Joe Satriani Quotes

I blew amps like they were made of tissue paper. Once I blew out the sound system at Royal Albert Hall in London.

I play loud onstage for my own benefit as I like. But I'm not too fond of the P.A. either.

We are always fortunate to have our own sound folks with us that do a great job in ensuring that everybody can hear and the sound is good.

You get to bring your own sound system when you play an arena, all the lights and visual stuff, which I think is really cool. There's something about those old arenas, where it feels larger than life.

I wanna go play my music in a club.

We were gradually playing larger venues and in the early days PA systems were kind of non-existent. So to play loud, we had to use louder equipment. The PA systems back then didn't mic the instruments - only the vocals.

The fact that I'm often pushing my voice as hard as I can is from playing in nightclubs in Albuquerque where you don't have a good sound system.

When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.

My first killer amp was a Sunn Beta Lead. It was solid-state, but that Sunn was incredibly loud. I used to say to my friends, 'Hey, check it out. It's only on two.'

I use the aid of technology while running through songs. Visual tuners and feeling the vibrations through the floor to keep time.

There are certain things that you can blast through a stereo. You can blast hip-hop. You can blast heavy metal. You can't blast 'All Things Considered.'

I love tearing people's speakers up.

With real estate, it's location, location, location. In public speaking, it's acoustics, acoustics, acoustics.

When I was first starting out, you'd have to bang an old upright piano and stick a mike in it and it would always feed back and you could never turn it up loud enough to be heard and I would beat my hands black and blue and bloody.

I don't even listen to rap. My apartment is too nice to listen to rap in.

I got a man cave. I play my music loud. I bought big speakers because I need to hear music loud.

I learned loudness from working with Lou Reed.

I'm not going for a soft sound. I ain't lookin' for a warm sound. My sound is warm, but I don't need tubes to do it. The Randall RG-100 is the best amp for what I do.

It sucked to make my own CDs. I'm bad at that. It sucks to figure out how to power my amp. I don't know that stuff.

In the studio, my brother and I have always used a lot of Marshall amps. We like to keep it pretty basic. We just use a couple of cabinets each - sometimes just one, if we think that's enough. We mainly go for 100-watt and 50-watt heads.

If you're playing in a room that holds 15,000 people, it's just a question of how bad the room acoustics are and in what way they're bad.

'Spinal Tap' influenced me, I think, specifically in making me really pay attention to tone.

You go to a musical; you are deafened by them, with everything blown up. I remember musicals when they didn't use microphones.

It doesn't matter if one is live on-air or sitting through a commercial break. There aren't any on or off switches on a lapel pin microphone; it is always 'hot.'

I don't know what I did to my main bass. I've poured makeup into it, I've bashed it around - and we've gone in the back and cleaned it up... It sounds amazing and one of a kind at this point, but it picks up a really decent radio signal if you're anywhere near an antenna.