MARTY FRIEDMAN: Upcoming Appearances Announced

Former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman has lined up the following appearances during October/November:

Oct. 08 – Osaka, JAP @ Festival Hall (w/ Sera Masanori)
Oct. 09 – Tokyo, JAP @ Budokan (w/ Sera Masanori)
Oct. 19 – Osaka, JAP @ (w/ Aikawa Nanase)
Oct. 29 – Peking, CHI (Mini-Concert Event)
Oct. 30 - Hong Kong (Mini-Concert Event)
Oct. 31 – Taipei, TAI (Mini-Concert Event)
Nov. 01 - Taichung, TAI (Mini-Concert Event)
Nov. 02 – Kaoshung, TAI (Mini-Concert Event)

Five more shows in Japan with Aikawa Nanase will take place later in the year, including an appearance on the "Countdown" live television program on New Year's Eve.

There will be nine events for Musician's Institute Japan as well as a clinic tour of South America for Ibanez in the works. Marty will feature his new SZ model guitar. This is the axe that he beat violently at the "Guitarevolution" shows.

There will also be a December event in Bangkok, Thailand.

Japanese fans should look out for Aikawa Nanase's upcoming single, "Konnani Ai Sitemo", coming out this winter. Described as "probably the hardest rocking track in her collection," the song features "walls of guitars" by Marty.

Marty is scheduled to play on Fuji TV's "Mina Utaeru Super Hit" on Oct. 12 from 8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. along with Japanese superstars EVERY LITTLE THING, ANRI, GOTO MAKI and others. This is the first time EVER that a non-Japanese rock musician has appeared on Fuji Television during prime time.

In a recent interview with Guitar.com, Friedman spoke about how the music scene in Japan differs from that in the U.S.

"As far as music goes, it just seems like there's a bigger demand for more varied kinds of music [in Japan]," Marty said. "There's just more music — there's more quantity of music and if there's more quantity, then that kind of means that there's more quality, because the standard is really high. People really buy a lot of music and listen to a lot of music here. What might surprise you is that domestic music in Japan outsells the international music by about 90 percent to 10 percent. When I'm talking about international, I mean U2, CELINE DION, MARIAH CAREY, METALLICA, and those types of artists. All that takes up about 10 percent of what gets sold over here. The other 90 percent are all Japanese artists. It's absolutely a massive scene here and it's not unusual for a Japanese artist to sell a million copies. Like the Japanese artist I'll be touring with, Aikawa Nanase, she's sold 12 million records here in Japan.

"There's just a lot of music and the more you dig in, the more you learn. The music is completely different from American music. They borrow from American music to some extent, but the sense of creating a melody is, I think, very different from the way of creating melodies in America. Because people intend to sing these songs at home or in karaoke, the melodies have to be relatively easy to understand and really sink into your head after the first listen. They can't be too ad-libbed or improvised, or too wacky. I think it's an art to create a melody that is really easy to pick up and understand right away. It's a lot harder than it sounds."