An Interview with Troy Grady

 

 

IC: Troy, your upcoming shred-documentary has been featured in Newsweek, and on MTV and VH1’s websites, but how does it feel knowing you’ve finally arrived at your place in history now that you’re doing an interview with instrumentalcase.com?

TG: I’d like to thank my mother, my father, the Academy…

Just kidding -- thanks for having me! I’m surprised by and thankful for the attention the project has garnered. All the more motivation to ensure that the endproduct lives up to expectations.

IC: I’d like to know more about your documentary, but more importantly I’d like to know more about you, so let’s start there...

Your biography says that you once saved a small village from a mudslide with nothing but a Dunlop Jazz III and a Yoo-Hoo… was that a red or a black Jazz III?

TG: Definitely black. The red ones, though deadly in the right hands, are way too slippery for my comfort level – especially on Thursdays.

 

IC: That’s mildly comforting to hear, because I’ve recently started using the black ones, too.  The red ones seem more popular though.

 

Okay, onto the less important stuff… What’s an average day like for Troy Grady? How is your time divided between business, working on the Code, updating your site (or not), and showing off at your local Guitar Center?

TG: I feel for guitar salesmen, I really do. I recently brought my friend’s wedding reception to a standstill by shouting “no Stairway!” as the band launched into that time-honored favorite. A chorus of “nooooo” from the dais clearly indicated that none of her grandparents had seen Wayne’s World. I’ll stick to the hors d’oeuvres next time.

 

("No Stairway?  Denied!")

Between the job and the film, I’ve been pretty much swamped. I’m a partner in a recruiting firm called Grady Levkov & Company that specializes in technology and finance searches. Our clientele is composed primarily of highly skilled engineers and financial mathematicians on one end, and the firms that employ them on the other. Only a couple years into the project did it occur to me that this audience intersects the film’s audience in significant ways. The Computer Science / music nexus is well known. As a result, the recruiting clients have generally been enthusiastic about what I’m doing in the off-season, which was cool to discover. The film activity is split between research, extensive practice, and of course the actual logistics of producing a movie – tracking down the people I want to meet, scheduling, travel, filming, and so on.

IC: I was amused when I scrolled down to the very bottom of your Shred, Rock, ‘n’ Pop List and found the names of many of the people I wanted to interview most, such as Mike Orlando, Conrad Simon, Todd Duane, Rusty Cooley, the fine people at Cheeze Whiz, and yourself. Despite the numbers do you think instrumental guitar music is making a comeback?

TG: The demographics of internet popularity are fascinating. For example, on my site I have an article which mentions the phrase “rotten teeth” in connection to the way certain keys would become loose and fall off an old synthesizer I used to own. Further along in that article I mention Eddie Van Halen. And this month, I discovered that a number of people found my site by searching Google for “Eddie Van Halen rotten teeth”. If Eddie Van Halen’s dental hygiene can lead a few hundred people to TroyGrady.com, I’d have to say that guitar music is making a comeback!

(Incidentally, folks, I’m pretty sure the radiation therapy is to blame for Eddie’s enamel, or lack thereof. Keep on keepin’ on, EVH!)

IC: Do you have any plans to release instrumental guitar music of your own once your documentary is complete?

TG: Yep, and if they pass that stem cell legislation, my clone can start composing it all right away! But seriously, the film research has dominated my practice time with mechanical investigation as opposed to creative endeavors – which is ironic, in a way, given that the movie is in itself a creative endeavor. But once I can clear some of this off my plate you can bet there’ll some tunes a-comin’.

IC: Let’s time travel back a ways… When did you start playing guitar and what was your initial inspiration?

TG: I started playing the summer between seventh and eighth grades. At the time, I was busy pounding out Billy Joel riffs on the piano. Being from Long Island, Billy Joel fanhood is of course mandatory, as is Springsteen fanhood for those from Jersey. However guitar skills are also something of a compulsory requirement in area codes 516 and 631, and if you look at all the guitar players from Long Island – Satch, Vai, Petrucci, Stump, even Brian Setzer – this becomes abundantly clear. We breed them out there. The kids across the street were big Van Halen fans, and from hanging out with them I think Fair Warning was the first album I listened to seriously. The rhythm part to Mean Street was so hookalicious, it was almost as good as stealing your Dad’s Playboy.

IC: How did your influences change over time?

