The world of instrumental guitar is a competitive realm. Given the names that inhabit it, your need more than just technique, speed and flash to get a look in. You need a marketable angle or time in a vocalist fronted band to build solid foundations. In the late eighties, a shredding metal band called Nitro tore up the Sunset Strip in L.A. in the wake of Racer X and others by utilising the insane guitar acrobatics of Michael Angelo alongside glass piercing vocalist Jim Gillette, who has since married femme fatale rocker Lita Ford. Part of Michael’s show stopping skills included a four necked guitar, shaped like an ‘X’, with two necks on either side of the guitar body. At that time, a ripping instructional guitar video coincided with his notoriety. Behind the somewhat questionable glamour, there was a skilled, university trained musician clearly itching to do more challenging music.
Now known as Michael Angelo Batio, his ambidextrous speed playing together with patented string dampeners and his rather unorthodox yet now imitated ‘over under’ hand flipping neck fingering has left many shred guitar aficionados in awe. Despite the showy antics, his understanding of music theory remains such that he is a long running columnist for an international guitar magazine that once published a review severely lambasting his most well known band. Given he has a line of Dean signature guitars, understands web product sales and seems more than capable of conducting a plethora of worldwide guitar clinics tours, Michael takes the shredder ridicule in his stride, driven by a desire to create interesting guitar music. He was here recently promoting Dean guitars and Australian Guitar’s Paul Southwell managed to snare a chat with Michael, possibly the fastest shredder yet.
AG: You’ve been playing guitar for such a long time, what keeps you interested?
MAB: I love to play and never lost the enthusiasm. My song ‘No Boundaries’ became a famous instrumental song and I have to play it all the time. If I don’t play it in the set, people ask me about it. But I enjoy playing it, appreciate traveling the world and never take this for granted.
AG: With technique, do you think you’ve hit a limit as to how fast you can play?
MAB: My technique has gotten to a point where I can play really fast and cleanly but I try to put as much feel into it as I can. I don’t have any desire to be any faster. People ask, ‘how many notes can you play per second?’ but I’ve never cared about it. When I play I just try to put as much into it as I can. I think that is what has gotten better over the years. I know my tone, vibrato and the nuances as well. That is what I work on.
AG: For fast guitarists, your style has more ‘out there’ notes and chromatics then most. Is that second nature to you nowadays?
MAB: Yeah I do more outside stuff. I came from a jazz background even though I don’t have a dotted rhythm feel to my guitar playing. I’ve used four notes per string chromatic scales ever since I’ve learned them to apply to jazz as passing tones. I use open fret groupings so notes on the lower strings are above the higher strings so it creates this really outside sound.
AG: Do you think in terms of boxed shapes or do you just know the notes you want?
MAB: Both but I have a degree in music so when I think in the key of say E flat, I look at it as a piano. So, I can play in B flat as easily as I can play in F# or E or A, it doesn’t matter. I did play in a jazz band and had to play chords that were in B flat or A flat. Guitar is great for taking a pattern on two strings and moving it onto the next pattern. But you need to think in terms of the notes of the scale rather than in shapes. If you’re just playing shapes, you’re in big trouble (laughs).
AG: Despite the overhand tapping you do, is most of your playing not so much, ‘wow, look at what I’m doing’ but actually is just the way that you play?
MAB: Yeah, when I play I have songs where everything is the same. So whether people like it or not, that’s the way I hear it. I really just look at technique as a means to getting sounds. I don’t try to emulate other guitar players, even in my stage moves. It is just about the part. I would say sweeping or taps would be faster than alternate picking. But the fastest guitarists in the world are gauged on how well they can alternate pick. Think of a violin; [bow back and forth] that is the most strenuous thing to do on a guitar.
AG: As a solo piece you need to get your rhythm sound as well. When you’re doing your rhythms, do you alternate much at all?
MAB: Sometimes. I got signed very early on in my career to two major labels; Atlantic records and then Nitro was on a subsidiary of Warner Bros. When I got signed we used Tom Werman in my first band, Holland. He had produced Motley Crue, Poison, Ted Nugent, Dokken and discovered Boston. He told me that one of the reasons he signed my band Holland was that I was such a good rhythm guitarist ‘cos I worked really hard on it. We played with a click track way back then. The timing and tone was there. I have an array of guitar picks I use just for the studio.
AG: A lot of 80’s guitar was about flash. They were great players but a lot of the sales angle was on flashiness.
MAB: Yes but L.A. is Hollywood and that is about glamour. I can say why some of those bands are still popular is because they cared both about their playing and what they looked like. I doubt if ten years from now we’re going to be talking about bands like Godsmack. Nothing against them but I know coming up in that 80’s scene, if you didn’t look a certain way and you couldn’t play to a click track, you had to have a good sense of rhythm and these guys were playing and they tried to look their best. It was over the top but what do hip-hop guys do now? It’s just a different era but the same idea.
AG: When Guitar World reviewed a Nitro album I recall it being called ‘dickhead music’. Did that work to your advantage?
