Italian guitarist MARCO SFOGLI, known for his work on DREAM THEATER vocalist JAMES LaBRIE's solo albums Elements Of Persuasion, Static Impulse and Impermanent Resonance, is featured in a new interview with MusicPlayers.com. An excerpt is availabel below:

MPc: When I listen to your work on the LaBrie records I definitely hear a lot more dropped-tuning than in your solo work. Tell me a little bit about—let’s focus on the latest ones, Static Impulse and Impermanent Resonance, and the guitar tones and the guitars used for those records.

MS: "Well, the whole songwriting changed between the past three records. I mean Elements of Persuasion was still an experimental record, which had some prog elements. On Static Impulse, Matt’s listening changed to a more modern metal vibe, he got into the whole gothic metal genre, and bands like IN FLAMES or SOILWORK, (who) used those lower tuning on their guitars. So the goal was to make a record that sounded kind of like that.

Starting with Static Impulse that was a cool record to do because we went all together to Sweden to track—all of us but James, who tracked from Canada. So we went all in the same studio… I mean, it was me, it was Matt, Ray Riendeau on bass and Peter (Wildoer) on drums, all together in the studio, tracking our parts. And for that one, I used—well the lowest tuned guitar was drop A, and I used it on songs like 'Mislead' or… gosh I can’t remember the song, I remember just 'Mislead'. But anyway that was the lowest tuned song; it was standard B and drop A.

On Impermanent Resonance, the goal was to be even more authentic, in terms of gothic metal thing, you know. So most of the bands he was listening to were like DEAD BY APRIL; they were even using eight-string guitars. But I just said, for me, an eight-strings is like having a baseball bat in my hands. I can’t really play it. I tried. I had Ibanez send me a couple of models, but they didn’t really stick to me because just the neck is just too big.

So I said, let me experiment a bit with tunings, because the writing process for James’s songs is quite different. Matt writes pretty much ninety-nine percent of the stuff, even the guitar parts, and they have to be exactly that way on the record. I just take a step back, with James’s records, because I trust Matt a hundred percent, I trust Matt’s parts a hundred percent. So I tend to stick to his parts. And for some of his songs he uses some really low tunings, and I had to figure out how to do that. And what I did, I took one of my seven strings, which is a baritone actually, and I tuned it down to G. So that’s really low. It was really, really low. And it was hard to keep the guitar in tune, because it’s a guitar with a Floyd Rose tremolo. So even using a super thick string will make it like a rubber band."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Sfogli is featured in a video clip promoting his new Jamtrack Central debut, Essential Metal Vol.1. Check it out below:

Following is Jamtrack Central's overview of the package:

"2012 brought us a superb list of debut artists releasing jam track packages, so we are delighted to add another in the form of the metal machine that is Marco Sfogli. Marco is already a household name in the world of guitar players and has a superb following. His debut album There's Hope was a phenomenal success and since then he has worked on numerous projects including albums with Dream Theater's James LaBrie.

His debut jam track package, Essential Metal Vol.1 features three backing tracks that were created by another JTC artist, Martin Miller. Marco specifically wanted three styles of tracks to jam over including an 80's style track, an Andy Timmons style track and a John Petrucci style track. So Martin got creating and then Marco let rip over them. And the results speak for themselves. These tracks are immense, and we think that Martin and Marco are a jam track match made in heaven!

As ever, the package comes with the full tracks, backing tracks, extended jam tracks, full length videos and complete tab and notation in both PDF and Powertab formats and is available to download for just £12.99."

Guitar tabs and backing tracks can be found here.