“Marty Friedman taught me to pick phrases that help tell the story. Resist the temptation to use your songs to show off your fastest licks”: Nita Strauss on how she stepped up her game for The Call of the Void

It’s been a rollercoaster couple of years for Nita Strauss. In October 2021, she topped the American rock charts with Dead Inside, which saw her team up with Disturbed vocalist David Draiman. Last summer, the American guitarist – who made history in 2018 as Ibanez’s first female signature artist – left her position in the Alice Cooper band to join forces with pop star Demi Lovato. And now, having toured again with Alice, she returns with her long-awaited second solo album, The Call Of The Void. 

While the predecessor, 2018’s Controlled Chaos, was a completely instrumental affair, her latest venture sees her going the other way with more vocal-led tracks, including features with Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), Anders Fridén (In Flames) and even Alice Cooper himself. So what made her decide to switch things up?

“It started out as one or two collaborations and then it just snowballed,” Nita says. “I guess it just evolved that way. At one point my label said, ‘Why not just release two separate albums?’ But I felt it would end up giving more attention to the one with all the features and radio songs. The instrumentals, which are what I mainly love and want to do, would have fallen by the wayside.

“I worked very hard to make the album I wanted to make. My label were very supportive. They signed me as an instrumental solo artist with no inclination that I’d give them a song like Dead Inside, which ended up being a number one song. They even suggested doing the first half instrumental and the second with vocals, or vice versa, and I said, ‘No, because I want to lay it out in a certain way and tell a story’. They listened and it ended up exactly how it should be…”

Talking to TG from her home studio, Nita discusses the key tracks on the album and the creative process behind them…

The opening track, Summer Storm, builds very quickly from downtuned clean guitars to neoclassical harmonised leads and then triplet riffing…

“It was partly inspired by the first song on DragonForce’s Sonic Firestorm album, which is called My Spirit Will Go On. It does this thing where it builds and builds, starting off with a clean guitar and going from there. I love songs that do that. Funnily enough, Summer Storm wasn’t necessarily written to be the first track on the record but it came out so cool I felt it could be my version of that DragonForce opener.”

There are parts of your solo that utilise two-string ‘mini sweeps’ – which can help cover a lot of melodic distance very quickly without going into full arpeggio mode…

“I picked that stuff up from Yngwie Malmsteen, probably when I was learning his Rising Force solo. I can do the three- and five-string sweeps in different positions, but there’s something extra cool about those little ones. I like it that you call them mini sweeps, because that’s what they are! 

“They’re so easy to throw in and very playable live too, which is key. It’s easy to sit in the studio and do these gigantic stretches but it’s different when you’ve got to go on tour and play that shit! I want to write things I can execute well on stage. It’s okay to go a little further, sure, but you can’t go too far!”

What’s your best tip for making these sweeps sound so effortless?

“It’s all about starting off slowly and cleanly. Then you start doing it a little less slowly and keep going from there – don’t think ‘fast’ in terms of how you imagine it, think ‘less slow’ every time you slightly increase the tempo. That’s the only way you can get fast and still sound very clean. It’s very painstaking. Honestly, getting good at sweep picking for me was like rolling a heavy ball up a steep hill. It has to be baby steps, one bit at a time.”

You’ve always described yourself as more of a legato player, but judging from some of the alternate picking runs on the opening track, you’ve really been working on your right hand.

“I still don’t think of myself as a good alternate picker! It’s never been a strong point. I don’t know if there was one particular exercise that helped. I just knew I wanted to approach this record as a more rounded player. I took more time with it, too. 

“I made Controlled Chaos in three months. This one took three years, from a very different perspective in terms of how I played, having vocalists, working with outside writers to help me understand the subtleties and nuances of creating radio songs that are completely different to the shred stuff I’m known for.”

Maybe some of Paul Gilbert’s legendary exercises came in handy though, right?

“You know, there’s a fast alternate lick in that first verse that I probably lifted from his parts in Racer X’s Technical Difficulties! It definitely has that Paul Gilbert vibe to it. I wasn’t sat there trying to copy anything but I guess you’re right… there were definitely a lot of Paul Gilbert exercises happening in my house over quarantine!”

