[Slowhand] The "Wizard?" behind the Clapton Shred Video

[Jeff Elliott]

Not necessarily a Clapton thread but for those of you who saw the Clapton
solo "spoof" on YouTube, here's the "genius" behind the video, Santeri
Ojala.  I read a similar article in the Jan issue of Guitar Player.

 

Jeff


Hilarious YouTube Parodies 'Shred' Guitar Gods


By Monty Phan  <http://www.wired.com/services/feedback/letterstoeditor>
Email10.17.07 | 12:00 AM 

The video resembles one of the many concert clips you can find on YouTube:
Guitarist Jake E. Lee burns up the fretboard onstage while Ozzy Osbourne
claps to the beat in front of thousands of rabid fans.

Except that something's not right
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqtk6kKTlDM>  -- the shredding solo
emanating from Lee's guitar sounds as if it was going through an actual
shredder, while the rest of the clip is devoid of background noise, save for
Ozzy's comedic, overenthusiastic clapping.

Of course, that's the joke (which, admittedly, loses some of its punch in
its translation to text). Lee's a legitimate metal guitar hero, and Ozzy's
not supposed to sound as if he's clapping to himself inside his bathroom.

But the overdubbed "shreds" videos -- of which there are nearly a dozen
skewering the likes of Eddie <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXbCt_1mrak>
Van Halen, Eric <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCzUMjCykn8>  Clapton and
Slash <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEwIRZ9pLCM>  -- have struck a chord
on YouTube. Countless posters have praised the creator of the hilarious
clips for pairing ax-wielding rock gods with god-awful guitar work, all
while making it look real.

The man behind the videos is Santeri Ojala, a 32-year-old from Tampere,
Finland, whose YouTube user name is StSanders
<http://www.youtube.com/user/StSanders> . One day a few months ago, Ojala
happened to catch a Steve Vai performance on TV while the sound was off. It
looked "kinda funny," Ojala wrote in an e-mail interview, so he grabbed his
guitar.

Ojala, a media artist whose work has included large audio and video
installations in highway underpasses and other public areas, said he creates
the videos by playing along and editing, strumming "as long as needed to
make it sound funny." The process takes at least a couple hours, depending
on how many extra sounds are needed.

The videos' titles are simple -- after "Steve Vai shreds
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsXS5fCq4LU> " came "Steve Vai
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s3Sk8o3xaU>  shreds in Denver," both in
April, with "Metallica shreds <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttaqVd0rOjA> "
a month later. It wasn't until the Metallica parody that Ojala noticed the
surprising amount of attention the videos were getting. The Metallica clip
has been viewed more than 140,000 times in the past few months.

Although musicians tend to particularly appreciate the videos, Ojala, who
has played guitar for 15 years, said he had no particular audience in mind
when he first started making them.

"It was more like a 'Let's see who will be fooled?' kind of thought," Ojala
wrote. "Many musicians and studio personnel have been fooled too, I must
add."

Indeed, after links to the videos were posted on the forums of Gearslutz.com
<http://www.gearslutz.com> , a site dedicated to discussions of recording
equipment and music production, even some musicians were caught criticizing
the (as one poster put it) "insanely bad" stylings of Clapton and Van Halen
-- only to later laugh along with everyone else once properly informed of
the gag.

"If I actually played like that, perhaps I could finally be on MTV and in
Rolling Stone and have a real career," said Ojala's original target,
virtuoso guitarist Vai, through a spokeswoman for his label, Epic Records.
Vai thought the videos were hilarious, she said.

The consensus on the Gearslutz forums was that the overdubbing wasn't just
bad -- it was convincingly bad. Vahe Manoukian, 35, the lead singer and
guitarist for Los Angeles band Nu-Tra <http://www.nu-tra.com>  and the
person who posted the videos to Gearslutz, said he was convinced the
overdubber was likely a pretty good guitarist in real life.

"It's probably just as hard to make it wrong as it is to make it right,"
Manoukian said.

While the videos got a lot of raves on the Gearslutz site, Manoukian said
the reaction was decidedly different when he shared them with his
non-musician friends. In short, they didn't get it. Oh well -- their loss.

"I'm a fan of their guitar work, but it's just funny," Manoukian said of the
parodied performers. "These guys have been on top of the world. Their facial
expressions and how serious they are -- for those horrible noises to come
out of their guitars, it's just funny. It's funny to see them in that light,
as a horrible guitar player. It's refreshing, actually. They're mortals
now."

 

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