Wolfgang Van Halen: Sing the Solo

Wong Notes

Premier Guitar

Music, Music Interviews, Music Commentary

4.9 • 587 Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wolfgang Van Halen joins Cory for the season 7 premiere of Wong Notes! Chatting before the release of Mammoth II, the duo discuss guitar trios, 5150 studios, cloning, touring with Metallica, plus: Who’s that playing wah on the record? What’s WVH’s rig? And much more.

On his new record, WVH has lots to share. When it comes to writing and recording rhythm tracks, he’s says, “It’s all groove.” Later, he adds, “I’ve always championed myself as more of a rhythm player than anything.”

And on what’s next for EVH gear, he promises that there’s much more in store.

But the most profound thoughts come when the pair go deep on music. WVH shares his soloing philosophy, which he learned from his father:

“Something I follow … when I write guitar solos that my dad taught me … is you can shred all you want, but if you can’t sing the solo, then it’s usually not working. There’s always a moment … that you can do the wankery of a shreddy solo, but it’s important to be able to hum the melody, you know? That usually, with the way that I write solos … is really deliberate in the way that I write … I’m a pretty poor off-the-cuff soloist, I like to really plan things out and have it be this nice piece. It kind of forms up with a melody, then it crescendos, then by the end it wraps up with … maybe a tapping section or a shreddy sort of passage. Basically, the main thing is you should be able to hum it. The melody should be in your head.”

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Produced by Jason Shadrick and Cory Wong

Additional Editing by Shawn Persinger

Presented by DistroKid

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's happening? Welcome to Wong Nodes podcast. I'm your host, Corey Wong. Today we launched season seven,
0:09.1	season seven of the podcast, which means there's six fantastic seasons you got to catch up on
0:15.6	if you're a new guest of the podcast. Lots of sip through my just right off the top the top of my dome right now, suggestions would be listen to the two John Mayer episodes, listen to the Methini episode, Satriani, Jacob Collier, Vince Gill was a good one, Joe Walsh. I mean, actually, I don't know where it is. I don't know.
0:38.3	I don't know what you like.
0:39.3	I don't know what you like. Victor Wooten, go check out Victor Wooten. Scan through, see what your favorite artist is, and if I've interviewed them, go check it out. But today we start season seven. I'm excited about that. I'm excited because today I am flying to Sweden
0:56.3	to start my Europe tour.
0:58.0	For those of you that are in Europe, come hang out.
1:00.0	Well, I guess actually pretty much all the shows are sold out except for a couple of the UK shows.
1:07.0	So try to find some secondary market tickets. do i encourage that i don't know find
1:15.1	somebody who bought a ticket and see if they want to sell it to you go on reddit or something i
1:20.6	don't know and if you're in the uk there's tickets available come check it out it's going to be a
1:24.9	fantastic show a lot of new material insane Insane live band right now, 10-piece live band. Antoine Stanley is joining me. It's going to be fun. And for those of you in the U.S., I'm doing a West Coast tour starting in February. You're going to want to get tickets to that one fast. Everybody else in the U.S., just hang on, okay? Several months after that, I'm going to go back
1:46.1	out on tour. It just worked out for me to do the West Coast during the winter. So be it. It's going to be
1:51.5	amazing. I have the band La Lalom opening up, and my friend Monica Martin is going to be a special guest
1:56.8	on that tour. Very excited. Now, you want to talk special guests? Today's guest, Wolfgang Van Halen.
2:04.7	This cat is dope. Great guitar player, great bass player, singer, songwriter. Let me pull one thing to bed right now.
2:13.2	Okay, let me pull one thing to bed right now because I've seen some of this on the internet. Oh, people like Wolfgang because of the last name, Van Halen.
2:21.8	I'm here to tell you right now, I don't care if he's Wolfgang Van Buren,
2:26.8	or what other family association is going on?
2:29.5	This cat is dope, independent of any family name.
2:32.6	Now, yes, we all pay respects to Edward.
2:35.6	One of the kings, not just lead guitar, but rhythm guitar.
	...

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