The solo in Digital Bullets has some wide interval taps that are almost keyboard-like.

“Yeah, they are quite wide! I have to put my guitar on my knees for that one! That song was a co-write with Johnny Andrews, who has worked with Motionless In White, Halestorm and others. It was my first time working with an outside writer. I’d done co-writes for other people but never for myself. He asked what made me angry and I said, ‘All these motherfuckers on the Internet who tell everybody else how to live their lives but don’t have any real-world experience!’ 

“Like all the detractors from the Demi Lovato thing last year… They’re not actual musicians working in the industry. They’re just keyboard warriors, firing digital bullets from behind a screen but never being strong enough to say those things to someone’s face. Crafting this song and solo was a big ‘Fuck you’ to all the haters. I think it was Johnny who said, ‘Why don’t you have an Eruption moment as a big middle finger to these people?’ So I came up with that!” 

You generally tend to stick with your Ibanez Jiva signature guitars and either Marshall amps or Boss multi-effects when you play live. What are we hearing on this album?

“I would say 85 per cent of the record was done with the original JivaX, which came out in 2020. When I was designing the range, versatility was the first thing in my mind. When I used to go to the studio as a younger player, I would bring this guitar for that and another for something else. It’s like you’d need a Les Paul for rhythms, your Ibanez for leads, an acoustic for cleans and so on.

“And I wanted to bring just one instrument that could do everything. The Jiva, for me, is that guitar. I worked closely with Larry DiMarzio on the Pandemonium pickups, which are a huge part of the sound. The African mahogany body rings so true, especially because the Pandemonium pickups are really hot. But if you split the coils, it can sound so clean. And the ebony fretboard makes your fingers feel like they are just bouncing right off it.”

So what are the other guitars we are hearing and what did you put them through? 

“The other 15 per cent was done using an RG with an EverTune bridge, which was great for the lower rhythms. If you’re in drop C, it’s very easy to throw the string a little out of tune if you’re picking hard – and I chose to pick some of the riffs really hard.

“There’s also a little bit of seven-string, like on the Alice Cooper track Winner Takes All, and layered into some other tracks. Using digital gear made it really straightforward going back and forth between different studios. I used the Archetype: Tim Henson by Neural DSP and, of course, the Gojira plugin because everyone loves that. The rest was done using my Kemper live tones, which has all my Marshalls profiled into it.”

Shred legend and former Megadeth star Marty Friedman guests on the grand finale, Surfacing. What did you learn from working with him?

“Talk about a storyteller! I’ve learned so much from Marty over the years. He knows what he wants. This collaboration was such an education for me, as a sort-of young guitar player at the foot of the master! The first metal song I ever heard had Marty playing guitar on it. We fleshed out the whole concept together. 

“I sent him some riffs and then he sent back this crazy song with his own ideas. Funnily enough, there was a quote I read from him recently which said something like, ‘Nita’s not afraid of a little hard work!’ referring to how this song went back and forth. I wanted him to critique me…”

And what kind of advice did he give you, exactly? 

“He would tell me how I could make melodies better and what notes I should use instead of the ones I’d initially chosen. I came out the other side a better player. He sent pages of detailed notes and through him I learned you have to know what your story is and what you’re trying to say or convey. Pick phrases that help tell the story. Resist the temptation to use your songs to show off your fastest licks. 

“It’s about the message of the music rather than a bunch of notes you can play fast one after another. I had Marty’s Exotic Metal Guitar instructional DVD growing up. Honestly, I learned so much from that – as well as John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline, Yngwie’s Play Loud or Frank Gambale’s Modes: No More Mystery… which is how I learned you can go from A natural minor to G Mixolydian or C Ionian and move between those shapes. 

“It’s just a case of taking a little walk down the neck through the different modes of the same scale. That’s when the whole fretboard opened up for me. All of these greats shaped what us guitar players do now!”

• The Call Of The Void is out now via Sumerian.