EP 15: Andrea Valeri on Groove, Guitar Tone, and Chasing Curiosity as a Composer

Jesse Paliotto (00:00)
Hello everyone and welcome to the Guitar Journal, podcast where we love to talk about making music, particularly through the lens of fingerstyle and jazz guitar. I am pumped to have with us today Andrea Valeri. Andrea is an internationally acclaimed fingerstyle guitarist. He's already a veteran of stages around the world, truly around the world, blending techniques like ⁓ thumb picking, finger picking, flat picking into kind of his own really amazing voice. Both a performer and composer, host of albums and collaborations out there.

and share the stage with folks like Tommy Manuel and Guthrie Govan. ⁓ Andrea, I am honored to have you here today. Thanks so much, man, for being on the podcast. I appreciate it.

Andrea Valeri (00:35)
I'm super

super super honored to be here. Thank you for having me Jesse. It's a huge pleasure for me.

Jesse Paliotto (00:45)
thank you so much,

Andrea Valeri (00:47)
What a journey it has been until now in guitar and music. ⁓ know, next year is ⁓ just to give you a little update that next year is going to be my 20th anniversary. And so it's going to be a very, very special to that one for next year. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (01:08)
20th

anniversary of your first tour or your first performance.

Andrea Valeri (01:11)
Yeah, my first album and my

first tour. Public tour, yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (01:19)
right on. So what are you going to do? Is there any big plans yet? Or you're still working that out?

Andrea Valeri (01:25)
Well, there are some plans already done, but yeah.

You know what I really want to do is to bring together all the musicians who have been on my path for this 20 years and to bring them together on each nation I've been into. So let's say for instance, know, of course, Italy and Germany and Australia and England, France and US, Canada. Wherever I've been, I met so many amazing human beings and so many amazing musicians that I now want

Jesse Paliotto (01:41)
Eugh.

Andrea Valeri (02:00)
to bring back on a big 20th anniversary tour. So that's a spoiler for next year. ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (02:07)
That would be incredible.

Yeah.

All right. You heard it here first. That's epic, man. That's going to be so great. ⁓ You know, if you don't mind, I wanted to go back a little bit, actually before even the 20 years of your first ⁓ album, and ask, because I believe you started playing guitar when you were a teenager, which is, you know, or actually even younger, I think, but then started playing on stages as a teenager. Is that right?

Andrea Valeri (02:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ I remember... ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (02:38)
And then,

What?

Andrea Valeri (02:40)
The first performance was when I was about 10, 10, 11. That's what I remember being the first performance. But ⁓ I wasn't a fingerstyle player back then. I was playing with a friend of mine. We did play as a duo. So we played both ⁓ guitars and I was singing too with this big rough pirate voice.

Jesse Paliotto (02:46)
Okay.

That's awesome.

Andrea Valeri (03:09)
And is... Well,

I didn't have that rough voice back when I was ten. Well, this friend of mine, Lorenzo and I ⁓ played for many years as a duo and we ⁓ were basically presenting all the Italian singer-songwriter songs and ⁓ bringing them on stage arranged as a duo, as a duo of guitars and singers.

And that was it for many years. I was a rhythm player, basically.

Jesse Paliotto (03:44)
so how did you turn the corner from playing rhythm playing with your friend playing ⁓ Italian songs into fingerstyle guitar? Like what was the inspiration or or what really drove you to be like, Hey, that's what I actually want to focus on.

Andrea Valeri (03:57)
Well, when I was about 12, 13 years old, and I understood the potential behind the fingerstyle guitar. ⁓

the fingerstyle guitar allows you to play everything at once. you've got bass lines, melodies, all the kind of keyboard patterns behind the drums. I felt that was very complete and inside me, even if I was, you know, singing and doing other things before, there was an instrumental part of myself, which was pretty strong since I was a very, very

little boy. mean music was inside me much before the guitar. I was about one and a half years old when my mother started singing me songs and potentially I can remember them even now. ⁓ You know, I was a sponge. ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (04:50)
right, right.

Yeah, wow.

Yeah, yeah, just sucking it

all up.

Andrea Valeri (05:07)
And I think by the time I was 12, 13, I got exposed to fingerstyle guitar through DVDs from Tommy Emmanuel.

Michael Figgs and of course many many other Francois Shortino many other players like Marcel Dede, Chad Atkins and suddenly I was like I know what I can do it now from now on let's take the guitar let's put all the things at once and let's try and write more music than perform live you know I was in a writing process back then

Jesse Paliotto (05:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I want to ask you about writing, before I do, my understanding with your playing style is you kind of, you'll use thumb picking, ⁓ more regular finger style, ⁓ flat picking. How did you, how did you develop that style? Do you just try it all and use whatever technique fits for a given song or, and I'm also curious, how do you practice all the different techniques? Cause they can all take quite a bit of time to develop excellence on their own.

Andrea Valeri (06:08)
Yeah,

yeah, they do. I had a period between, you know, being 12 and probably 14, 15, where I practiced all of that, you know, technique.

Jesse Paliotto (06:26)
Mm.

Andrea Valeri (06:27)
technique, pure

Jesse Paliotto (06:28)
Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (06:29)
technique. I was spending hours and hours every day, just probably 8 to 10 hours a day practicing with a pig, practicing with a thumbpick, and trying to achieve one very important thing which always fascinated me since I was a little boy. Color. Color. Dynamic. Dynamics and color. Tone. That thing was always my big focus.