TG: In the ‘80s you were either a Van Halen guy or Rhoads guy, and I was a Van Halen guy. This charted a direct path through Dokken, Whitesnake, Ratt, Extreme, and yes, Winger. Lay It Down is still one of the best metal guitar intros of all time in my opinion, right up there with Unchained. This is not to say I disliked Randy Rhoads, only that the Rhoads path led to the darker territory of Sabbath, Dio, Maiden, and eventually Metallica, Megadeth, and Slayer – bands I know more about, and subsequently appreciate more now, than I did back then. I’d also include Battery in the “Greatest. Intro. Ever.” category, for example.

IC: I know this isn’t an original thought, but I’d have to nominate Crazy Train for the Greatest Intro Ever category. Granted, I’ve never actually heard the entire original version of that song. My exposure was through hearing Michael Angelo Batio’s “Tribute to Randy”, which is probably a bit too extreme for most people’s tastes.

 

… Which leads me to my next question! What was your practice schedule like when you were younger?

TG: By my current standards I would say I never really practiced per se, though of course I played for hours at a time, all the time. This time was spent in more of an extended, unstructured jam – typically with the stereo blasting – but it was enough that within a year or two I could do most of the Van Halen tricks.

IC: Did you have a favorite instructional video?

TG: Never had any instructional videos in the formative years, believe it or not. But I will say, like a lot of other guys, one of the very first things I did was order a Doug Marks Metal Method cassette. That guy deserves a lifetime achievement award.

IC: Doug is a great guy. I also turned to Metal Method for awhile, but my young age really shows here, because mine came on DVD.

So what are your favorite instrumental guitar albums now, and who have you been listening to more recently?

TG: I’d say Rising Force sits unassailably at the top of that list. Both the playing and the songwriting on that disc are so mature and cohesive, it’s as though Yngwie burst forth from the womb a fully formed guitar adult. Van Halen I has that same beyond-their-years feel to it.

Number two is probably Surfing With the Alien. The success of the G3 tours suggests I am not alone in that selection either. By contrast to Yngwie, who was all of 21 or 22 when he did Rising Force, Joe actually was a fully formed adult when he released Alien and it showed. The album was so genre-defining that it’s pretty hard to play a melody these days without suffering the comparisons.

Beyond that, I always liked guitar best in the context of a band. David Lee Roth’s Eat ‘Em and Smile was a great record. Van Halen had slid off the cliff into radio balladry, and Dave’s band was like version 2.0 for me. I think it’s some of the best work Vai’s ever done. The strictures of the band format, particularly a David Lee Roth band format, ensured a certain amount of creativity on Steve’s part. For example, I heard he came up with the outro solo to Yankee Rose because Dave wanted something they could play while thrusting the guitars between their legs in the video. That’s just not a requirement you’re ever going to have on a solo album, and it’s the reason why everyone should give themselves creative limitations even when they’re free to write or record whatever they want.

Lately I’ve been doing so much guitar that I’ve been spinning things like the Killers just for a change of pace. First album, not the second one. I still play keys, and Stevie Wonder, any of the first six solo albums, is pretty much on permanent rotation as well – always has been.

IC: The MTV article says you “shelved your mighty axe for most of your college years at Yale University”. What lead to that decision?

TG: I think something got a little lost in translation there – I actually did a ton of playing in college and used that time to develop the first part of what would eventually become the film project. At the time it was a manuscript of a book on picking technique which I wrote as part of an independent study, and which a contact in the music department shopped to Hal Leonard. They replied that they already had a book on speed picking. In fact it was actually called “Speed Picking”, and it was Frank Gambale’s book!

IC: That’s a great book.  But something tells me that your book wasn’t 35 pages about sweep picking…

 

(Frank Gambale in Cracking the Code) 

In retrospect, are you glad that you pursued higher-education instead of getting a job teaching guitar at the local Music-Go-Round?

TG: I came from a blue-collar family, and my focus was on paying the bills, so professional musicianship was just never something I considered. That, and when you get into Yale, you go. In retrospect, I built a career that has allowed me to do the music thing entirely on my own terms. That’s a degree of freedom that working musicians struggle to attain, and I’m thankful for it.

IC: Once again, to quote the MTV article, “Grady realized he’d plateaued. He’d gotten as good as he was going to get, and no amount of practice was going to make a dent.”

How did you overcome your technical-plateau?

