One of the greatest guitar players, Yngwie Malmsteen, talked about his strategy and technique in making music with a band. He gave examples from the iconic band Deep Purple and stated that, unlike them, he prefers to act like a writer or a painter.
There are many ways a band could compose music together, but the most common way is to build up on top of each other’s instruments step by step until the whole sound comes together with the lyrics. It is a more organized process and requires teamwork. Deep Purple is one of the iconic bands that used this technique while composing a song.
However, Malmsteen’s technique is a bit different from that. Instead of expecting other people in the band to make additions, he thinks about all the instruments himself. He stated that he doesn’t tell the other members to match his tunes, but he focuses on all the parts like a painter to create a whole.
Here is how he compared himself to Deep Purple and The Rolling Stones:
“It’s a very bizarre thing to try to explain because in rock ‘n’ roll it’s embedded in people’s minds that it has to be a band playing everything, right? And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that – I love the Rolling Stones and Deep Purple and so many bands.
And 99.9 percent of the songs in those bands usually come about when the guitar player comes up with a riff, the drummer starts playing along with it, and finally, the singer comes in and starts singing over that. Which is great. But for some reason, I tend to approach things more like a writer or a painter would.“
He continued to resemble himself to a painter by stating:
“Like, the painter paints the foreground, he paints the background… he doesn’t go, ‘Oh, can you do this part for me?’ It’s the same with a classical composer, for that matter. And that’s just the way I approach it. Even when I was a little kid, if the drummer wasn’t in the rehearsal room, I’d just put the record button on. Like, the demo tape version of ‘Black Star’ that I did in 1982, that’s me playing drums, bass, keyboards, and guitar. So this is nothing new for me.”
He revealed that this has been his way since he was young. Malmsteen doesn’t play the drums, but he would still record whatever would come to his mind even if there was no drummer present in the studio. In the same interview, he also stated that he doesn’t like to practice repeatedly because he is a born performer and he never believed in practicing until getting it right.
