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Posted by: The Uncreator Nov 2 2007, 07:05 PM

Hey pavel, i know your a fan of Marcel Coenen, wondering if you could do an in the style of him. I love his long slow melodies with the bursts of quick sweeps and taps, thought you would be a great candidate for this kinda lesson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s9U1C4Wgz4

This is what made me ask.

Posted by: MickeM Nov 2 2007, 08:13 PM

I also like Marcel Coenens playing.

lol fynny how they have a fan to make "wind in hair" effects to enhance the musical feeling.
Pavel must do that too if he makes a lesson

Posted by: Bali Nov 2 2007, 08:30 PM

Why don't you guys just go for Steve Vai?

This guy is just copying him.

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn Nov 2 2007, 08:46 PM

Yeah, he does have a lot of Vai about him for sure, to say nothing of the fact that he is playing a Jem. But the thing that clinches it for me is the fan blowing his hair - where have we seen that before ???

However, the guy is accomplished and I really enjoyed that vid, so I'll be checking him out some more!

Posted by: MickeM Nov 2 2007, 09:30 PM

He has more than that in his portfolio. He's progressive metal band Sun Caged is not the least Steve Vai alike.

Posted by: Pavel Nov 2 2007, 11:22 PM

OK guys, cool down - don't shoot each other!!

First of all - i like his playing but i don't listen to his music, and he doesn't even hit my list of influences, so i don't know his style too much to make a lesson on it.

The fan is there not to make the hair go into your face and mouth while playing (in Marcel's case it's not a big deal - he almost has no hair left ). If you listen to DIRECTOR'S COMMENTS on LIVE AT THE ASTORIA DVD by Steve Vai you'll hear him explaining what fan is for. It has nothing to do with visual effects.

Andrew: Marcel has a custom made RG with TREE OF LIFE inlay - only built for Marcel, and he has a huge Ibanez collection including JEM's, UNIVERSE's and other stuff. Recently he had his signature guitar built by Bo-El Guitars - Dutch guitar builder, i already made a topic on it before.

And please let's not start talking about copying this or that because EVERYBODY is copying EVERYTHING. And honestly i don't care about copying as long as the song sounds good and it's not an obvious copy of a song. We all have our influences and we want to play like them so we can not avoid some parts being too similar to their's and there is nothing bad in that. It's better than being a smart*** and saying: "You copy this, you copy that!" and you yourself can't write sh*** yourself. I know some of my compositions sound like somebody's else, like for example that Power metal piece i wrote and uploaded last week -> Rhapsody influence, some of my solo stuff which you haven't heard yet -> it's all instrumental metal/rock and if it's the style, you can not play jazz over a metal riffage. You know what i mean?

If i am heavily influenced by Vai and Rusty, you sure will find some parts in my songs where you will recognize their playing. Also i have one song which is in progress of arranging which is turning out to be a Mozart song -> it's not - but is definitely sounds in his "style", all i did is i added electric guitar to that orchestration, althought the composition is totally mine, it just sounds like Mozart piece -> i love classical music.

You think Malmsteen is genius? He is openly copying classical pieces and adds guitar to it! Is it bad? No! He likes it, he lives with it and i am sure he doesn't care about anything else!

We can go further in this discussion and i will give another example: Kai and i were watching and talking about some metal riffs and stuff and some people say: "Oh man, this black metal band is awesome, bla, bla..." -> 10 minutes later Kai gives me a link to some metal band which had an album around '90s, and their riffs were the same riffs which were released 10 years later by some other band and hit the top 10 black metal songs!

Nobody cares about it - but those riffs were written 10 years earlier and back than nobody cared about them so this "new" band can pump his popularity and money on stolen riffs 10 years later. Fair? No! But nobody cares! I won't put any names not to start a fight but it's really TRUE and you can ask Kai about it if you don't believe me.

So, Marcel is almost as old as Vai is so i honestly doubt that he's copying his style. When one metal bands pops up, there is another metal band just like that in another country in 2 weeks playing same music. Cool, ha?

Rhapsody hit the world with FilmScore metal and 2 years later we have 30 bands claiming to be FilmScore metal bands. To copy somebody's music it means to play his exact notes, if you make the music in same style - it's not copying. Did i copy Rhapsody in those 2 IN STYLE OF lessons? NO! I pay you 10000$ if you find a song of Rhapsody which has those riffs. Does it sound like Rhapsody? Yes it does! IT'S THE SAME STYLE!


Marcel and Vai play the same style in their solo CD's. Marcel is also an awesome progressive metal guitarist with really catchy compositions so he's a REALLY REALLY accomplished musician.


Sorry for making this long, and maybe going off-topic but i find this "copying" thing really annoying. People like Matt Rach on YouTube is a copy-cat because he's stealing pieces of song from Vai and Satch. But playing the same style is nothing bad.

Maybe we just started a great discussion, ha?

Posted by: MickeM Nov 2 2007, 11:32 PM

Well said Pavel

EDIT: Copying can also be unitententional, in which case the question is whether it's copying if you never knew the piece from the start. Maybe you have the same fuzz ever year in whole of europe with the Eurovision song contest?

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn Nov 3 2007, 12:35 AM

Hey Pavel,

I agree with what you say - every guitarist is a mixture of his influences served up in a new way hopefully with an original twist, I totally get that.

That one piece taken in isolation sounded VERY Vai-like, but shame on me for judging him by that - I am sure he has a lot more to offer, and as I said, I was going to check him out, because that one piece to me was amazing and I want to hear more.

Posted by: leedbreak Nov 3 2007, 01:03 AM

My step son told me one time, that I played way to much Kirt and I was starting to sound just like him,
All I did was say "Thank you"

Posted by: The Uncreator Nov 3 2007, 07:08 AM

Wow, and all i was looking for was a "yes or "no".

Posted by: botoxfox Nov 3 2007, 07:41 AM

Whoops, disregard this...

Posted by: Bedlam Nov 3 2007, 07:46 AM

Ha, and Vai does that too!!

Posted by: Pavel Nov 3 2007, 07:50 AM

What are you talking about?

Posted by: botoxfox Nov 3 2007, 07:53 AM

Posted in the wrong thread lol...

Posted by: Bali Nov 3 2007, 08:38 AM

Oh! I was just talking about the fan!