Stratovarius Community

Great news! And don't forget to make a couple of stops to Greece!!!

Burning Reflection wrote:...or The Cage's intro solo note for note

That reminds me... Henrik still can't play it perfectly at their shows.

Beast_Pete wrote:

Burning Reflection wrote:...or The Cage's intro solo note for note

That reminds me... Henrik still can't play it perfectly at their shows.

And he never will. He is one of the keyboardists I really don't respect.

He is not trying to play it perfectly if note for note is what one means by that. He is putting his own touches on it. He bends in different places. Part of what I like about concerts is when people play the song a different way. Henrik plays it with full capabilities, perhaps not with the super human skill of Jens but still at a high skill level. I want to hear matius put some of his own style into the guitar solos and not just copy the ones tolkki does.

icecab21 wrote:He is not trying to play it perfectly if note for note is what one means by that. He is putting his own touches on it. He bends in different places. Part of what I like about concerts is when people play the song a different way. Henrik plays it with full capabilities, perhaps not with the super human skill of Jens but still at a high skill level. I want to hear matius put some of his own style into the guitar solos and not just copy the ones tolkki does.

I am sure ''Mathew, Matius'' won't deceive us. They chose him for some reason.

I don't know how many of you out there are musicians, but I think even Jens can agree with me when I say that it's nearly impossible to play the same solo twice

Ask me to play my own solos note for note and I probably can't ever play them back the way they was recorded. I think this is the reason most fans have a hard time learning their favorite guitar player's (or keyboard player's) solos.

Jens always plays different solos than on record, especially live!

Henrik is a solid keyboard player. I personally wish Mikko never left, but oh well. I've seen Sonata Arctica something like 15 times, and they're always great.

MikeKhalilov wrote:I don't know how many of you out there are musicians, but I think even Jens can agree with me when I say that it's nearly impossible to play the same solo twice

Ask me to play my own solos note for note and I probably can't ever play them back the way they was recorded. I think this is the reason most fans have a hard time learning their favorite guitar player's (or keyboard player's) solos.

Jens always plays different solos than on record, especially live!

Henrik is a solid keyboard player. I personally wish Mikko never left, but oh well. I've seen Sonata Arctica something like 15 times, and they're always great.

yah thats true its pretty hard to play the same solo multiple times note for note not only that, I find it gets boring after a while. Thats why I always loved how jens plays improvised variations of his solos live, and I do the same. keeps it sounding fresh.

I think a midi file is the only thing that can duplicate some of the crazy stuff out there. Stratovarius is a great band for doing cool things live with the songs. That ending for paradise is always different and kotipelto does some amazing stuff. I've found some songs with some amazingly cool differences between the studio albums.

no band member can play something note for note.

Even the best musicians have to improvise when they are playing live and just hope that the stuff they play is very close to what is on the album, but also take into account that there are many fans like myself who like it when the band puts some different touches on a solo live.

even singers sound differently live, I'm not saying it's worse, just different cause your hearing them without the polished sound of the studio.

Well, IMO Jens is unique. His style is amazing and there's no better keyboardist for me at the moment.

MikeKhalilov wrote:I don't know how many of you out there are musicians, but I think even Jens can agree with me when I say that it's nearly impossible to play the same solo twice

Ask me to play my own solos note for note and I probably can't ever play them back the way they was recorded. I think this is the reason most fans have a hard time learning their favorite guitar player's (or keyboard player's) solos.

Jens always plays different solos than on record, especially live!

Henrik is a solid keyboard player. I personally wish Mikko never left, but oh well. I've seen Sonata Arctica something like 15 times, and they're always great.

I remember when Jens was talking about it. Of course playing a solo note to note is nothing important, but expressing the feeling of that solo is very important. It can vary from show to show, but you have to give your soul into it and it should be felt by the audience. I don't like Henrik's play of Cage, he played it well only once, I was really surprised btw (saw them twice in 2005, first in Wacken where it was fail :/ and second in Hungary which was maybe their best show ever that I've seen from them). Jens on the other hand always delivers, and always high quality. Though I haven't seen him too drunk on stage yet, I always ask him not to drink the booze I give to him before the show but rather afterwards.