Jesse Paliotto (06:54)
Interesting.

Andrea Valeri (06:57)
I wanted a certain color from my fingers and from my guitar that I've been looking for for something like for 10 years and one day I remember probably was around the time I did Mediterranean album or something I got pretty close to my idea of sound and from that point on I could

Jesse Paliotto (07:11)
Hmm.

Andrea Valeri (07:26)
develop that kind of final tone I've been working on for so many years.

Yeah, I've been practicing all of this ⁓ stuff for years, but when I got my aunts doing what they were supposed to do, a thing which is not easy as you know, because they need to obey you. But they do want to do anything else, but not exactly what you tell them to do. ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (07:50)
I know.

Yeah.

Yes, yes. Every guitarist knows

it. You're like, I know what I want. Why won't it work? Yeah, it's so frustrating. And it's just repetition. You just got to put in the time to train your hands to do that.

Andrea Valeri (08:04)
You

And... Yeah.

holy words

very holy words and once I got my ends doing what they were supposed to do the final goal became another one you know that was the moment when I understood I wanted to write music you know and put all the techniques I've learned

Jesse Paliotto (08:39)
Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (08:44)
into music. ⁓ From that point on, stop just technique, use it for the songs. ⁓ And from that point on, it still is what I'm working the most, creativity and songs and trying to...

Jesse Paliotto (08:55)
Interesting.

Andrea Valeri (09:08)
get good at this but it's very hard.

Jesse Paliotto (09:13)
A lot of work. With the

sound, when you said you got the tone that you wanted finally, the color, was there any secret to that? is there any insights? Or was it just, it just took time to get your hands to play what they were supposed to play? Or I'm wondering if there's any tips for guitarists who are trying to develop their own color and sound. What could they do?

Andrea Valeri (09:35)
I ⁓ let me tell that for well that's that just it's just my opinion but this is one of the biggest things that makes difference when when you hear somebody playing you know it's not about you know how fast they can play it's not nowadays you just turn on the social medias and and you see

Jesse Paliotto (09:58)
Yeah. Somebody

just shredding. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (10:01)
10,000

notes and the post after that is 15,000 notes and then 20,000 notes and you keep scrolling how many thousands of notes per minute. If there was a speed camera on Instagram, I think we would all get a find.

Jesse Paliotto (10:07)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, right,

right. I know, and I know there's been some drama lately with some of the YouTubes online of people faking what they play, which seems so silly. But yeah, so yeah, you can find somebody to play fast, I think what you started to say, it's about the sound is what's really important.

Andrea Valeri (10:24)
But.

⁓

You know, you asked me if there was a secret to achieve that sound. First of all, I must say that my idea of sound might be different from somebody else's sound, from somebody else's idea of sound. But what I really want to tell is that you find it once you understand how music can be built.

You know, I think into music, when you get ⁓ a song done, you've got four different dimensions, at least. You've got a character who's the melody acting in the song. Then you've got a place somewhere where this character does his own whole own thing. it's chords, it's harmony. Then you've got a time.

This is a certain structure that gives you the tempo that you use for this character to act in the ambient. But then you've got a fourth dimension which you can almost touch in music and you can feel, which is color and dynamics. That one is a fourth dimension that you can hear.

The color, the tone is something that when you go to a show or when you listen to an album you can hear and you can know straight away who is playing that guitar.

Jesse Paliotto (12:20)
Yes, yes, yeah. It's funny that you'll hear certain things and you just immediately know who it is. If I hear Joe Pass, I know it's Joe Pass. I don't know why, I just know it. And I think a lot of it is what you're saying.

Andrea Valeri (12:23)
it

Yes. ⁓

Exactly.

So all these people like him or like Marc Knopfler or like many other players, they've worked on sound. I believe, I don't know how many hours they use to achieve that goal, but they surely worked on it. And this is what I was concentrated on. You know, getting that sound, it's like a bowl. When you hear a note, it doesn't sound like, but it sounds like

Jesse Paliotto (13:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (13:02)
this

big rounded and dynamic so the secret is to concentrate on these topics and and it will come today when after finding the character the ambient and the time you'll find the color to to draw all the paintings with

Jesse Paliotto (13:26)
Yeah, I don't know if you have any insights on how to really work, like how do you actually change your sound or if it just comes on its own.

Andrea Valeri (13:38)
Well, it does come on its own if you are connected to the instrument. Sometimes we ⁓ find a barrier between us and the instrument. We need to get rid of that barrier. We need to...

Jesse Paliotto (13:45)
Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (13:59)
make the process as smooth as possible, as fast as possible. And the only way to do it is to create a connection between our soul and the soul of the instrument. The guitar is called musical instrument, not by instance, because it's a musical instrument. It's not music, it's an instrument. So it allows us to reach people.

with a universal language that everybody knows and that everybody can understand on this planet, every nation, in every part of it, without speaking a single word from our mouth. So, if we remember that the guitar is an instrument,

somehow we get very close to the moment where we can use it to transpose our soul through it to the people.

Jesse Paliotto (15:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (15:02)
So I think that's the way

you can work on it and record your tone a lot of course because you need... We hear it from the other side. We never get to hear it from the side of a listener.