TG: I’d spent a lot of time reverse-engineering the Yngwie picking technique and applying it to players across the board, and it worked very well. It’s an exceptionally powerful formula and eminently applicable to almost any style of music. For example, as you’ll see in the film, the Django Reinhardt / gypsy jazz right hand is essentially similar in many respects. You could learn nothing but the Yngwie/Django technique and be quite a formidable player, and this is essentially the world I lived in for about ten years. In that time I worked out every conceivable fretboard pattern that would fit within this right hand model. So “plateau” is a matter of perspective.

Nevertheless after starting the firm and building the brand name to a certain point of stability, I decided I was going to put a band together. So I went out and bought a couple of the “classic” instructional videos I’d heard about but never seen – Paul Gilbert’s Intense Rock, and Michael Angelo’s Speed Kills. Actually I went looking for Angelo’s Star Licks video first, which I had seen the trailer for in the ‘80s, but couldn’t find it. Anyway, it was only after watching these that I realized there were mechanics other than Yngwie’s – mechanics, for example, that permitted three-note-per-string alternate picking, which Yngwie for the most part avoids. Investigating the how and why of these mechanics is what eventually led to the movie project.

IC: Did practice eventually make perfect for you, or did it take the help of the Casio SK-1 and the ShredCam to get your playing both lightning fast and Windex clean?

 

TG: The faithful SK-1 – the keyboard with the rotten teeth – was what got me over the Van Halen hurdle, and the college study was what resulted in the Yngwie model. Within that model, my playing was clean and had been for a decade before I started working on the film. It was in preparation for the film that I spent a lot of time deconstructing pure alternate picking technique, which I’d never worked on. The primary tools were the traditional video and audio catalogues of guys like Gilbert, Angelo, and others. The Shredcam was an outgrowth of that work – a daydream at first, really, of how cool it would be to have crystal clear slow motion video of master players instead of having to frame-advance through twenty year-old VHS tapes. The more I thought about it, the more inspired I became to try and build it.

IC: I guess that since we’re up to the ShredCam, now would be a good time to discuss your documentary, “Cracking the Code”. I’ll do my best to a resist the temptation to ask “no comment” type questions about your guarded secrets of shred guitar that you plan to unveil in the documentary!

Sooo… um… just between me and you, what are your guarded secrets of shred?

TG: It’s all about the hair, really. Short hair is for staccato blues stabs. Long hair equals long, flowing shred lines. Layered hair equals nuanced, expressive playing. Now, if you use too much conditioner, you might find your articulation a little soft. If you don’t use enough, you can suffer string breakage. It’s really quite simple, see?

 

(The Hair Progression)

 

But seriously, I really will save the bulk of the technical discussion for the film. This discussion is in fact the entire plot of the movie – like a murder mystery whose answers are revealed piecemeal as the film progresses. What I can tell you generally is that guitar playing is inherently inefficient – guitars were designed to be fingerpicked, and if you’ve ever watched a fingerpicking master like Scotty Anderson, this much will be obvious. In general however there are two problems that flatpickers face. One is hand synchronization, and the other is efficient string switching. Of the two problems, the second is the more intractable. String switching is in fact an area of great and very interesting mechanical diversity, even among players who may superficially appear to have similar technique – DiMeola and McLaughlin, for example. Exploring this diversity is much of the journey of the film.

IC: Which players did you visit first when it came time to film?

TG: Rusty Cooley was the first player I visited, and he was a key impetus toward the development of the Shredcam. I had flown down to take a lesson with him as part of what was at the time still a purely personal interest in picking technique. Instead, I spent most of the time filming him with a handheld camera I had brought along. The goal was to try and capture some of the same style footage I had been culling from instructional videos as part of the research on alternate picking research I had been doing. Of course the frame rate and shutter speed weren’t nearly fast enough – with the camera a few inches away from Rusty’s hand I was still recording nothing but blur. If you’ve seen Rusty play, you know what I’m talking about.

(Cooley and the ShredCam)

 

When I got back I began putting together a better system for capturing clear high frame-rate video, which led me to the Basler camera and its lack of Macintosh application support – so I wrote my own. Once this was done I ended up going back to film Rusty a couple more times before I got all the software and lighting kinks worked out. The third time was a charm, and despite the loss of a laptop power adapter and about a million software crashes, I was finally getting clean footage of what he was actually playing. At some point along the way I realized that if Rusty was receptive to my pseudo scientific investigations, other players might be too – and the film project went from casual daydream to reality.

