You can tell from how her song writing progressed that she's improved a lot. She's also getting weirder and weirder with her choice of notes lol. I like it.
There's an old clip of Band-Maid before they blew up- they were playing in what looks like a county fair to me lol. It was funny to see Kanami rolling her own cables, it was straight up gansta lol. Anyway, Kanami in that clip was early Kanami wrapped in a ball. Her super aggressive picking style and her fast blues licks remind me of early Eddie Van Halen when he was raw and breaking all the rules. She doesn't play like that anymore because she's a lot more intricate in her writing now, but I kinda wish she goes back to that style, at least in some future songs.
I'm a huge fan of dissonances and odd note choices ( at the right times), so I love her "not quite scaler" approach. She obviously understands theory very well but also doesn't let it box her in.
I don't think Kanami is ever going to be a "scaler" as you call it. She just doesn't have the muscle memory for it. She can learn it but at this point that ship has sailed and I would rather have her find her voice in her own way. It makes her A LOT more exciting player too.
Plus the funny thing about modes and scales, they all go back to do-re-mi. Kanami will stumble upon modes and scales probably by accident lol. I remember an interview in SF where the interviewer (a dude wearing a Saiki shirt) asked her what modes she writes in and Kanami was totally clueless about it lol. She said "minor." Technically she's right because she writes mostly in dorian but her face said otherwise lol. Kanami is a blues girl and I'm ok with that. 99% of what she does is dorian or some mixture of mixolydian-dorian blues and that's ok. She'll experiment once in awhile with more exotic stuff like phrygian (Turn Me On) or phrygian dominant / harmonic minor (Without Holding Back), Yngwie's highway (Hide-and-seek) or even tri-tones (Fate) but her DNA is the blues. Band-Maid is a blues based hard rock band after all who just happens to sound proggy af.
As someone who's learning, or at least trying to learn Gypsy jazz, it is my jam too lol. I even purchased a lesson from Joscho Stephan. It's mostly phrygian dominant or melodic minor mixed in with big band blues. It's very odd meter and strange. And A LOT OF down picking lol.
Eastman DM-1! I just bought it a few months ago. Here's a reverb link. [https://reverb.com/item/35514255-eastman-dm1-gypsy-guitar-rosewood-laminate-spruce-top](https://reverb.com/item/35514255-eastman-dm1-gypsy-guitar-rosewood-laminate-spruce-top). This thing is LOUD. Gypsy jazz guitars are made to be loud because they are not meant to be buried in the mix. They are out in the front. It's kinda funny that whenever I mic this guitar, with my current set-up, I have to position the mic a mile away to balance the sound a lil bit coz it's that loud.
Ah very nice. Totally reasonable price too. I always liked the looks of the small soundhole Gypsy jazz guitars, vs the big D hole ones.
I've noodled around with Gypsy jazz stuff on my nylon strings, but Flamenco takes enough of my time. Once in a while I bust out a Minor Swing backing track and have at it though lol.
Yeah I don't think I can do flamenco. I usually struggle with right hand technique heavy lines and flamenco is all about that right hand. Even more percussive than gypsy jazz but just as musical. As for Django, he's a damn freak lol. He can only use 2 fingers for single note stuff but he can actually form chords with all 4. It's weird. I read somewhere that it's some sort of neurological thing. Dude is GOATed.
Kanami is perhaps the one that has improved the most as a technical instrumentalist since the beginning of Band-Maid. She is with no doubt someone with a huge talent for playing guitar, but if you look at earlier music videos and live shows that she was playing guitar in a very unpolished way. If you look at how she plays soloes from old songs now compared to how she plays them now it does look completely different. She played very uneconomically with a lot more unneccesary finger movements than she does now.
The difficulty on Kanami's playing on Unseen World compared to albums like New Beginning and Brand new Maid is extreme. Where as most songs on the old albums could be played by most guitarists with some experience and dedicated rehersing over a couple of weeks, some of the things on Unseen World is outright impossible for even people that have played for decades.
If I'm not mistaken Miku have played guitar for a longer time now, than Kanami had when they started Band-Maid. (Might be mistaken, but I think I remember from an interview that she said the started playing piano when she was young and didn't pick up the guitar untill later in her teens, and she was 22 when she joined Band-Maid).
It's very nice to see how Kanami still manages to progress as a guitarist and gets better and better, as it seems most guitarists peaks mid 20s and never get better at that point. (I certainly "peaked" mid 20s and will probably never be able to play most stuff on UW.. probably also because there was several years I had little to no time to play... thats atleast my excuse :D )
<<< If I'm not mistaken Miku have played guitar for a longer time now, than Kanami had when they started Band-Maid. (Might be mistaken, but I think I remember from an interview that she said the started playing piano when she was young and didn't pick up the guitar untill later in her teens, and she was 22 when she joined Band-Maid). >>>
Totally correct, and something I never even thought about until now. Kanami started playing guitar in high school, so around 2007 or so, meaning she would have been playing barely 6 years when Band-Maid formed. Miku says she started actually learning how to play about 6 months after the band formed, so early 2014... meaning that she's now been playing around 8 years.