Jesse Paliotto (15:17)
Right. It's always funny when you record yourself and you think that's what it sounded like. I like. it's different than what I thought. Yeah. But also what you're saying about the instrument and the connection, it reminds me of a class I had taken and it was talking about, you know, awareness and kind of how our brain works, neuroscience. And one of the concepts that really stuck with me is by just paying attention to something.

Andrea Valeri (15:22)
Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (15:46)
it starts to change. We often think, well, if I want to work on my tone, I need to like do a bunch of stuff maybe or something. But if you just start listening to your tone, like you'll start to do some subconscious subtle things based on that because you're like, that's what it sounded like. Let me try something different. sometimes just the paying attention is the real trick to start to change ⁓ part of what you're doing, I think.

Andrea Valeri (16:10)
Huh.

I'd say this is the best words you could ever say about this topic. When I'm live, when I'm in the studio recording an album, of course you've got two different sources for the sound. Of course you are plugged whether you have three microphones in front of yourself. But it doesn't make any difference at the end because if you have got that

If you've got that mixer installed in you, then the sound is going to be exactly the same, just bigger or more intimate.

It depends. I also when I record my guitars in the studio here where where I'm sitting in this very, very small little room. But that's where the newer album, Odyssey, Historia and where I mix Valeri Live. It all happened here in this room. And believe it or not, but I use three different microphones to record my guitar. And one, it's standing like this in front of my head.

Jesse Paliotto (17:03)
Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.

Okay.

Andrea Valeri (17:26)
so

Jesse Paliotto (17:26)
Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (17:27)
that when I mix it, people can hear what I hear. So they can hear what the listener hears, plus what I hear mixed together in the same track.

Jesse Paliotto (17:32)
Mm-hmm. Interesting.

Well, while you're talking about recording, now that you opened that door, ⁓ when you're recording, what is the other, is there any other ⁓ tools or techniques you use to get a good sound in the studio? I mean, that's pretty interesting just to create the sound for the listener that you as the player are used to hearing. Where's the other mics? Is there any other tools or techniques you use to get a good sound?

Andrea Valeri (18:07)
⁓

I wish I could turn the camera to show you where the mics are placed but I'm going to tell you straight away how they are placed. There is a big diaphragm microphone, I usually use the U87 or the TLM49 Neumanns and one is standing right here on the higher part of my guitar where the middle low frequencies are amplified the most.

Jesse Paliotto (18:14)
Yeah, sure, yeah.

Andrea Valeri (18:37)
So

it stands like here, okay? Not very far, it's about, what, 20 centimeters? Not even 20 centimeters away. And I've got other two, which are the two KM184 Neumann. One is standing right here where I'm ⁓ with my head, and the other one is pointing to the fretboard.

Jesse Paliotto (19:04)
Okay. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (19:04)
to the fingerboard.

So when you mix them together I usually put these two stereo. So one left, one right. And this bigger diaphragm stays right in the middle. So the bigger diaphragm gives you the body of the guitar, the amount of ⁓ honey.

Jesse Paliotto (19:16)
yep.

Interesting. Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (19:33)
That's how I call it. The amount of honey is given by this microphone and it stays on the two channels, so both right and left. The other two I usually mix it this way. The one that points to my fingerboard, which I would see if I was the listener, I would see it on my right.

Jesse Paliotto (19:33)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (19:56)
so that one goes on my right and the one that stands right here goes on the total left hundred hundred so the sound you get is extremely wide so

Jesse Paliotto (20:03)
Interesting. wow. OK.

Yeah.

And then are you applying the same reverbs and room treatment to all three of the same or do you differ how you do that?

Andrea Valeri (20:17)
⁓ No, not

now. I used to, but I'm not doing it now. You know, the room where I record, this room here, is very small. It hasn't got a very tall roof. It's very low. So the acoustic instruments, they react very well in this kind of surrounding. They have got those lows and the very strong, but not...

Jesse Paliotto (20:39)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (20:47)
strong but mellow sound you know it's not too bright the ambient is not too bright it has got that middle low frequencies amplified and the only thing I use digital is reverbs nowadays I had I had the rack unit with the lexicons and all that stuff but I'm ⁓ I'm not using it anymore all the other outwears are a real

Jesse Paliotto (21:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (21:16)
real thing.

Jesse Paliotto (21:18)
Yeah, what do you mix in? What do you have a favorite DAW or favorite software that you use?

Andrea Valeri (21:22)
I'm a Prutools guy. I'm thinking to learn how to do it on other doors, but Prutools is what I saw since I was 15 and, you know, I'm not very good at computers to be honest. ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (21:27)
right on. Yeah.

Once you get your workflow, it's not worth it to

change it. Like if this works, why? Like, you know, there has to be a really compelling reason to go through relearning a whole other system, I think.

Andrea Valeri (21:56)
Well,

I want to keep my brain active, so I will have to learn something new too. But to be honest, know, Prutools is very good for audio.

Jesse Paliotto (22:01)
But yeah.

Andrea Valeri (22:08)
It's very, very good. For production, it's very good, but it's very heavy as a program. the audio is so good. I find it very good for myself. Maybe other people have been using other DAWs and they get exactly the same result. It's just a program. What you need to work on is hands.

