BAND MEMBER BIOGRAPHY - SARMAD
Full name: Sarmad Faraz
Date of birth: 21st April, 1980
Trivia: "I once had to play a 10 minutes lead for Roadhouse blues at a gig arranged by FAST at the NIC while moby was busy headbanging with the audience".
I love transformers and driving around.
Weapons of choice: Lead & rhythm guitar: Ibanez RG570 & the poor whammy bar. Backing vocals.
Equipment: "Ibanez RG570" electric guitar, "Line 6 Spider II" 75 watt combo amplifier, "Peavey Deuce VT" Series combo tube amplifier with 2 x 10" Speakers (120watts), Line 6 "PODxt direct recording box" guitar amp simulator, "Boss DS1" distortion pedal, "Jim Dunlop Crybaby" classic Wah pedal, Assorted plectrums
Influences: Van Halen, Steve Morse, Joe Satriani, Deep Purple, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Johnson, Pearl Jam, Jeff Beck, Dream Theater, Candlebox, Collective Soul, Aziz Ibrahim (Love this guy), Ritchie Kotzen ... the list goes on.
Q) How did you learn to play the guitar?
A) I'm self taught. All the credit goes to Sheheryar Chaudhry who lent his beat up acoustic guitar to me.
Q) Do you give guitar lessons?
A) Occasionally. Though, I am planning on giving formal guitar lessons after the album release.
Q) You're also producing the album, aren't you? How are you doing that? How did you learn how to do it?
A) Yes, I am recording and producing Corduroy's album. I have a home-based setup (if you want to call it that), where we are recording digitally on a modest PC running Cubase SX. I've learned through trial and error (mostly error!), tons of articles, and lack of better options (financial!) :)
Q) I have some stuff I want to record, can I come to your studio to record it?
A) For demos, yes, but not for album recordings, currently.
Q) The guitar leads you play live: how do you come up with them?! Do you practice them beforehand, or is it all spontaneous? And if its all spontaneous, how does the rest of the band know when to move on?
A) Most of the leads I play live are spontaneous and improvised. How do i come up with them? Lots of practice and jamming. Corduroy has played countless gigs and we've jammed a lot during the process so a certain level of chemistry has developed to anticipate each other.
Q) What kind of effects do you use for your guitar? Live and on the album?
A) My live setup is very simple: a simple Boss DS1 distortion pedal feeding a Peavey 120 watt combo tube amp with spring reverb. I use a Jim Dunlop Crybaby Wah pedal to compliment my leads.
Do you have any more questions for Sarmad? Send your questions to us at bandfaq@corduroyonline.com.
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