PipemanRadio Interviews Manuel Barbará

0:04 Hi, you have done to censure for Wow, crazy young. Wake up America. It's time for the Adventures of whipe Man on W four c Y dot com. West Pompeats is number one Internet radio station. Here's your host, the white Man.

0:54 This is the Pipe Man here on the Adventures white Man W four c Y Radio. And I have our next guest who is man what amazing musician and has some great music. I love when you can find somebody that really, you know, is into the art of the musicianship itself, and that's who we have here. And now, hopefully I won't Butcher's name because I totally forgot to ask before the interview and I hate doing that, so I'm going to say Manuel Barbara close. But you know my name has been butchered in more ways than you could possibly imagine, so I appreciate the effort.

1:39 Right, I came close, like the American probably couldn't even say it the right way if I tried twenty times. I'm sure you get it eventually. No doubt. So when did this all start? Like when did you find your passion for guitar playing and musicianship in general? You know that's maybe a slightly unusual story because I kind of didn't really care much about music until I was maybe seventeen, sixteen, seventeen, and I only started playing the guitar at around seventeen eighteen, so like late high school.

2:20 Throughout high school, I started. Getting really I had some friends who got me really into Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd, just classic rock and metal, and one of them played the guitar, and I was like, I want to do that, So I picked up the guitar started playing. I immediately got way into it, you know, five six hours a day practice kind of way into it. And I managed to get. Into music school after what a year and a half of playing the guitar, which, wow, probably says more about the psychotic amounts of practice. Than about anything else. That's why take Yeah, yeah, it does. I mean it takes it does take time. So I felt for a lot of my college time that I was kind of behind just because I hadn't done this since I was a kid, and a lot of the people who I was interacting with were like, hey, I don't even remember when I first started playing the drums or whatever it was, So I feel.

3:20 Like now I am way more. I guess mature is the word as an artist than I was back then, but which is you know kind of. I feel like this last ep is the best thing I've done basically ever so far because of. That, and let's hope so right, because as you continue to make music, we should hope that gets better and better at least for ourselves. Well, we're proud of you know, because as a musician, you're your own worst critic. Yeah, tell me about it. So that's pretty wild. He started so late, and you are like, I mean, amazing at the guitar. Like me, I started on drums I was a little kid, and then I wasn't good at that, and then I went to guitar and my you know, lack of better way of playing it, idol at that time was and still I think is one of the greatest guitars ever was Randy Rhodes. Yeah, and I remember reading that he practiced eight hours a day. So to your point, that's what it takes. And I was like, I don't think I have eight hours a day to learn how to play guitar.

4:44 Yeah, you have that when you're when you're fifteen, and you don't have that at any other point in your life. I think I know right exactly. So you know, it is pretty amazing that you put that kind of work into it at a time in your life, probably where you had to put a lot of work in other places as well. True, But one thing I will say is that as I have, as I have grown, I think I've learned to practice a lot more efficiently. So I don't think I need five hours to get a good practice session in anymore. But especially when you're starting out, it's just, uh. There's no like. Easing into like what the further that what I built my calluses, I was like, I want to play fast, So I just started playing a like a like video riff for hours until my fingers started bleeding. And I was like, I don't have problems with pain anymore. I guess I'm just that kind of person. I dive in until it hurts, and then I it doesn't hurt anymore.

5:42 Well, there you are. You're natural for playing guitar for sure. And and uh, you know, I'm always amazed at people when and like like yourself, they are just so proficient. And also I gotta tell you that I love the spin because I don't think it's a spin and I'll say, why have metal and classical and progressive? Because I've always said for years that people don't understand metal music comes from classical music. It's a derivative of so to me, it's just normal what you're doing. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's a spin. I don't know if I.

6:23 Entirely agree that it comes from classical music, but I think it's like the closest that the pop tradition gets to be in classical music. And I think a lot of people when they hear oh it's metal and classical, they're like, oh, ingva Elmstein or oh it's night wish you you know, made a metal song and put some strings on top of it. And that's not what I do. I'm trained in traditional composition, especially like modern stuff like when you know the composer started getting real weird with it. And I love it, and I think there's a lot to be learned harmonically in terms of song structure, in terms of just the way you're thinking about putting together piece of music from that tradition.

7:05 So what would you say is the difference, you know, basically in how you do it or how you learn from you who is classically trained to somebody that just picks up the guitar and just starts playing. There's no wrong or right way to do it. And I'm not classically trained in guitar at all. I'm classically trained in composition, which is a very different thing. But there's no right wrong way to do it. It's just a When you learn to write music in a more traditional sense, you learn a lot about thematic development. You learn all these ways to play with notes that you might not come up with if you were just and people do you know, like God, the periphery guys come up with this stuff all the time, just kind of intuitively.