Jesse Paliotto (22:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. You

know, I was, I was talking to somebody about this and they would, they were asking me about, ⁓ Cubase or something. And I was like, you know, I feel like half the time it's easier for me just to record into GarageBand. If I'm just trying to work out an idea, cause I don't like getting distracted by the technology when I'm trying to stay in a writing or an organic like guitar mode. And yeah, so I actually, sometimes I find the software can be distracting and I'd rather keep it simpler, ⁓ if I can.

Andrea Valeri (23:04)
Yeah.

But trust me, when I'm recording, there is very little things involved into the recording. I use a VOLF preamp for my Neumann microphones. There are usually three Neumann microphones. That's everything I use. And they go through a VOLF preamp, which is a very old TL audio that I got from England.

Jesse Paliotto (23:19)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (23:35)
Basically they come from LA I believe.

Jesse Paliotto (23:41)
⁓ they may, if see they're here or up in San Francisco, there's a couple of the companies up in, ⁓ Santa Cruz area. Yeah. There might be LA. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (23:47)
is that yeah

they they are matched so two and two they they have one kind for for two channels another kind for other two channels and I run the microphones through the bulbs that are exactly the ones that I feel the best for those microphones and then they go into a compressor and that's it

Jesse Paliotto (24:15)
Yeah.

Huh. Yeah, I love that. Very clean and ⁓ simple, ⁓ but beautiful sounding. Like, I mean, your recordings sound amazing. Do you record your, like your albums? Are you recording all of your albums in your home studio? wow.

Andrea Valeri (24:17)
That's it.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There

have been some tracks like Odissea or the Historia album where the string section was made in Rome.

Jesse Paliotto (24:45)
Did

you go there or did you pass tracks back and forth like online?

Andrea Valeri (24:47)
I went

there a couple of times to meet the guys. ⁓ They worked with Ennio Morricone in the past. So they know what they are doing.

Jesse Paliotto (24:56)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Andrea Valeri (25:02)
and they are called the layer bows, fantastic people. And once we got friends and they knew what kind of sound I wanted, they very, very precise. So they could work on their own. I could send them the charts and whatever and they did it there. But everything else, yeah, was recorded in the studio. So, yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (25:25)
I'm curious because I love the idea of steel string acoustic guitar with an orchestra or with strings really. ⁓ And how to do that. Did you write all the parts for the strings or did you give them your compositions and then have an arranger basically expand those for the string section?

Andrea Valeri (25:45)
Well, it depends. It depends from the songs and how complex is that. And if I feel that I've got the right taste for it or if I know that somebody else could do it better than I do. for Odisea, for instance, I wrote the percussions part that my friend Vito Perini played in Naples. And I worked all the guitar parts.

Jesse Paliotto (25:55)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (26:15)
it,

correct the bass and all that stuff, but the string section and the brass was written by a friend of mine in Luni in the north of Tuscany. And when I wrote that song, I could hear that his taste would be the best on this song. So I do it if I find out that I can do it.

Jesse Paliotto (26:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (26:44)
If somebody could do it better than I do, then it's his job. And it happened another time for the song Due anime, which is still on that album. And you know, the Hans Zimmer percussionist Satnam Ramgotra ⁓ worked on that track too. He played the shamanic drum and tablas. ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (27:11)
Okay.

Andrea Valeri (27:12)
It was unbelievable for me. was a dream to have him. I heard.

Jesse Paliotto (27:18)
Did you just say like

do whatever you want to do? Like just have go to town. Yeah, yeah, just you tell me what you want to do and it's going to be great.

Andrea Valeri (27:21)
Exactly. ⁓ know. ⁓

Man, that guy is mind-blowing. I've heard him three times with Hans Zimmer, two times in Germany and one time in Italy. And he was just phenomenal. When he played the drums...

Jesse Paliotto (27:44)
Ha

Andrea Valeri (27:48)
It was incredible. But when he touched those tablas, I cried. I just cried. I had tears falling from my eyes. And I said, ⁓ I felt very, very small compared to those musicians. know, felt a very, very small guy from Tuscany. And eventually,

Jesse Paliotto (27:55)
Yeah. Really?

Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting

because tabla and a lot of the percussion, especially if you don't know or if you're not familiar, can just seem like a very simple instrument. All you're doing is...

Andrea Valeri (28:25)
⁓ man.

Jesse Paliotto (28:26)
like that's it. But the the when you hear somebody who's really, really good, you get it. You're like, ⁓ there is all this groove and subtlety and nuance. And it just makes you for me, like when I've heard really great percussion, it makes you want to move like, like all of a sudden you're like it just it's almost at a physical level, like it draws you in.

Andrea Valeri (28:48)
Exactly. And I felt like a wave of emotion when I first heard him play the tablas. And I was like, it would be a dream in my next life if I could have this guy on board for a song.

And suddenly COVID came. had a release exactly the day that Italy went in lockdown. There was a story album. ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (29:23)
wow.

Andrea Valeri (29:27)
When I was crossing that period, kept writing music and one of the songs was Due Anime. And suddenly when I heard the groove of it, I said, I know that this guy could make such a difference on the song. And there was...

