Open-Source Guitar
“The rock-star attitude is, ‘I’m the best, here’s my music. Nobody is better than me.’ A modern attitude would be, ‘This is what I’m able to do now, [so] here are all the tracks.’ I’m sure somebody’s going to come up with an incredible idea…”
“IMPROVISING WHILE READING THE COMMENTS IS MY new late-night practice routine.” This is a somewhat comical but certainly zeitgeist-tapping caption to a recent Instagram post from shred king-cum-social media influencer Kiko Loureiro. The accompanying video is the kicker. If you’re a longtime fan of Loureiro — who first rose up in the Nineties with Brazilian metal icons Angra — you know his painfully scrunched brow has nothing to do with his chromatic waggling, or the outsized bends he’s stretching across the sunburst Ibanez AZ on his lap. That’s just him trying to keep up with the mile-a-minute scroll of messages from eager fans, likely chiming in with anything from a “Sick lick, Kiko!” to “Check out my band at the link.”
This is all to say that the internet is a hell of a place, but at least Loureiro’s having fun with it. Though he
