{"id":23179,"date":"2024-12-28T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T09:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/?p=23179"},"modified":"2025-01-12T14:50:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T14:50:51","slug":"we-shared-and-borrowed-gear-from-our-students-who-usually-had-better-gear-than-we-did-how-jason-becker-and-marty-friedman-made-one-of-shreds-most-celebrated-albums-with-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/2024\/12\/28\/we-shared-and-borrowed-gear-from-our-students-who-usually-had-better-gear-than-we-did-how-jason-becker-and-marty-friedman-made-one-of-shreds-most-celebrated-albums-with-a\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe shared and borrowed gear from our students, who usually had better gear than we did\u201d: How Jason Becker and Marty Friedman made one of shred\u2019s most celebrated albums with a little help from their pupils"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 1986, Marty Friedman and Jason Becker started Cacophony \u2013 a relatively short-lived project that would be responsible for some of shred music\u2019s most technical and celebrated compositions.<\/p>\n

Together, the two virtuosos produced a pair of studio albums \u2013 Speed Metal Symphony<\/em> and Go Off!<\/em> \u2013 which gave Friedman and Becker ample opportunity to let loose on 15 tracks of no-holds-barred neoclassical shred metal.<\/p>\n

Both records have been cemented into the annals of metal guitar history \u2013 Guitar World<\/em> ranks Speed Metal Symphony <\/em>as one of the greatest classic shred albums of all time, no less \u2013 but it turns out that Friedman and Becker both received a little help when it came to assembling their recording rigs.<\/p>\n

In a new interview with Guitar World<\/em>, the Cacophony partners reflect on the recording of both Speed Metal Symphony<\/em> and Go Off!<\/em>, and recall how they managed to piece together their records with some equipment they borrowed from their pupils.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shared gear and borrowed gear from our guitar students, who usually had better gear than we did,\u201d Friedman remembers. \u201cWe started to have a few endorsements, so there was a lot of new gear coming into the studio, too. I used my first Jackson Kelly and a few Carvin guitars. Few, if any pedals. No idea about amps.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I remember right, we used the same kind of Carvin amps,\u201d Becker adds. \u201cMarty could correct me if I\u2019m wrong. Maybe we used Marty\u2019s student\u2019s Marshall amp like we had on our solo albums. I think we used the Carvin guitars from the cover of the album.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the mash-up of borrowed student gear and increasing endorsements didn\u2019t have an adverse effect on the overall sound of their tone: no matter what the two guitarists played through, they still sounded exactly like themselves.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe didn\u2019t have to consciously work on sounding different,\u201d Becker notes. \u201cWe could use the same gear and sound like ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the help of their students, Becker and Friedman were able to tape two masterclasses in extreme shred guitar. And, as the pair go on to reflect in their Guitar World<\/em> interview, that was exactly the objective.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur problem was we were shining too much almost all the time,\u201d Friedman notes. \u201cThere is only so much shining a listener can take. Any one song on Go Off!<\/em> might have about one full album\u2019s worth of guitar work on it. It was like a ‘money shot compilation’ of guitar solos.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew listeners usually wanted a memorable song rather than an insane guitar solo or riff, but we wanted to be extreme, whether people liked it or not. At the time, that extremeness was a big minus, but that may be why the album is more appreciated now than it was then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just so much fun being able to make music with my best friend,\u201d concludes Becker, who was diagnosed with ALS in 1989. \u201cI\u2019m so grateful for those times. I was healthy, happy, young, and full of creative energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In 1986, Marty Friedman and Jason Becker started Cacophony \u2013 a relatively short-lived project that would be responsible for some of shred music\u2019s most technical and celebrated compositions. Together, the two virtuosos produced a pair of studio albums \u2013 Speed Metal Symphony and Go Off! \u2013 which gave Friedman and Becker ample opportunity to let […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23562,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23179\/revisions\/23562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guitarmadrid.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}