KORN Guitarist MUNKY To Release Instrumental Solo Album

March 30, 2006

Ultimate-Guitar.com recently conducted an interview with KORN guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer. An excerpt from the chat follows:

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Ever thought of doing a solo album to give these shredding tendencies of yours an outlet?

Munky: "Absolutely, and it's going to happen. At the moment I'm kind of going with the concept of what it is going to sound like. It's going to be an instrumental record and it's going to have a lot of atmospheric and ambient guitar textures and a lot of open cut spaces. But there won't be too much shredding but just enough to get the point across. That is the concept I have about it right now. I'm going to start working on the record after once we get back from an Australian tour in late April."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: One of your distinct characteristics of your playing style is the way you bend the strings and then slowly release them to create the effect of a guitar going out of tune, how did that technique evolve?

Munky: "It was something I came up with around 1992. If you've ever heard an orchestra tuning up, it sounds really eerie and when I first heard it on a sample that a DJ friend had of an orchestra tuning up, I thought it was the scariest thing I ever heard. So I wanted to emulate that on that on my guitar and that is how it came out."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: In regards to your guitar playing and approach to it, who do you class as being the cornerstone musical influence on it?

Munky: "I would definitely say Steve Vai had a big influence and remains my main influence. I mean that is the reason why I went out and bought a seven string guitar in the first place. He had come out with a record called 'Passion and Warfare' and it just blew my mind. So he's always and will always be an influence and an inspiration. He's always pushing the envelope and I respect that, so I try to incorporate that into what we do as a band and in regards to pushing ourselves. I harness the same ambition that he has, for us too."

Read the entire interview at Ultimate-Guitar.com.

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