There is another guitar player from a very famous Italian Sardinian band called Tazzenda and a wonderful friend of mine is called Massimo Cosso who arranged with me the song Due anime and he wrote a part I didn't tell him anything about my idea to call Sutnown on the song I didn't say anything and he wrote a B section

Jesse Paliotto (30:14)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (30:16)
He called me on the phone and said, okay, you know what? Your song is great. I just added another section to it. It doesn't sound any anything like the first section. It sounds totally weird and different, but I hope you like it. When he sent it to me, I said, I can't believe this is true. He got it perfect.

perfect and I tell you it was spot on section for Satnam to play the tabla song. So the minute later I asked him

Jesse Paliotto (30:48)
⁓ yeah. You're like, there it is.

Andrea Valeri (30:54)
would you like to... I know you are one of my biggest inspiration, you're such a great musician, I know that you've played with so many incredible artists on this planet, I know I'm a guy from Tuscany who is trying to make his new album and would you like to be on board on the song? And he eventually said yes. I... man, it was...

Jesse Paliotto (31:18)
wow. That's so cool. And that was during

COVID. So this was all sort of remote that you collaborated.

Andrea Valeri (31:26)
Yeah,

it was, what was that? When we recorded the final thing, it was about 2020, end of 2022 or start of 2023, something like that. And I just remember the feeling.

of working with Satnam's take and the other takes with the strings and my guitars on top. And eventually that feeling of having tears falling from my eyes were even amplified. had waterfalls from my eyes.

Jesse Paliotto (31:58)
Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. Well, so this gets me back to what I wanted to ask you a few minutes ago, and it's great that we've sort of, this conversation's come back a little bit toward this. I wanted to ask about composing. ⁓ Do you have a process or how do you write? I know some people, it's just very, you know, they get inspired in the shower and they write. Some people are very structured and they have a, I'm just curious, like, how do you approach composition?

Andrea Valeri (32:31)
Well, it's a mystery, isn't it? Composition, it's a mystery. You know, it was probably Ennio Morricone saying the same thing. I'm not sure 100%, but 80%. Then he said, every artist should work on 40 minutes of creativity every day, at least. You know?

Jesse Paliotto (32:34)
Yeah, exactly.

I

Andrea Valeri (33:00)
This is ⁓ a

Jesse Paliotto (33:00)
like that.

Andrea Valeri (33:01)
very, very beautiful advice because creativity is like every other skill. If you don't work on it for much time...

suddenly you lose it and you lose it and you lose it you are inside computers you are inside this and technology and doing reels and all that stuff and suddenly you lose the focus of everything you know we we human being we start there and we end here one day we're here the other day

hopefully not. But the other day we could not be here but the music we've done, the music we've played, the music will survive, the music will be here. So composing is a big responsibility first of all and it's a big honor because it requires

Jesse Paliotto (33:40)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (34:06)
if you're really really really meant to compose songs it means that you want to serve music it means that you need to do a step back and let the music go and be the protagonist so working on composition tells us first thing that we need to do a step backwards and we need

to have the music flow. That's the first thing we need to do. The second thing, which is more technical, is to describe. As it was a painting, as it was a poem, or any other art, composition is exactly the same. We are meant to find a character, we are meant to tell a story.

You know, let's see for instance, do you remember the solo from Sultan's Aswain?

Jesse Paliotto (35:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (35:17)
Now, ⁓

do you remember ⁓ Skyfall? Do you remember the melody of Skyfall? Okay, do you remember Pirates of the Caribbean, for instance? Or the Gladiator or Jurassic Park? You know, those themes and this music

Jesse Paliotto (35:27)
Yes, I think so. I will confess the James Bond stuff starts to blur into each other after a while.

Andrea Valeri (35:46)
is so beautiful because it's not worked on technique that becomes music but it's music that tells a story. So these composers, these film music composers, they are my biggest inspiration because they tell the story of the movie through music and using

their skills, the skills they have achieved not to pass me the word, not to show off but to give something that will stay forever in our world. ⁓ What would Pirate of the Caribbean be if we take the music out of that movie?

Jesse Paliotto (36:39)
It would

be very empty. It is such a huge part of the experience of watching that movie is the excitement from the music. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (36:44)
they stick together.

When ⁓ you remember John Williams ⁓ working on ⁓ Jurassic Park, do you remember being a kid seeing those, you know, giants, T-Rex and other dinosaur just walking on earth and that music made them walking on earth.

If it was not for that music, dinosaur would never gone back walking on earth.

Jesse Paliotto (37:09)
Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, it would have just looked like special effects and you would have been like, okay.

Andrea Valeri (37:21)
Exactly,

exactly. So I believe the first choice is our training. The training we can do for composition is to listen a lot. First, the first rule that music teaches us is to listen. If we don't listen, we cannot do anything else. So first of all,

Jesse Paliotto (37:36)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (37:49)
we need to be able to listen we need to be able to ⁓ understand how a note can be played to describe a certain story or how a passage can do the same basically that's the first exercise for composition and then trying trying to write you know maybe I'm talking too much about it but it's a you know it's a

Jesse Paliotto (38:16)
I love

it. It's great.

Andrea Valeri (38:17)
It's

a topic that really matters to me. It's the topic that matters to me the most. It's not about writing... How can I tell that? Not about writing about something or writing about someone straight away. You need to learn how to do that. Try and describe situations. Try and take a melody...

Jesse Paliotto (38:23)
Mmm.

Andrea Valeri (38:44)
as an exercise and make it funny or make it intimate or make it romantic, make it epic, make it everything you want.