MAB: It doesn’t bother me because now I’m the longest running columnist in Guitar World (laughs). Nitro was a product of a record company saying, ‘if you guys are the most extreme band, not only can we market you but we guarantee you’re going to be successful’. They wanted parents to hate us so bad reviews were like a script. The label wanted that so the kids thought, ‘ah, those corporations!’ They structured us to achieve and they didn’t care about the critics. We would sell out everywhere, it was the kids.
AG: A bit like Racer X and that kind of LA speed metal stuff?
MAB: Yeah, we are still remembered because we were extreme. It was fun but I wouldn’t do it again. That’s why I started my own label because I didn’t want labels to tell me what to do. Nitro are now this iconic band that was the forerunners to bands like Dragonforce. We are attributed to being the first band to do blast beats without death metal vocals. We had singing over it. Dragonforce does that now. I don’t want to re-live it [Nitro era] though.
AG: When did you start with Dean guitars?
MAB: I was originally with Dean back in the 80’s. Today, Elliot, is a fantastic owner. When Dean started to get back on the map, I resigned with them in 2002 and they exploded. They look for both established and young artists. Elliot is a musician and wants players. I mean they’ve got Vinnie Moore, Michael Schenker and Leslie West who would only play Gibsons by building the first viable alternative to a Les Paul.
AG: Your signature model Armorflame guitar has a slanted neck, is that right?
MAB: Yeah, Dean is known for the pointy shapes but also for the most amazing graphics. So, we just did a super Strat, standard guitar. I love European history so the graphic is medieval, ‘knights of the round table’, ‘kick your ass’ armour chain mail mixed with NASCAR. Nobody has got one like it, it really came out fantastically. It is a viable alternative to an Ibanez. I mean it is a real Floyd Rose. I like EMGs [active pickups] but we’re also going to do additional models that have passive pickups in it. The neck pickup is close enough to the fretboard to keep that warm neck pickup sound.
AG: You say you have EMGs. Are they like the signature pickups you have?
MAB: No, my next model of the MAB1, we’ll have maybe two versions that will have my pickup in the front and it is a passive pickup. I love the sound of it. We use an EMG 81, an 85 and an SA in the MAB1. EMGs are more compressed so they have a less dynamic feel to them than a passive pickup. I had to get used to that. The middle pickup is screaming loud so when you play clean it sounds great. It is a really full sound so it’s that compression ratio that it is just loud. It starts ‘up there’ whereas with a passive one you have a little more room or dynamic play. No tricks or preamp boosts. There is a real clarity but if you’re used to passive pickups you have to approach playing it slightly differently.
AG: The output is higher so is that one of the reasons for your string dampeners?
MAB: On the double guitar I use passive pickups. I don’t really use the dampener in six sting guitars though. A lot of guitar players do. Joe Satriani has actually bought one from me and a lot of guitarists use them in the studio. I finally have a patent on them. They enable me to tap without feedback. It blocks extraneous string noise like a third hand muting the strings as you’re playing.
AG: I noticed you have great sustain but are not cranking the distortion too much. How does your signature distortion pedal help with that?
MAB: I have the exact opposite EQ curve pattern of Dimebag [late guitarist of Damageplan and Pantera]. I’ve been doing this forever; I accentuate the mids but lower the bass and high end for solos. For rhythms EQ is different. Most high gain amps have so much overdrive that I end up using the rhythm channel. I turn the amp overdrive down. On the JVM Marshalls I can’t even use the hot channel. I use the rhythm guitar channel and turn the gain to about nine o’clock. I have to have the amp so that when you play a chord and hold it, there cannot be any feedback or noise. So there is not a lot of distortion coming from the amp. Then I have my MAB Overdrive and I turn everything up all the way on that. So the overdrive creates the distortion and it creates sustain but I get the tone of the amp. I hardly ever crank the pre-amps on the amp. It is too much and I don’t like saturation from an amp. I like saturation from an overdrive pedal.
AG: I think a lot of people who emulate players like yourself don’t quite get that there is a clean sound that you can utilise. They want to press an overdrive button.
MAB: Yeah, they want massive overdrive. I’ve found overdrive does not equal sustain, overdrive equals mud. I used to use a TS-9 but the only thing I didn’t like was it was muddy on the low end when you play up past the twelfth fret. So, when TRex did my pedal, I asked them to fix that and I think they did. Man, it’s got that sustain.
AG: With keeping dexterity happening, how much free weights exercises can you do before it becomes a hindrance?
MAB: You have to watch what exercises you do. I do light weights but with a lot of repetitions. But I’ll tell you the exercises that can hurt you ‘cos I’ve never been hurt playing guitar. There’s an exercise where you hold out a dumbbell and you move your arm straight up, to get that ‘cut’ look in your shoulder but it puts incredible pressure on your wrist. If muscles grow faster than the tendons around them, they can’t handle the additional weight. Now, I work out with very light weights and I think it has contributed to me never being hurt in my career even playing ten to fourteen hours a day. I did hurt my wrist a long time ago with that weight movement and it hurt my right hand and I went to a sports doctor. He said, ‘you are either going to be a pro guitarist or you are going to be a body builder’. It killed me ‘cos all the pressure and strain is on your wrist to keep it straight. So I stopped doing that particular exercise.