7:55 But for me, I'm a very rational. Analytical kind of person, and I I don't think I would have gotten to a lot of the choices that I do make when I write without that training. So I think it just boils down to how you need to internalize these ideas. There you go, and so tell us about the EP Whisper in a Storm, and you have guests I'm pretty much every song, which I think that's pretty cool. So tell us a little bit about it, and you know a little bit about what made you bring each guest for that specific song. Yeah, So it's four songs.

8:38 It's, as you mentioned, there's a guest on each song, which was something I wanted to do. I don't remember exactly where in the process I came up with that idea, but I thought it would be cool to just feature a different person on each song. And so the first one, dead Hand. I actually think that was the last guest that I chose. But I was like, I've got guitar all over the place, what if I did not guitar? And I know this wild proggy bluegrass violin is named Jody Miller, and so I got this wild proggy bluegrass violin solo and all kinds of you know, creepy horror movie violin sounds, and they fit so well on that song, better than I expected. Then the second one, Different Horizon.

9:27 It's Jake Low of Plenty, who I take lessons with occasionally, and a super cool dude, and I just thought that the feel of the song would really fit his playing. Love I've loved Jake's playing since I first heard of Felix Nebula ages ago. But it's really frantic, and Jake has this really cool habit of taking really frantic things and then playing solos that make them feel a lot cooler than they are over top of them. Third song. Third song is a different horizon and it features my dear friend Mike Bala, who plays in the death metal band that I play in, uh Ex Mortis, And that's the most like traditional song of the of the lot quotation marks because it's just kind of a four riff headbang and four riff that gets kind of messed up as.

10:26 It goes along. It's funny because I played a really shreddy solo Mike's the Mike's the shreddy guy in in ecronomic on but I ended up playing a really shreddy solo and Mike ended up playing a really melodic solo, and there's some wild shread toward the end of it. But it's just funny, kind of the role reversal. But I love playing things with Mike. I like solos on the same song with Mike because we're super different, but we do have some shared interests. And the last song, the last song I Want. I've been wanting to do vocals on something for a while and Thalia. I worked with Alia a bunch in college, Sally Tamowski, and I'd always wanted to get her on something, and I was like, this this song, this is the song that needs vocals. So we worked for months to get the vocals written and recorded, and I just love her voice and how it works in this song. And then I got I actually worked with those two guests on that song quite a lot together, Thalia and Melissa Henderson, who very very melodic player, very.

11:36 Kind of intervals inspired. It boils down to I just love how these people play, and I thought they would fit very well in these songs. See that's the coolest part right there. Like, I think that's part of it. You have to love how somebody plays to play with them, and you know, to really you know, have the passion. I did really really dig the violin for sure. Yeah, it's cool. Cool. So how do you feel like the difference when you're playing your music on say this album, compared to playing death metal. Oh, it's quite different death metal. I mean. So the joke we have in Necronomic on is that because I don't write anything for Mecerano, Actually that's not true.

12:20 I do write some of the more cinematic interludes, but those have almost no guitar in them, but they're both very difficult music. It's just that Necronomicon is difficult because it's two hundred plus beats per minute and mostly sixteenth notes, and my right hand gets tired pretty quickly these days. And this stuff is difficult because it's it's complex, it's strange rhythms, a lot of interval, like you know, big stretches and stuff, and you need to be very kind of focused and very on top of your game to play it well. For both of them, you need to be on top of your game. But it's it's it's one of them is like it's a just work out, the other one is a musician workout.

13:05 There you go makes any kind of sense. It does make sense to me at least. So how do people reach out to you on socials? On the web check out your music, your merch everything. Yeah, yeah, so I've got I've got a website. It's it's been about about dot com that has links to all of it on it on most of the social media. I'm at eight String Alchemy. So I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok, I'm on YouTube under eight string Alchemy. Uh. Then merch is something I'm still working on. I'm intending to get some of that done hopefully soon we will see, but whenever that happens, it'll probably be up on my band.

13:53 Camp, which. Is, uh, what's the link again, It's it's it's on my web psyche, go go find it there. That's easiest. Yeah. So is there anything else you want the listeners to know that you have coming up, or anything that we didn't cover. Yeah, well, I mean we've got necronomicns always doing stuff, so go check us out there in necronomic on ex Mortis. I think I forgot to mention. All of my stuff is available on all the streaming services, so go go listen to that. But I've got. My current goal is I want to start putting out one release a year nice, which might be an ambitious goal, but we'll see. So I've already got about eight songs that are in various stages of being done, so maybe next summer there.

14:49 Will be more. I love it, and I hope to see a lot more because you are definitely badass for sure. And thanks giving us such great music, and thanks for being on the Adventures of Pinpe many. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Patemin on w fur c u I Radio