Jesse Paliotto (38:49)
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

Andrea Valeri (38:58)
just with a simple melody. It's a beautiful exercise that helps you to develop this attitude of translating emotions, feelings and everything else into music. So, you could just take a melody and try to...

Jesse Paliotto (39:05)
Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (39:19)
bring at least five or six different feelings with it. So, sadness, happiness, ⁓ being joyful, being angry, being determined, being very happy. And that's it. That's a beautiful exercise.

Jesse Paliotto (39:31)
Yeah.

That's a great one. It reminds me actually, have ⁓ younger kids, they're seven, eight, nine years old, and they'll play on the piano sometimes. it's almost like they go right to that because they don't have a bunch of technique or expectation. So they're just figuring out how they can make emotion, just big noises, quiet little noises, noises that go up. it's a very, like, it's just, they're just trying to see how they can get expression out of this big funny thing in the living room.

Andrea Valeri (39:51)
Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (40:03)
⁓ rather than being very intellectual about it. I love that exercise, that's great.

Andrea Valeri (40:06)
We

need to keep being children. The moment we grow up too much is very bad. We lose that moment, the spontaneous feeling of being a child, being surprised. Do you remember when we were kids? I'm 34 by the way, but I...

Jesse Paliotto (40:13)
Mm-hmm.

Thank

Andrea Valeri (40:32)
I am doing this for 20 years but I still remember that part before where you know the distances were very big. If I was going to meet with my uncle or with my aunt living in another city it would be such a journey even if it was 15 minutes away. You everything looked bigger.

Jesse Paliotto (40:49)
Yeah. Right.

Andrea Valeri (40:56)
we could see a caterpillar or a tractor and say, this is incredible, this is such an incredible vehicle, know, such a powerful noise, such a powerful sound. And we would be surprised about everything, that we don't need to lose this for creativity. If we lose it, that's the end. We can't be creative anymore.

Jesse Paliotto (41:00)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah, some sort of wonder about the world. ⁓

Andrea Valeri (41:23)
And I

want to show you somebody who's with me in the room at the moment. he's my... Let me see if I can pick him up. You know this beautiful grey cat? It's my little brother, Lilo. And... Lilo is my magnet. know? If he likes a song...

Jesse Paliotto (41:37)
Yes.

Okay. Lilo, I love it.

⁓

Andrea Valeri (41:55)
that's going to be a good song. Look, look, I'm going to show you. He's a little bit, you know, he's very funny. He's quite old at the moment. He's feeling very young. He's still a kid. He's still kid. He's still feeling like a child. You know, if he looks, stares at you like this.

Jesse Paliotto (41:59)
How do you know if he liked it? What does he do if it's good?

Yeah, that's right, inside.

Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (42:22)
with his head like this, it's a good song. And then he relaxes and he sleeps with it. If he does that, it means that it's a beautiful, beautiful song. If he starts to move around and says, hmmm...

Jesse Paliotto (42:29)
Okay.

Andrea Valeri (42:38)
⁓ And then he says, meow, meow. That's not going to work. So he would always stay here with me when I record, when I do things. he keeps, you know, that's okay. And when I play some wrong notes, he just comes down from his chair and goes straight away from the house.

Jesse Paliotto (42:44)
I love it.

Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (43:03)
And then he is telling me that's not how you are supposed to play. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The good old Lilo that tells me how the song should be performed.

Jesse Paliotto (43:10)
No, it's like he's Rick Rubin. You've got Rick Rubin slash Quincy Jones right there in the studio giving you feedback.

You

I love it. That's so good.

Everybody needs that. It's actually very hard, would say, for lot of, especially fingerstyle guitar where ⁓ people may not be as familiar with the genre. So to get like real feedback, it's actually a really good thing. ⁓ Really very helpful. ⁓

Andrea Valeri (43:39)
He's

my assistant and he knows how guitar tones should sound like and I tell you something which is pretty funny of this little cat. know, Mayton ⁓ built the newer Andrea Valeri custom model ⁓ right in January last year.

And before that I had this other guitars you see in the background. This is the Dread, not the first Andrea Valerio and ITC we built. And there is a NATO 8 over there that was the mother. And Lillo always loved that guitar. When I would play the other ones, he would go, ⁓ when I played those guitars, he would sit down and relax. Always, straight away.

Jesse Paliotto (44:23)
Okay, yeah.

Really? Huh.

Andrea Valeri (44:38)
And,

you know, when they built the new guitar, a ⁓ wonderful person called Patrick Evans, who built my new guitar at Mayton, I got it and I went to Milan, picked it up, came home and started playing it. I was so, you know, shaking and looking forward to that. And I was wondering what could Lillo say about that guitar.

Jesse Paliotto (45:04)
huh.

Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (45:06)
and he started just going around it and I loved that instrument. I absolutely loved it and every time I play it, he just sits very calm and relaxed and listens to it. So good job, mate, on guitars. You made Lilo like the newer guitars.

Jesse Paliotto (45:12)
Hahaha

Lilo approved it, ⁓

They have to put that up on their website, just a little picture of a cat, Lilo approved. That's their new certification of excellence. I love it. Oh, sorry, cut you off.

Andrea Valeri (45:32)
You

Yeah, no,

I was just saying the Maiden, wonderful, wonderful builders in Australia, in Melbourne, Australia, they have just launched the Master Build, Master Build Syria, which ⁓ is an unbelievable amount, has got an unbelievable amount of quality. I mean, this is incredible. These guitars are just mind blowing.