I have seen Sonata for 6 times so far. Once in 2003, once in 2004, twice in 2005, once in 2006 and once this year. Couldn't attend their gig last year because of my injury.

6 gigs out hundreds is a very small sample size. I'm not sure if my main goal as a keyboardist would be to work so hard as to be able to play that perfectly. Too me it’s just get to a level and have fun with the band and the crowd. The emotion of songs is so subjective that 50 people will say they loved the feeling and 50 will say there was no feeling.

I just arrived and saw this message.

OMG !!!!
THIS IS AWESOMELY, EXTREMELY, TERRIBLY, AMAZINGLY GREAT !!!

I don't wanna fight about the name, the main thing for me is that the band carries on with new material, found a new great member, keeps on plaring gigs and recording albums!

The band has a new bio.


http://twisted-talent.com/index.php?p=a ... fulltext=1

The result is a melodic, powerful, fresh, tight, and technically elaborate new album with the working title King of Nothing. It is a positive, powerful album that Stratovarius fans all over the world are certain to take to their hearts.

It's fun to see what kind of things get written about bands.

I like the article and thought it was done quite tastefully.

it's basically positive but doesn't put blame on anyone, it's not a "it was this person's fault" kind of article.

it was non-bias, those are the best kind of article's.

I think it made some good changes to do that and that will help lead to a great future. This will be great when the fans have the record and can spread its awesomeness to the world.

Keyssion wrote:

Beast_Pete wrote:

Burning Reflection wrote:...or The Cage's intro solo note for note

That reminds me... Henrik still can't play it perfectly at their shows.

And he never will. He is one of the keyboardists I really don't respect.

*lol*

I wonder if they'll keep the lily in the logo, album covers, all promotional stuff, etc.

The lily seems to be a special symbol for Tolkki. It's been present in the cover art of all his solo albums, and in all Stratovarius albums since Visions. He said in an interview that it has some deeper meaning to him.

Looking at it from this perspective, perhaps it would be better if Stratovarius dropped the lily. However, I guess most if not all fans (including myself) almost instantaneously associate the lily to Stratovarius. Heck, it's the one symbol that identifies Stratovarius.

they could always go back to the way the name was designed pre-visions

hiro23 wrote:they could always go back to the way the name was designed pre-visions

I don't think that reflects the musical style. The more curvy font used nowadays is perfect, in my opinion. It's an analogy to the classical inspiration.

It was just a suggestion

I think they could desing a new logo, the old one is kind of worn out.
Or they could switch back like that someone mentioned earlier.

I really like the old logo, too

Fuuso wrote:I really like the old logo, too

Agree

Te old logo was really great. We'll see. Anyway, RR is gonna use the lily.

Maybe they could "remake" the old logo.

RazielSR wrote:Te old logo was really great. We'll see. Anyway, RR is gonna use the lily.

Maybe they could "remake" the old logo.

Seeing it from this side, yes, because RR was using this logo, already I have seen it, and it seems that there are other groups that have it, but it should be the equal one of grand or a "remake" of the previous is a idea

But I don't really see any problem in using the lily. Every time I see the lily somewhere it reminds me of Stratovarius. Now they are different bands, aren't they? So why can't Stratovarius go on using it? The lily has also been used a lot throughout history, mainly in France, where it was quite meaningful, I mean, they are completely free to use it or not.

that's what I'm saying, that way people can say "hey I recognize that logo" and know it as Stratovarius but also not have to fight with Tolkki about it.

Or they could design a new logo still using a lily but in a different way ?

hiro23 wrote:that's what I'm saying, that way people can say "hey I recognize that logo" and know it as Stratovarius but also not have to fight with Tolkki about it.

but why should they fight for that symbol? I know the lily is really meaningful to TT, he has said that many times, and it was also his idea to add it to the Strato logo (I think so) but there were many people using it before TT did.