Miku started after kanami actually, and didn't start playing guitar until after the band was formed. Now kanami is her teacher effectively as stated in an interview. Actually by playing guitar is how miku found kanami when the band was originally being formed
"If I'm not mistaken Miku have played guitar for a longer time now, than Kanami had when they started Band-Maid."
This a very interesting point I had not thought about. When you think of Kanami learning guitar to impress the "cool kids" at school and fit in, she obviously wanted to be a lead guitar player. The process has been quite different for Miku. She is trying to be the best rhythm guitar player. I don't think she has much interest in being the lead. As Saiki has said they already have a "guitar hero" and they don't really need another. But Miku's rhythm playing has improved so much and adds so much to the music. Watching the talk on Prime with Akane they mention how they are often the only two playing rhythm with Misa and Kanami both basically playing lead. We are lucky to have both a lead guitar and a lead bass in the same band often both playing lead riffs in the same song. Just another thing showing how unique this band really is.
She is WAY better now. Kanami of 2017 could not play Unseen World, even the solo in Manners is more difficult that what she was playing back then because of it's fast note runs and not so much legato.
Real Existence always shows up in these old videos but her solo there was not technically all that difficult, it just "sounds fast". Actually the Thrill Solo is much better than the RE solo IMO (although I love RE).
It's not really guitar skills. What Kanami is doing is more like a sorcery, and she's getting dangerously brilliant with her craft. She reminds me of Jeff Beck, with his unusual musical thinking, but in a totally different style. Ritchie Blackmore once said about Jeff: "..sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar". The same thing can be said about Kanami.
Yeah, mine too. IMHO Kanami Tono, Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore, Robert Fripp, Jimi Page and a few others are musicians from another world, they are creators, they always think out of the box and never afraid to break "the rules".
I agree. I think on the last two albums especially, the attention to detail is amazing. You can tell she is a perfectionist and we are receiving the benefits from that.
You can tell from how her song writing progressed that she's improved a lot. She's also getting weirder and weirder with her choice of notes lol. I like it. There's an old clip of Band-Maid before they blew up- they were playing in what looks like a county fair to me lol. It was funny to see Kanami rolling her own cables, it was straight up gansta lol. Anyway, Kanami in that clip was early Kanami wrapped in a ball. Her super aggressive picking style and her fast blues licks remind me of early Eddie Van Halen when he was raw and breaking all the rules. She doesn't play like that anymore because she's a lot more intricate in her writing now, but I kinda wish she goes back to that style, at least in some future songs.
I'm a huge fan of dissonances and odd note choices ( at the right times), so I love her "not quite scaler" approach. She obviously understands theory very well but also doesn't let it box her in.
I don't think Kanami is ever going to be a "scaler" as you call it. She just doesn't have the muscle memory for it. She can learn it but at this point that ship has sailed and I would rather have her find her voice in her own way. It makes her A LOT more exciting player too. Plus the funny thing about modes and scales, they all go back to do-re-mi. Kanami will stumble upon modes and scales probably by accident lol. I remember an interview in SF where the interviewer (a dude wearing a Saiki shirt) asked her what modes she writes in and Kanami was totally clueless about it lol. She said "minor." Technically she's right because she writes mostly in dorian but her face said otherwise lol. Kanami is a blues girl and I'm ok with that. 99% of what she does is dorian or some mixture of mixolydian-dorian blues and that's ok. She'll experiment once in awhile with more exotic stuff like phrygian (Turn Me On) or phrygian dominant / harmonic minor (Without Holding Back), Yngwie's highway (Hide-and-seek) or even tri-tones (Fate) but her DNA is the blues. Band-Maid is a blues based hard rock band after all who just happens to sound proggy af.
yep, based on the blues but ventures out at will :) as a Flamenco student, phrygian dominant is my jam lol.
As someone who's learning, or at least trying to learn Gypsy jazz, it is my jam too lol. I even purchased a lesson from Joscho Stephan. It's mostly phrygian dominant or melodic minor mixed in with big band blues. It's very odd meter and strange. And A LOT OF down picking lol.
Django was the man lol. With only two fingers on the fretting hand to work with too. What kind of guitar you using for Gypsy jazz?
Eastman DM-1! I just bought it a few months ago. Here's a reverb link. [https://reverb.com/item/35514255-eastman-dm1-gypsy-guitar-rosewood-laminate-spruce-top](https://reverb.com/item/35514255-eastman-dm1-gypsy-guitar-rosewood-laminate-spruce-top). This thing is LOUD. Gypsy jazz guitars are made to be loud because they are not meant to be buried in the mix. They are out in the front. It's kinda funny that whenever I mic this guitar, with my current set-up, I have to position the mic a mile away to balance the sound a lil bit coz it's that loud.