I was on tour in Africa in August last year and it was the dried season in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Jesse Paliotto (46:17)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (46:19)
and I was very worried about what was going to happen to my instrument because you know it was a newborn, it was from January so just a few months and she was touring in Germany, was touring in Italy, was touring in Africa, was touring in England and not one single move stable

perfectly stable. ⁓ The humidity rate was extremely low. I don't know how low was that, but extremely low. And we got not one single movement. I could play every show happily without any problem. I did not even adjust the truss rod.

Jesse Paliotto (46:42)
Really? Yeah.

Yeah,

that's amazing. I wish I had more of a chance to play maintenance. They just being in LA, there's a few shops that will keep like a selection of nicer acoustic instruments. The big opportunity is when we do, we have the big NAMM trade show, which happens. so, but yeah, I would love to be able to try more of their guitars because they just have such a obviously such great players like yourself play them. And then, you know, they just have such a great reputation. I would love to get more experience with them.

Andrea Valeri (47:22)
Yeah.

there.

Jesse Paliotto (47:37)
on there.

Andrea Valeri (47:38)
wonderful,

wonderful solid instruments and every time you plug them in they are unbelievable but personally I love to record with them, Odissea or Valeri Live, Historia, Mediterraneo or whatever they all just played with major guitars they sound huge they sound very well acoustically many people they tend to tell

Jesse Paliotto (47:58)
okay.

Andrea Valeri (48:07)
guitar doesn't sound very good acoustically if it doesn't have a huge volume. ⁓ But volume is not what makes a guitar special acoustically. You can always turn the gain up on an amplifier and you will have more volume but you can't turn the color up. No. ⁓

Jesse Paliotto (48:14)
Right, right.

Right. I can change the volume. can't change the color. If it's crap to begin with, it's just

going to be louder crap.

Andrea Valeri (48:35)
good guitar

is not the guitar that gives you 300 dB of volume, it's the guitar that gives you as many choices of color as possible and then each one of us chooses what's the best for that, this or that song.

Jesse Paliotto (48:53)
Yeah, yeah, you know, got to meet Tommy Emmanuel years ago when he was playing in LA and I sat down with him, I got to do like little interview bit before the show. And he was like, you know, people think I play really loud. It's like, I don't play that loud. And he played right like sitting across and he was on his maiden and it just sounded normal. But then you go into the concert and it's huge, right? But it's because, you know, he's going for the tone here.

And the sound system can be the amplification system to make it big in the room. So it's exactly your point. It just needs to sound good right here, and then we can use all the amplification later.

Andrea Valeri (49:31)
you just need the

best combination possible ⁓ on earth to play live and in the studio but it doesn't mean that that guitar needs to have tones of volume because when you plug that guitar in if it has got 300 dB of volumes it's not gonna sound that good you know it needs to vibrate well

Jesse Paliotto (49:37)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it's gonna just be blown away.

Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (49:59)
it needs

to be solid, reliable and that you can take it off, put a jack in, play and it sounds great. Go to the studio, record it and it will sound great. Play just for yourself in the living room or in the bedroom and it will still sound great.

Jesse Paliotto (50:18)
Yeah, yeah. That

is the most amazing thing is when you have a guitar that can kind of do it all. ⁓ Where you just playing by yourself and it sounds sounds good. The electronics and everything that is amazing make me want to go buy a maiden now. Speaking of which, I know we are right at the end of our time, but there's a couple quick questions I thought I could ask. These are just quick hits. You can answer very quickly, very long, whatever you want to do.

Andrea Valeri (50:40)
Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (50:45)
But I just thought we could maybe close up with a couple of fun stuff. If you could buy, so this is a good tie-in to that last conversation there. If you could buy any gear, any guitar, anything right now, money is no object, anything you want, is there anything on your list right now where you're like, oh,

Andrea Valeri (50:53)
Ha

Jesus, that's a hard question. I'm the worst person for this. Let me say, let me say, if it could it be a guitar or could it be some hardware for the studio as well? Okay, I would probably buy two. I would buy back a 1073 Neve.

Jesse Paliotto (51:05)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Either one, either one, yep.

Okay.

⁓ yeah, buy it back. had it. You sold it, guess. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (51:33)
and

⁓

bad choice and if it was in terms of guitar I would go for a Merrill Merrill Merrill guitar Merrill Merrill guitar the ⁓ guy builds wonderful guitars and probably this too

Jesse Paliotto (51:51)
I'm not familiar.

right on.

I'll grab a link for the Mario guitars and put it in the show notes for anybody who may not be familiar, similar to myself. What is playing on your playlist right now? If we picked up your phone and you just started playing the last song you were listening to or maybe the last album or something, what is Andrea listening to today?

Andrea Valeri (52:24)
90 % of soundtracks. Lately ⁓ I've worked on a set list of soundtracks that I started arranging to learn new ideas. One of these was ⁓ that next place from Thomas Newman, which is one of the soundtracks from Meet Joe Black.

Jesse Paliotto (52:28)
Mm, okay.

Okay.

yeah.

Andrea Valeri (52:51)
which

is one of the best movies I've ever seen in my opinion. And the other part would be full of The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and Jurassic Park, Jaws, Indiana Jones, and a soundtrack. Jesus.

