Entrevista con - Fabrizio Chiruzzi

GL - Hello Fabrizio Chiruzzi, thanks for your time!
FC - Thanks to you guys for the help showed me to spread my music.

GL - Please tell us about your personal history and background for the Guitar fans at Mexico
FC - I'm a 26yr old italian guitar player and composer. I was born the march 23th, 1977 at Chieri (TO) and I moved when I was a child in the south of Italy, in a small and boring citadel called Menfi ( AG ) where I grew up I start showing a deep interest to sea world, sharks and biology. When I was a kid I started collecting shells, shark teeth and jaws, reading gothic and horror literature, my favourites writers are E.A. Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and few others. In 1992 I began to move my interest to Occultism and Ufology and at the same time I started to write horror tales that were published for Joppolo and Libro Italiano editors. In that period I fallen to crime world, expecially to the psychopatology and the distorted behaviours. I'm a great true crime books lover collecting over 30 books regarding the serial killers and the cruelest crimes they perpetuated.
In 1995 my passion to heavy metal music become concrete when I bought my first guitar, a Century guitar: a cheap red guitar with rosewood neck, 22 vintage frets and a cromated Floyd Rose alike bridge. two single coils and an humbucker really noisy. I practice a lot for the first two or three years and then I decided to record a video of my playing in a "famous" CD ROM lately called The Dominance Video thanks which I won an internation electric guitar competition and I was invited to play live with Steve Vai during his The ultra zone world tour in march 2000. From there I started recording new material and now I'm working to my second cd.

GL - What motivated you to want to learn to play the guitar?
FC - Passion for music over all, but I guess also the possibility to express my own feeling and emotions in music, componing new stuff or just playing. It is a form of relax where I can find my peace. Music is one of my favorite form of art and everything is created by human brain is something special and unique.

GL - Who are your main influences?
FC - It depends by the different faces of music. If you're talking about tecnique I have absolutely to say : Michael Angelo, he was my first " virtual "sensei" thanks to his videos. obviously there are thousand of players I can mention but I think that the well known players are my guides. Vai, Satriani, Malmsteen, Howe, Garsed etc.. I think that to be a good guitar player you have to learn the technique of your favorite players but find the real source of inspitation in the others music genre, because you have to refresh the music scene with something different and not re-do the same things you hear.

GL - Tell us about your technique and how you developed it?
FC - I never took a lesson in my life, why do I? music is art and not a way to make money, so I don't need to be a copy of my favorite players, I just want to discover how to play the guitar on my own. This is probably the best way a musician should take. But I think that anyone has a different way to learn music so I have nothing to recriminate to students of berkeley or stuff like that. Technique is nothing else that hard practice with the instrument and this is what everyone can obtain. But develop a voice in the instrument whatever it could be, is probably the most difficult target.

GL - What are your main guitars and amps at the moment?
FC - I play a Natale Curti's customed Ibanez RG550 guitar. Connected to a Ibanez Tube Screamer, a wah pedal and to a JMP 1 - Marshall Valve MIDI Pre-Amp and a 9100 Marshall Dual Monobloc Amplifier 6L6 Valves and a 4X12 Marshall Cabinet with Celestion speakers. My efx units for guitar are the Tc Electronic G Force + PCMCIA G Card and the Yamaha G50+G1D. I use 2 Rode NT 3 Microphones and a Shure SM 57 Microphone in a triaxis setup: the 2 Rodes are connected with the DBX 386 Dual Vacuum Tube Preamp Mic with Digital Outs, with the send return connected to my Spirit Folio SX Soundcraft Mixer. From the DBX the signal is digitally sent to my Tc Electronic Fireworx version 2.0 and than to my MOTU 2408MKIII and 308i expander. The Sm57 is connected to mixer and sent to Motu this is the analog and dry way. The guitars are recorded with a soundproof box customed by Alberto Dori. The bass lines are recorded with a Yamaha BBG5S five strings bass guitar with the tube screamer connected with the DBX with the send/return to the mixer and the output digital signal sent to Motu. All sounds are monitored by 2 Tannoy Reveal Active Nearfield Monitors. The synth lines are made with the Yamaha G50 or with the Evolution MK-149 MIDI keyboard. The mastering is made by the TC Electronic Triple C processor, Peavey Kosmos Pro unit and the TC Electronic Fireworx. The set of strings ranges from 09-042 to 010-052 for the rhythm tracks. I'm a DI MARZIO endorser and I have Di Marzio Evolution, Paf Pro and virtual 2 pickups in my Ibanez. The analog cables are Di Marzio too and the digital cables are Gotham with Neutrik connectors. About the picks, I usually use the Jim Dunlop teckpick anodized aluminium plectra or the Stubby 2mm.