IC: Recently Joe Stump and Frank Gambale have appeared on the players list for the Code. Would you tell us your experience visiting and filming those two?

TG: I have a variety of friends in academics, and in many respects it’s an ideal lifestyle – spend all day long studying what you love, flexible schedule, summers off, and travel to far off locales to discuss your fetish with like-minded obsessive-compulsives. Joe Stump is this plus heavy metal. As if a better job existed! Joe is a great guy, also from Long Island, the very crucible of shred guitar as it were. Joe’s a very disciplined player and very good at what he does. As a result our session went pretty quickly – he needed so few retakes, I actually ran out of things to ask him to play! Joe’s even good at a few things he probably doesn’t know he’s doing, but that emerge very clearly beneath the Shredcam.

Meeting Frank was a real treat as well. His contributions to modern guitar technique are legendary – and if that’s an overstatement, it shouldn’t be. Many guys in virtuoso guitar are polarizing figures of one kind or another – too many notes, not enough feel, that’s the standard gripe. But I find it hard to believe that any serious guitar fan could listen Frank’s impeccable marriage of technique and taste and think in anything other than superlatives. He’s a player first and foremost, one who happens to be known for some – er – sweeping innovations in right hand technique. In reality though he’s a technical opportunist, switching ably from sweeping to alternate to legato in ways that have not been appreciably documented. I think that’s going to be a great segment in the film.

IC: When and how did you first discover the smooth stylings of Conrad Simon?

TG: Conrad was an internet discovery around the same time. I don’t remember where I first heard him – Chops From Hell, maybe. I really liked his songwriting and of course his technique needs no introduction. But web presence was all but nonexistent. I dug up an email address and sent him a note at one point, and he never wrote back. After I got the movie project rolling I got serious and tracked down his phone number in the wilds of New Brunswick Canada and called him. Interesting guy, interesting story – owns a lobster and crab fishing business, and due to the grueling beating his hands take during fishing season, which is most of the year, he doesn’t really play. What recorded output you have of him was generally done in the winter when he can hole up and practice. Who knew shred was a seasonal crop?

IC: Yeah, I usually use lobster fishing as an excuse for not practicing.

I was very happy to see a couple of non-rock/metal/fusion players are participating in the documentary. You acquired the help of gypsy jazz-swing guitarist Stephane Wrembel and bluegrass former National Flatpicking Champion Orrin Star. Did filming them reveal any new tricks that you can apply to your own playing, or was it more about covering some different picking styles used in those fields of guitar (plus the great music, of course)?

TG: Everyone in the film has been selected for their relevance to the story. As we discussed, the Django pick model is awfully similar to the Yngwie model, and filming a gypsy jazz player was always in the cards. I’m just lucky enough to have someone as talented as Stephane so close by. I was all ready to book the flight to France when I realized I could just walk down the block.

Ditto for Orrin. Bluegrass guitar players routinely do things that rock players consider difficult or impossible, like alternate picking one-note-per-string arpeggios. This is de rigeur in the bluegrass world and every rock player who cares about technique should understand how they do it. It was a trip when I realized I also had a bluegrass champion down the block. Living in New York has its privileges.

IC: It sounds like the documentary will cover a lot of virtuoso right-hand picking technique, but do you also plan to discuss fretting-hand movements much?

TG: Left hand development is relatively straightforward, the traditional wisdom in doing so is more or less accurate, and there aren’t as many pressing mysteries there to unearth. Perhaps the most significant thing to be said about left hand technique is what Stephane says in the film: “The right hand dictates the left hand.” And this is generally true. In this respect they’re linked and will be discussed, but I probably won’t be telling you anything you don’t know about the left hand per se, i.e. except what its limitations are with respect to what fingering choices are feasible for the right hand.

 

(The ShredCam at work)

IC: Was it difficult to get permission from Warner Brothers to conduct your “probing retrospective” into Yngwie Malmsteen’s 1991 REH instructional video and Paul Gilbert’s Intense Rock?

TG: In a YouTube world, someone like me who’s forthright about requesting copyright clearance is the good guy, maybe even a dying breed. The guys at Warner were helpful and I look forward to working with them again.

IC: I just got Intense Rock I & II on DVD for Christmas… I guess I’m a little late to the party!