Jesse Paliotto (53:02)
yeah.

Yes.

Andrea Valeri (53:18)
I started to get old. just forgot. I just forgot the soundtrack from an Italian movie from Salvatore's which was called Mediterraneo. Fantastic, fantastic soundtrack. So 90%, that would be 90 % of soundtracks and 10 % of fusion.

Jesse Paliotto (53:20)
No, there's a lot on that playlist already.

okay.

Andrea Valeri (53:50)
8 % of fusion and a couple of points for bluegrass.

Jesse Paliotto (53:58)
yeah. Yeah.

Andrea Valeri (53:59)
So at the moment,

this is what's going on in my musical listening life.

Jesse Paliotto (54:07)
I love that, that's very insightful actually. ⁓ Okay, then final quick question. If you had to play a song, you went to a party, you didn't know you were gonna be performing and somebody gave you a guitar and they say, you have to get up there and play a song right now. What's your go-to song? Like what's your song like, if I have to just jump up and play something, this is the one I'm gonna play.

Andrea Valeri (54:28)
⁓ I've got three. One of them is a very dear song to me. I wrote it back in 2012. It's a song of mine called La Lettera.

Jesse Paliotto (54:32)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (54:46)
And it's a ballad, it's not a fast song, but it has got a very special story behind it. It's a letter from a mother and a son during the war, in the Second World War. It's something that I imagine. There's nothing I'm referring to, but it probably really happened. So the son gets the letter from the mother, he gets shot.

Jesse Paliotto (55:07)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Andrea Valeri (55:14)
And when he closes his hand, he understands he's not alive anymore. And the song has got all the story. In the A section, there is only one voice. In the B section, there are two voices singing together all the time. So it gives you the dynamic of them singing together. And the other one is a song that I wrote three days ago.

Jesse Paliotto (55:25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

⁓ wow.

Andrea Valeri (55:41)
And I

dedicated to the maestro, John Easley from Dias Trades. He's a fantastic human being. We've met a couple of times. We've played together. And we're going to do a show on the 21st of June this year in Casana Alta, close to where I live. And I call it The Groove Man.

Jesse Paliotto (56:05)
Sorry.

Andrea Valeri (56:07)
is literally 105

% of groove. That man is 105 % groove.

Jesse Paliotto (56:17)
If it were the movie Spinal Tap, he's turned the groove to 11. Yeah. But this groove goes to 11. It's better than 10. That's awesome. So when can people hear that song? Are you going to put that up on maybe YouTube or social media or something?

Andrea Valeri (56:20)
Hahaha!

You

Yeah,

yeah, think so. I think so. I'm in a very creative time at the moment. You know, I'm thinking whether to stop touring for a while, maybe a few months before the big...

the big 20 years thing and ⁓ I'm thinking maybe in late fall this year I will stop for a little bit and get something special done and come back. know, Odysseum was a very big turning point for me as an album. know, honestly if I have to tell you I'm not listening to my albums anymore.

Jesse Paliotto (56:53)
Yeah.

Mm.

Andrea Valeri (57:20)
not

even one time. But Odisséa, yes I did. Because I still find that inspiration very close to me now. I went ahead of that with the new live album, Valérie Live, that was released two days ago. But now I'm trying to write the next chapter.

I want to move on. My albums get printed two times. After the second time, it's gone. We go to the next one. This is why people can't find my old ⁓ albums anymore. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (58:01)
Yeah, yeah, right. Because you're moving forward. You're just trying

to move ahead, right?

Andrea Valeri (58:05)
I don't

want to stay there forever. I want to move to the next level. I want to grow up. I'm a very curious person. This curiosity keeps me moving to the next level and next level. I hope I will come up with something that sounds a bit better than Odisséa.

Jesse Paliotto (58:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, this is a great note, I think, for us to wrap up on. Is there anything we did not get to cover that you wanted to talk about today?

Andrea Valeri (58:37)
how good you've been listening to myself all the time listening to my ⁓ thank you it's my honor and pleasure to be here ⁓ it's very special what you're doing I mean look at how world today it's not easy

Jesse Paliotto (58:44)
It's been a pleasure, It's a real honor to meet you.

Andrea Valeri (59:01)
to find so much beauty and so much passion in the world anymore. There is, there is a lot, but it's not streamed enough. We need to stream more beauty.

and you are doing a beautiful job that brings joy and happiness to many many people and I'm very grateful that I could contribute a tiny tiny little bit to it as well trying to give you my joy for music and guitar.

Jesse Paliotto (59:42)
Thank you, Andrea. That means a lot. I appreciate that, Yeah, ⁓ I think we'll just kind of use that as our wrap-up note today. It's very humbling for me, but I'm very honored to have you here. Thanks everybody else for joining us today. Thanks for being with Andrea and I. I'll drop a bunch of show notes as well because I know there's links to Andrea's music, to some of your stuff, your website. I'll make sure we get that in there. And yeah, thanks everybody. I'm your host, Jesse Pagliato. love talking about music here on the Guitar Journal and being able to hang out with people like Andrea today. So thanks everybody.

Andrea Valeri (59:54)
Thank you. Thank you.

Jesse Paliotto (1:00:11)
and have a great week.

Andrea Valeri (1:00:12)
Thank you. Thank you.