"I wanted to be able to bring anything I had done - any style I'd played, any lick, any technique, into my world: my crystal planet."
"Crystal Planet is an inclusive record - not exclusive like the other ones."
"There were other concepts like not having any real dragged-out, bummer songs like Down, Down, Down, - nothing should be that dark."
"I wanted the guitar to sound different on every song."
"The songs are sequenced so that the key signatures are ascending."
"Guitar players write too much in E!"
"I could never have thought of the 5/4 drum beat on Trundrumbalind - that was Jeff's brainchild."
I should tell everyone that I'll never be able to recreate that sound again, so let me off the hook! I don't have any detailed knowledge of where that sound came from, but the solo section could have been approached in a number of different ways. I'd actually recorded a version of that song for the 'Joe Satriani' album and I really didn't like it - it ended up being a bonus track on the Japanes album! This is really how I wanted it to sound! Weird, electronic and analogue-synthy. I basically went through a Wizard amp, a 5150 and maybe a Marshall 6100 with a Boss DS-1. We then had a DigiTech effect on the guitar that made it sound kind of like it was going in and out of tune, then I stepped on my Fulltone Ultimate Octave pedal and, as the amps were already really charging, that really sent it into super-overdrive. Then, I hit some harmonic around the fifth fret and out popped that weird noise and I just went with it! After recording I asked Mike (Frazer) if I had actually played or solo or just made strange noises but now I really like it!
That's just driven by the fingers and I'm embarrassed to say that it's a two-handed technique. My disclaimer is that I've found a way of doing it in a normal, acceptable way for guitar players in todays climate. You have to reach over with your right hand and play a B note on the G string at the 4th fret and a B note on the first string, 7th fret. With your left hand, you play all of the melodic notes that you hear. You're basically hammering on and pulling off on the first three strings in a mixolydian mode. The two notes that you are holding in conjunction with the open B string, provide you with a B note in between every other melodic note. Halfway through the riff I use a whammy pedal to reach those high octaves.
It's me shouting into the pickup! We had these special headphones that knocked 40dB out of your surrounding , so you were almost entombed in your own little universe. Mike was encouraging us to experiment with each take so for some reason I decided to shout "I am Trundrumbalind!" into the pickup before one take. Mike made a sneaky sample of it and snuck it up to the beginning of the finished song.