GL - Who is your favorite guitar player?
FC - Michael Angelo as I told, but I can mention thousands of great musicians that inspired me a lot.

GL - What projects are you currently working on?
FC - I'm working on my second CD called AWAKENING where will feature the italian keyboard player Mistheria and other guitar players as: Brett Garsed, T.D. Clark, Marco Ferrigno, Steve Saluto, Theodore Ziras and the drummer Fabio Colella. It will be totally different from my previous CD Gates of doom. I called this: cybershred cause it is technically shred as much as the shred albums but It sounds heavy and more techno/industrial metal oriented. With few ethnic passages and a bunch of loops and distorted sounds.

GL - What type of music do you enjoy listening to?
FC - I like everything, You won't believe it but one of my favorite CD/Artist is Avril Lavigne or T'Pau. oh I can just hear the echos of your voices screaming " OH MY GOD!!!" But it is true. Cause I don't care of what I'm listening, but how it sounds. I'm able to listen extreme band ala Annihilator, Slayer, Kovenant, Rammstein and others no nu metal modern rock bands until to new age bands or Ost albums. One of the best band I'm hearing in this last period are the Amethystium.

GL - Do you love doing live performances?
FC - Yes but not so much, I think to be more Studio oriented. Anyway when I'm on stage I like to be an exibitionist, playing with teeth or up or down the neck ala Michael Angelo. Pure shred.

GL - Where is the line between performer and musician for you?
FC - A great musician needs to have the right balance between melody/taste and breathless technique. I can justify who doesn't like oriented guitar music considering it boring or cold with only exercises-solo at all, but only by people who are able to play like that but refusing to do it in their albums. Sometime guys ignore what is the meaning of the shred playing. They consider it as a tons of useless notes without feeling, and I can accept this idea but it needs to be thought by great musicians able to play those cold tons of notes anyway. It is absolutely important have a big music vocabulary that is the tecnique. How is possible to write a great poem or book if you don't have the tools, the knowledge and the ability to express your ideas as they are? technique is cold if you want it cold, but technique is the only way to try to record your ideas on tape at 100% cause only in this way you can obtain all the details, nuances and feelings you have in mind. If your ideas are cold, even your notes/records/albums are cold too.

GL - What are your thoughts on the state of instrumental guitar these days?
FC - Guitar music in these last years returned from the ashes of the Varney periods with a lot of great musicans. I don't listen guitar music all the time, I like to find other genre to expand my ideas so I don't know much about who is the best or the worse or who is a talent boy or the asshole. I don't care! who is able to find a personal approach in music can be mentioned.

GL - What do you think about the new crop of talented Guitar player's that are currently out there making music?
FC - You are lucky kidz. I hope'em all the fortune of this world!!!

GL - Which is in your opinion the best way for an undiscovered artist to be less unknown with his music?
FC - Believe in his music and do all to promote his music. internet can help everyone at the same way, so the difference is in your music. play your best songs and let the internet people do the rest.

GL - When all is said and done, years from now, how would you want people to remember Fabrizio Chiruzzi?
FC - As a good person. and a good musician, I don't care about the rest, everthing that go up in the sky at the end will fall down on earth.

GL - What will be next for Fabrizio Chiruzzi?
FC - I hope to win a lottery, be billionaire so I will surely play what i like without thinking about how many copies I will need selling to live.

GL - And can we expect to see you in Mexico any time soon?
FC - Sure, but not for music. For un indipendent artist as I am is truly difficult to play live overseas, but I will come there for a jouney next year visiting the States and passing for Nevada, i want to go there visiting the legendary Area 51 :-) and other...

GL - Is there anything else you would like to share with us that I have not asked?
FC - Dunno, but remember to visit my site at: www.fabriziochiruzzi.com

GL - Thanks for your time Fabrizio, we really appreciated it!, we wish you all the best!!.
FC - Thanks you boyz, Ci vediamo alla prossima. Ciao