Music by Jordan Makin – Style & Influence

January 16, 2010 Posted by admin in Musical Influences

Style & Influence

Obviously, every guitarist, or every novice guitarist at least takes influence off somebody else. Mine, I'm happy to say was Jimmy Page. One day I just found an old Mothership DVD, the Led Zeppelin one, among some things in our living room. At first I thought it would be a war film because of the sand on the front of the case, so I put it on, and it had the opening song "Immigrant Song", I thought it was just an opening song, then the next song came on “Black Dog” and I loved that song, so I kept watching in hope for this war film to start, and after about an hour or so, I’d watched the whole thing without even knowing it. That’s when I decided to play guitar. And I think its safe to say, I watched the Mothership DVD over and over and over again for months and months after I got my first guitar, until the point my parents hid the the DVD from me because I was watching it too much. So my opening influence on guitar was very Led Zeppelin based. And still today, although I don't do Classic Rock, you can still here some of those Led Zeppelin like guitar licks and things in my work.

After the DVD had been “misplaced” by my parents I went rummaging through 4 boxes of old CD’s to find a CD entitled “Appetite For Destruction”, and that Guns N’ Roses CD had to me, the best and most powerful tracks on it they ever did. But unlike most people, I didn't get caught into it buy Paradise City or Sweet Child O’mine, I got caught it by this repetitive shaking action the guitarist did on the intro to Mr.Brownstone. Then, I looked them up on the internet, got the Illusion albums and I’ve never stopped listening to them since. So they had a big part in my influence too. Until I found out they broke up in the 90’s.

And I don't think I'm the first to say this….But I think the latest G n R's album, well, I don't think its all that it was cooked up to be really. We waited like 12 years for it, and well, it was all a bit techno-ie, for well, that style of music.

Nowadays, I'm not the sort of person, who, just comes up with a riff and goes "Holy moly, that's amazing!" I come up with the riff and try and make it better, then, I get verse riffs by basing them around the lead riff. And sometimes, I just let it flow out. All of the stuff on my 2009 solo album I did 100%, but all the new Syer stuff, I've just come up with the general riff and Aryel the second guitarist had what I like to call "Zommed In" and put his own edge on the riffs and some duel solos. I say "Zoomed In" because he uses a Zoom effects board, and he always managed to get some nice effect out of a riff, but then again some riff are just plain guitar to amp.

But long story short, here’s a list of my main influences: