Bio:
I am a professional prog rock/metal guitarist and composer based in Edmonton, AB, Canada. I have 19 years of playing experience, on and off stage, both solo and with a variety of bands.
In 2009 I released, together with other 13 artists, the compilation CD "Under the Same Sky", distributed worldwide in 10.000 copies. I am regularly collaborating with local acting companies for musical theater productions, the most recent being "The Rocky Horror Show'' in 2009 (with "Vi Va Voom!'') and "Hair'' in 2010 (with "Patient Mango Theatre'').
I am the author of "Sweeping Blues: 101 sweep picking licks for Blues Guitar'', an innovative course that applies the cutting-edge technique of sweep-picking to the grittiness and sincerity of the blues.
I am also collaborating regularly as article writer with websites such as ultimate-guitar.com, cyberfret.com, metalguitarlessons.net, insaneguitar.com, guitar9.com, and MyGuitarWorkshop.com
I am a proud endorser of AMT Electronics, the best distortion pedals on the planet. My pedals of choice are the SS-20, the F1, and the DT-2.
Composing music is one of my loves, and right now I'm writing and recording material for my first full-length album (listen to some original songs here).
As a teacher I am holding the Guitar Results Intensive Program (GRIP) in Edmonton, AB as the main teacher and I am available for private and group lessons. I am graduate of the Tom Hess' Music Career Mentoring Program and is currently involved in the Tom Hess' Elite Guitar Teacher Inner Circle.
Among my favorite musician and influences are: Dream Theater, Pink Floyd, Joe Satriani, Andy Timmons, Mike Oldfield, Jean-Michel Jarre, Deine Lakaien, Litfiba, Nightwish, Astor Piazzolla, Hans Zimmer.
I also have a PhD in Theoretical Physics and teach at university in Edmonton.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
"For those who want to build an explosive vocabulary of killer blues phrases and simultaneously achieve ridiculous sweep picking chops I highly recommend Tommaso's book 101 Sweep Picking Licks for Blues Guitar. This book will keep you inspired and motivated for years to come!"
- Nick Layton, Professional Guitarist and Author.
"101 Sweep Picking Licks for Blues Guitar is a no-nonsense book packed full of useful information. Most instructional products today seem to be filled with material to reach a particular page number and sacrifice quality while doing this. Not this product! It gets right to the point and delivers comprehensive information that is valuable for any guitarist whether they play blues or not. Excellent work Tommaso!!"
- Zack Uidl, Professional Guitarist and Composer
"The first book of its kind to cover an innovative approach to blues playing is here. Tommaso does a great job of breaking down and integrating a common metal guitar technique into the structure of the blues style, enabling guitarists to play blues with the highest levels of creativity and expression . Fans of Eric Johnson, Guthrie Govan, Scott Henderson and Frank Gambale will find a lot of awesome ideas from this book to expand upon their stock blues licks and phrasing ideas and take their blues soloing to a much higher level."
- Mike Philippov, Guitarist and Instructor
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).