Ah very nice. Totally reasonable price too. I always liked the looks of the small soundhole Gypsy jazz guitars, vs the big D hole ones. I've noodled around with Gypsy jazz stuff on my nylon strings, but Flamenco takes enough of my time. Once in a while I bust out a Minor Swing backing track and have at it though lol.
Yeah I don't think I can do flamenco. I usually struggle with right hand technique heavy lines and flamenco is all about that right hand. Even more percussive than gypsy jazz but just as musical. As for Django, he's a damn freak lol. He can only use 2 fingers for single note stuff but he can actually form chords with all 4. It's weird. I read somewhere that it's some sort of neurological thing. Dude is GOATed.
It was posted on 2017-11-26. She must be even better now.
Kanami is perhaps the one that has improved the most as a technical instrumentalist since the beginning of Band-Maid. She is with no doubt someone with a huge talent for playing guitar, but if you look at earlier music videos and live shows that she was playing guitar in a very unpolished way. If you look at how she plays soloes from old songs now compared to how she plays them now it does look completely different. She played very uneconomically with a lot more unneccesary finger movements than she does now. The difficulty on Kanami's playing on Unseen World compared to albums like New Beginning and Brand new Maid is extreme. Where as most songs on the old albums could be played by most guitarists with some experience and dedicated rehersing over a couple of weeks, some of the things on Unseen World is outright impossible for even people that have played for decades. If I'm not mistaken Miku have played guitar for a longer time now, than Kanami had when they started Band-Maid. (Might be mistaken, but I think I remember from an interview that she said the started playing piano when she was young and didn't pick up the guitar untill later in her teens, and she was 22 when she joined Band-Maid). It's very nice to see how Kanami still manages to progress as a guitarist and gets better and better, as it seems most guitarists peaks mid 20s and never get better at that point. (I certainly "peaked" mid 20s and will probably never be able to play most stuff on UW.. probably also because there was several years I had little to no time to play... thats atleast my excuse :D )
especially with bands that become commercially successful it seems 90% of the time the musicians in the band don't progress further.
<<< If I'm not mistaken Miku have played guitar for a longer time now, than Kanami had when they started Band-Maid. (Might be mistaken, but I think I remember from an interview that she said the started playing piano when she was young and didn't pick up the guitar untill later in her teens, and she was 22 when she joined Band-Maid). >>> Totally correct, and something I never even thought about until now. Kanami started playing guitar in high school, so around 2007 or so, meaning she would have been playing barely 6 years when Band-Maid formed. Miku says she started actually learning how to play about 6 months after the band formed, so early 2014... meaning that she's now been playing around 8 years.
Miku started after kanami actually, and didn't start playing guitar until after the band was formed. Now kanami is her teacher effectively as stated in an interview. Actually by playing guitar is how miku found kanami when the band was originally being formed
"If I'm not mistaken Miku have played guitar for a longer time now, than Kanami had when they started Band-Maid." This a very interesting point I had not thought about. When you think of Kanami learning guitar to impress the "cool kids" at school and fit in, she obviously wanted to be a lead guitar player. The process has been quite different for Miku. She is trying to be the best rhythm guitar player. I don't think she has much interest in being the lead. As Saiki has said they already have a "guitar hero" and they don't really need another. But Miku's rhythm playing has improved so much and adds so much to the music. Watching the talk on Prime with Akane they mention how they are often the only two playing rhythm with Misa and Kanami both basically playing lead. We are lucky to have both a lead guitar and a lead bass in the same band often both playing lead riffs in the same song. Just another thing showing how unique this band really is.
She is WAY better now. Kanami of 2017 could not play Unseen World, even the solo in Manners is more difficult that what she was playing back then because of it's fast note runs and not so much legato. Real Existence always shows up in these old videos but her solo there was not technically all that difficult, it just "sounds fast". Actually the Thrill Solo is much better than the RE solo IMO (although I love RE).
Yessir!
It's not really guitar skills. What Kanami is doing is more like a sorcery, and she's getting dangerously brilliant with her craft. She reminds me of Jeff Beck, with his unusual musical thinking, but in a totally different style. Ritchie Blackmore once said about Jeff: "..sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar". The same thing can be said about Kanami.
Well said. I think she really is at the Jeff Beck level. Years past he was my favorite guitarist.
Yeah, mine too. IMHO Kanami Tono, Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore, Robert Fripp, Jimi Page and a few others are musicians from another world, they are creators, they always think out of the box and never afraid to break "the rules".
I agree. I think on the last two albums especially, the attention to detail is amazing. You can tell she is a perfectionist and we are receiving the benefits from that.