffs and characterized by great shred licks mainly during legato sections. With this record Joey asserted himself enough to start clinics and seminaries all over the world, releasing a didactic tape for REH video, and starting to teach.

Joey currently owns JTM Merchandising, a apparel & gear manufacturing company in Huntington Beach, CA. who creates/prints apparel for such companies as Fender Musical Instruments, Line 6, Mesa/Boogie, the Rock Band video game franchise and many bands including Meldrum and others. Joey and JTM are longtime clients of Naturally Wired Designs, with both Joey's music site and JTM Merchandising site

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Joey
• Tafolla
• Paul
• Gilbert
• Vinne
• Moore
• Greg
• Howe
• Steve
• Vai
• Petrucci
• Malmsteen

[TheBodomBeachTerror]

love those awesome "kromatik" licks

[TheLostTruckDriver]

Petrucci is very basic though. I mean you know exactly what he is doing, you just have to work on string skipping and changes. This man's technique requires more understanding of wide intervals and specific timing that is not related to the tempo. John is essentially led by the tempo. Don't take that the wrong way, but to me anyone can quickly play Petrucci style stuff once you understand scale fragments and key changes but this is more challenging as your 1 2 4 and 1 3 4 triplets are OUT.

[ironguitardac]

John Petrucci is not a guitar player, he is a songwriter and composer, his work with Dream Theater is not from this world, there's no guitar player in the world who can make a song 24 minutes long but still awesome to listen, I don't mean to disrespect Joey Taffola, he is awesome too, but Petrucci is a GOD...OUT!!

[Yasminesoulstealer]

This guys solo on Jag Panzers Shadow Thief is the shit!

[krischayer]

@TheLostTruckDriver I totally disagree .. you can't compare both guitarists they are both good at what they do... For your information most of the key changes petrucci uses are different one to another, just sayin.. YOU CAN'T LEARN PETRUCCI'S STUFF EASILY like you say :)

Still, you're a moron trying to say that Tafolla is better than petrucci you just prove how ignorant to music you are.

[xTheWorldNeedsAHerox]

Somehow filmed in 1992, here we have GAY7X's entire discography. Seeing as how they can ONLY playing the chromatic scale.

[xTheWorldNeedsAHerox]

@TheLostTruckDriver John Petrucci is brilliant, though. And is capable of playing more than just the chromatic scale.

[FeedMeForiAmATroll]

@raskolnikov1873

i agree. the only guitarist that can sound musical at picking speeds higher than that is shawn lane imo. even then he can sound pretty robotic sometimes, but that's to get an outside sound so it does have a purpose. i don't like petrucci's fast picking runs unless they're short and sweet. if they're long then it just sucks. the new dream theater album really shows that petrucci can really mix it up. best dt album yet imo.

[raskolnikov1873]

@FeedMeForiAmATroll Fair enough but I would argue that there's no need to pick 16th notes above 180bpm to 200bpm. To my ear, it begins to sound very unmusical and very machine-like. I think at those tempos and above most guitarists would be better served by switching to triplets (one less note per beat) or, if they want to use straight 16ths, legato or tapping. That's just a matter of taste and many would disagree with me. When Petrucci does his ultrafast picking runs, it ruins the solo.

[FeedMeForiAmATroll]

@raskolnikov1873

that's 14 nps which is very unimpressive. 14 nps is far from elite speed. i was able to play faster than that a year and a half into guitar playing. his picking speed is extremely overrated. doctorhotlicks played flight of the bumblebee at 600 bpm with 16th notes. that's 40 nps and THAT is elite speed. he has the world record. even guthrie govan picks faster than petrucci, but he is still a master songwriter and speed doesn't matter.

[raskolnikov1873]

@FeedMeForiAmATroll Well said. Also Petrucci is very non-linear; by that, I mean he goes across strings an awful lot which produces some interesting sounds---difficult to reproduce for most guitarists. He also uses a lot of chromatic elements and spices his playing up with fusion-type compositional elements. He's a very dynamic songwriter. My only point of contention would be on his picking speed. On his instructional video he picks sixteenth notes at a 210bpm tempo, and that's elite speed.