Alex Machacek: guitar player interview

How did you come to record 24 Tales?
I was considering doing an album of compositions using different drummers, so I asked Marco if he had anything, and he said, “Yeah, I have a solo.” And then he gave me this. I was originally going to just use a section of it, but then he decided to have several composers write for the entire thing as part of his Normalizer project. Marco’s playing is so intricate and complex and the more you listen to it the more you realize that he’s doing things like playing in 5, but the high-hat is playing in 7, and it doesn’t throw him off. That, to me, was overwhelming. I knew about his facility, but you know about stuff and then you work on it and you really know.

Briefly describe your compositional process for the album.
The first step was to beat map the entire 52-minute composition in Logic Pro, because I wanted to sequence some sounds using MIDI. Otherwise, I would have had to play everything perfectly in real time, and I’m not a piano player or a bass player or whatever. Beat mapping allowed me to enter notes one at a time using the mouse. Also, if you know that you have a certain number of bars in a section, that helps with the structure. The next step was to lay down markers and write descriptions for every section, such as, “Lots of kick drum insanity.” Then, I’d try to establish a groove, a melody, a harmonic motif, etc., and develop a section from there.

full interview