DIMITRY SCOPELLITI – The Greek/Italian Guitar Hero
1. How did you get in to the music scene?
I started playing the guitar at the age of 13, I come from a musical family and lots of friends of mine were in a band at that time.I listened to lots of blues cause my dad had a big vinyl collection and I liked Queen & Acdc at that time. Then I got into Iron Maiden, Metallica, Pantera, Nirvana then came Death Metal, Prog, jazz and I went deeply into composition.
2. How was your experience with the band Arcadia?
I founded Arcadia together with the drummer in 1995. We played some local gigs as a metallica cover band, in 1996 we made our first demo recording some original compositions, after 3 demos we got signed and toured the Us first and Europe later several times. We recorded 5 albums in total, now we’re in hiatus, we might be starting recording and touring soon though.
3. Are you satisfied with your studies at the European Music College in Milan. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being an educated musician in contrast with self taught musicians?
When I joined the music college I was already 21 and as my teacher said at that time “already an experienced guitar player”; I learned the technique and opened my mind to genres of music as funky, jazz, blues, hardrock and even pop. I don’t think there’s any disadvantages in being an educated musician as long as you don’t confuse music technique with composition.Those are 2 different things. Technique is just and only a tool for playing music, I see a lot of confusion nowadays, especially on YouTube, both between musicians and fans.
4. What do you remember from your first personal album Evolution in 2008?
It was the beginning of my solo career, I recorded it in my bedroom when I was still living in Italy. Still proud of that album.It was the first album I entirely wrote and produced. I became endorsed by Peavey and Morley thanks to that album and the critique loved it, I just and only received positive reviews of it.
5. Is there still a market gap for instrumental albums, commercially speaking?
There are not so many musicians out there who made it big playing this kind of music. I sell better in some countries than others. I’ve been on tour in China last autumn, people love me and my music over there. I’ll probably tour more and more in Asia in General, I sell more albums in China and Japan comparing to Europe and the US for example. I think that in this kind of music you need to come up with something new, eventually people will notice it and spread the word around you and your music.
6. How did you approach the structure of each song for your recent album The Silent Watcher?
Between 2016 and 2017 I wrote around 25/30 songs recorded in a demo form. I chose which songs were supposed to be released on the album and then I started arranging those demos, in the meanwhile I reconnected with both Fabio Decovich (bass, already with Arcadia between 2000 and 2001) and Enzo Rotondaro on drums.I sent them the songs and they sent me their parts as “DI wav files” (bass) and “midi” (drums), I assembled those files with the rest of the music and mixed/mastered the whole thing in my studios in Norway.Then I had some more guests in mind. One of these is Marco Minnemann, probably the best drummer at the moment, I wrote “The Mirror” for our collaboration and I invited Jørgen Munkeby from Shining for playing saxophone on this track as well as Alfonso Pascarella on fretless bass. The result is a crazy prog-jazz-metal fully experimental track with lots of time signature changes, Marco’s drumming is of course superb, Alfonso fretless bass reminds me a lot Steve Di Giorgio, Death era. Jørgen is giving a total different dimension to the song, bringing some more experimental jazz to the plate. For my collaboration with Mattias IA Eklundh I chose the song “The Silent Watcher”. I truly love his solo in the middle part of the song. Mattias is one of my 3 absolute favourite guitar players ever.
7. What was the most important challenge during the recording of your album?
Everything went super smooth during the whole writing/recording process. My goal was to write a great album and raise the bar production wise, also I wanted to do something new comparing to what I have done previously. I wanted to give a recognizable character to the album, like a trademark or something.
8. What is your competitive advantage (technically speaking) compared with the other guitar players?
I don’t know, music for me it’s just and only an artistic expression of who we are and what we feel at a certain moment, even if I think I have a good technique, the only important thing for me is the music and composition. Anything I do technically is Never just for the sake of it but always at the service of the song.
9. Do you have Greek roots?
Yes I do, my name is Greek, my family is from the south of Italy which long time ago used to be greek (“Magna Grecia”).
Thank you so much for the interview, I invite anyone to follow me on my site and social media: www.demetrioscopelliti.com