TG: Intense Rock I is the keeper – I actually watched II and Terrifying Guitar Trip first, and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Then I popped in the first tape and became a believer.

IC: The first trailer for Cracking the Code debuted online recently. Are you anywhere near wrapping up filming for the project? Do you still expect to release it this year?

TG: I’m about halfway done with the filming, and I do expect to get it out the door this year. Stay tuned!

IC: Are you editing and narrating the documentary yourself, and have you worked out the structure of the film yet?

TG: I’m the Michael Moore ‘round these parts, and yes I have a general storyboard in mind. As much as I love then, even I get drowsy watching instructional guitar videos, which is why this will instead be a documentary with a discernible dramatic pulse. Think “Super Size Me” with fewer McGriddles and more guitars!

 

IC: I’m a teenager aspiring to one day be a virtuoso shred guitarist. I’ve been absolutely obsessed with instrumental guitar for almost half a decade now, and - as is often the case with any horrible disease - my obsession has only gotten worse with time. Over the past two years my instrumental guitar album collection has grown from roughly a few dozen CD’s to around 300. Although I only started playing and practicing recently (and can barely finger an open E chord), I’ve probably watched well over a lifetime’s worth of old instructional videos, and even taken private lessons with shred virtuoso Rusty Cooley. Doing so has created a stockpile of technique tips in my mind, which I always do my best to follow while practicing.  My question for you is: Will many of the secrets and tricks discussed in the Code be completely new to someone like me?

TG: Oh, you’re one of *those*! I’ve met you, and I’ve taught you, and what I can say is this: stop hoarding instructional material and start doing more playing. The techniques in the film were pioneered by players who played, and who let an auspicious combination of talent, drive, and serendipity do its thing. Although it’s not really an instructional video, the Code will help you in two ways. One, because the techniques profiled therein are applicable to all skill levels, and two, because it’s inspiring to watch guys like Rusty, Frank, and Joe do their thing. I’d really be surprised if you could watch this movie without reaching for your guitar at some point!

 

IC: Was part of your purpose for creating the Code to compile the shred tips and tricks that you’ve picked up over the years, perhaps so that less experienced guitarists could simply buy one interesting documentary DVD instead of sifting through countless old REH and HOTLICKS instructionals hoping to discover some of the secrets of shred?

TG: On the contrary, the Code is an enhancement to instructional videos you already own, not a replacement. You’ll get a lot a more out of your current instructional library when you know what to look for, and after watching the film this will be obvious. Those old REH and Hotlicks videos are gold mines of invaluable information from an era when technique was practiced to a breadth and depth it may never be again.

IC: I’m sure you’ve gained a lot of insights into speed picking technique over the years, and especially while filming and doing research for the documentary, but are the secrets unveiled in the Code going to be things that anyone can apply to their own technique? Could doing so significantly improve their ability, and help turn a late 80’s sloppy-Impellitteri into an early 90’s clean-Impellitteri, or will it all once again boil down to at least a few years spent in solitary confinement with a guitar?

TG: If skill is your goal, time will still be the toll. This may be a semantic distinction, but I don’t think the Code will bring the destination any closer. It will however make the road map exceedingly clear. What this means is that if you do happen to want to dedicate a couple years of your life to building great guitar technique, you will be more likely to get exactly two years of results out of it, rather than, say, the two years of fits, starts, and frustration that typified my early attempts at developing picking technique. This ratio of input to expected reward is something we take for granted in our dedication to other instruments that has not always been true of dedicated rock guitar practice.

IC: Do you hope to screen Cracking the Code at films festivals before releasing it on DVD?

TG: Film festivals, academic distribution, and television are all of interest to me. For more on these developments stay tuned to the web site and/or mailing list.

IC: Do you have any special features in mind for the DVD that you can talk about? Tabs and examples for some of the concepts discussed in the film?

TG: You mean aside from the Jenna Jameson Shredcam clip?

 

IC: [Laughs]  Well, that was just an assumed. When you’ve got a camera that films at an excess of 100 FPS you have a responsibility to film more than sweaty guitar players picking!

And finally – my last question - what’s the one thing you want people to know about you?

TG: I took the red pill!

 

 

(Ritalin?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

www.troygrady.com

 

 

www.troygrady.com/feedback.php 

 

... and don't forget to download the new trailer!

 

 

 -- Dave B.