THE EARLY DAYS

These are some of my early recordings.

ORIGINAL SONGS

This first song is a tribute to a local rock band "Ashes Remain", so I named it after them. It has a definite late 80's drive to it, similar to the upbeat songs off Joe Satriani's "Surfing With The Alien" album. I was originally going to sing this song, but after listening to my vocals played back, I decided to drop them and put guitars instead. So now it's an instrumental. I think it sounds better this way, although now it kind of leans toward sounding like TV commercial music. I put a lot of work into the guitar solos, and tried to stay with a theme.



This is a 1980's-style L.A. rock song entitled "No Promise of Return" and features me on vocals (for better or worse). It is reminiscent of songs of the glory days of power metal like "Eye of the Tiger" (Survivor) and "Here I Go Again" (Whitesnake). I played all rhythm and lead guitars, piano, and synthesizer. I played the bass track using the "finger bass" guitar patch on the Yamaha keyboard. I finally bought a drum machine, so the drum track is looped with the "heavy metal" drum kit on the Boss/Roland Dr. Rhythm 770. On the guitar tracks, the 1st and 3rd guitar solos I tried to play in the legato style of Joe Satriani circa 1986 (Not Of This Earth). Guitar solos 2 and 4 are in the style of Tony MacAlpine circa 1995 (Evolution) with a few six-string arpeggios.



The other three hard rock songs are guitar-driven instrumentals. I recorded these in 2004 prior to purchasing a drum machine, so the drum tracks are inconsistent since they were manually punched in literally note by note. On "Centrifugal Force", I had Rob Kennedy from Bel Air MD assist with the drum tracks, and as a courtesy, he added a live crowd track to give it the "arena" sound. Since the drum tracks were recorded last, and were recorded note-by-note with a keyboard, it was very difficult for Rob to keep perfect rhythm since he had no click track to follow. Despite this, I think it was very well done! It sounds like a couple of guys jamming for a crowd of thousands!



This next song is a Latin-sounding piece. It was influenced by the Tex-Mex kind of music you hear on the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns of the 1960's. On this piece, I had a guest trumpet player (Timothy Stowers) record the horn section for me. Tim is an accomplished horn and piano player as well as a music teacher and free-lance instructor. He used to play for a local Jazz band called "Black C.A.T.S." I think this tune sounds pretty good, and it shows how you can apply the same scalar techniques used in rock and metal to spanish-style music when you take out the amplifier distortion and play clean on an electric-acoustic (ala Al Di Meola). The song was originally to be called El Fiero, then "Tim's Tango", but I named it Pacoima Tango, in memory of the late Richie Valens (who was born in Pacoima, California).



This last tune is a totally unrehearsed jam I did with fellow local musician Tony Wilburn back in 2003. I was playing around on his keyboard synthesizer and we decided to just start recording, and there you have it. Tony is an well-versed jazz saxophone player among other instruments. We recorded this in his home studio in College Park, MD. Believe it or not, I only played piano on this song, not guitar. Mind you, I'm not a pianist by any means, but I thought this was still worth sharing. Have a listen!



COVER SONGS

These first two songs were originally done in 1987 by guitar virtuoso Tony MacAlpine, with George Lynch performing guest solos. They are called "The Vision" and "Tears of Sahara" from the Maximum Security album. I tried my best to play the guitar parts in both songs as close to the original as posssib. I didn't get them perfect, but they are close. Enjoy!

And here are a few other heavy metal cover tunes I recorded. Drums on Enter Sandman and Symphony of Destruction peformed by Noah Maxwell from Maryland using a Roland TD-3 electronic drum set. Vocals on all three songs peformed by Matt Acevedo from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

These next three covers were recorded while I was playing with local 80's metal cover band, Metal Factor. Our drummer Harold Weed plays on all three songs, and our original bassist Captain Mark Bly played bass on "The Trooper". I played bass on the other two songs using my Yamaha keyboard. Vocals on "I Don't Know" performed by "Shooter".

Lastly, here was my first attempt ever at doing a cover tune. I had very limited knowledge of recording in general (as I still do), very limited keyboard skills. I have since learned the correct keyboard parts, and now I have a drum machine, but I decided to leave this song the way it was when I recorded it back in 2003. It falls FAR short of the original, but I suppose it deserves a listen.



MUSICAL INSPIRATIONS

I'm 100% self-taught on the guitar, never took a lesson in my life. Everything I play was learned from listening to music, watching instruction videos, or reading books on guitar theory. My rock guitar playing was heavily influenced by several 80's rock/fusion/metal guitarists, including: Greg Howe, Tony MacAlpine, Allan Holdsworth, Al DiMeola, George Lynch, Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, and others.



RANDY'S TOP 12 HEAVY METAL LEAD GUITARISTS!!

This is my personal list of the top twelve heavy metal lead guitar players from the 1980's. The 1980's is where guitar viruosity blossomed, and every kid who played guitar wanted to be a Guitar Hero. Guys like me who grew up listening to music from the 80's are what I call "second generation" - we learned from the guys who started this whole "shredder" phenomenon. We didn't get serious skills until the 1990's and onward, after the pioneers like Yngwie Malmsteen have already shown us what to do. Therefore I think we owe these guys alot, and this is why I have created this list.

I ranked these original shredders in order of technical proficiency displayed on their albums. This is only my opinion, and it is based soley on the technical expertise of the guitarists listed and nothing else. Some of these players have since moved on to other forms of music, but during the 1980's, they were in fact playing heavy metal and hard rock. Also, there are so many other great guitarists in other disciplines (jazz, fusion, classical, blues, etc). So this is by no means a list of the "greatest guitarists". We are only concerned with the heavy metal discipline.

#1: Tony MacAlpine



#2: Yngwie Malmsteen



#3: Jason Becker



#4: Vinnie Moore



#5: Paul Gilbert



#6: Greg Howe



#7: Chris Impellitteri



#8: Richie Kotzen



#9: Marty Friedman



#10: Joe Satriani



#11: Steve Vai



#12: George Lynch




Live Music

For one full year I played lead and rhythm guitars for a local heavy metal cover band "Metal Factor". I put together this band with the drummer and singer from another local metal band "Plumb Krazy". We played at a few great local shows with some top notch national acts, and I got to meet and talk with some great musicians along the way, including George Lynch, Vinnie Moore, Tony MacAlpine, Matt Heafy and Corey Beaulieu (Trivium), as well as many local musicians. It was a great learning experience for me as a guitarist. I learned one very important lesson: no matter how good you are, playing on stage in front of hundreds (or thousands) of people is NOT the same as playing in a studio. From now on, I will always respect musicians who get up and play in front of a crowd, no matter how "bad" they sound, because it truly takes a lot to hold your own on stage, and make all the notes you practiced in the studio actually come out of your instrument in a live crowd setting. You literally cannot make major mistakes, and if you do make some minor ones, you have to keep playing like nothing happened, or the band will fall apart on stage! For details, downloadable music, pictures, and videos, visit my band's website at www.MetalFactor.net. Even though we don't play out anymore, I am keeping the website up, well, because its just plain cool! Enjoy!