How it all started

Well…
You may have Guessed!: My name is Remy Hansen! Born in the Netherlands ( The Haque) in 1974.

I started playing Guitar when I was 10. My Father kind of inspired me to pick up the guitar. He got me my first electric guitar ,which was an old Ibanez Roadstar series 2 start type guitar.I never really played an acoustic back then. There was always Rock ‘n’ Roll music around the house. The Beach Boys, Dave Edmunds, Status Quo and The Shadows.

My first years of playing was all about playing Rhythm Guitar, Learning Chords etc… NO SOLO Guitar! That kinda gave me my strong / solid background when it comes to just figuring out stuff . That all Changed when Guns n’ Roses “ Appetite for Destruction came out! Wow! I didn’t realize one could bend strings! Distortion was also new to me, so was the concept of tuning your guitar down a half step ! Or even more…

Things kinda got out of hand from there… I bought the Cherry Lane Tablature book for AFD , and locked myself away from the world of school. Well, I did go to school , but only because I HAD to.

After a year or two things got even more out of hand! Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert …Read on!

Like I said, after the first years of “ just ” playing Chords, I was blown away by Guns n’ Roses! I took the Tablature book, and started playing everything it said in there! I WOULDN”T settle for less! It had to be exactly what the book said. No Stripped down ( easier) version of that. That’s also something I say to Everybody who asks me how I play or practise: First Play it EXACTLY like it is, before trying to do it your own way! That way you’ll become acquainted with all the styles and techniques used out there, before ending up with something that’s not really it! Sure, there are exceptions! But Hey, I guess there’s no new Eddie’s or Yngwie’s or Jimi’s out there right now! If you know what I mean!

Then there’s /was always people telling me to play from the heart!( they don’t tell me that anymore…) What the hell does that mean?! When people play I guess they Always play from the heart ! You put your soul your everything into it! Even if you don’t know your theory whatsoever. The way YOU play makes it special! Even if you’re covering a song…

then , in 1986 was the release of the Movie “ Crossroads” , starring Karate kid : Ralph Macchio, and some other folks. One of them made his apearance at the end of the movie playing : Jack Butler! Little I knew at that time it turned out to be one of my all time favourite Musicians( Yes , Musicians!) : Steve Vai! Man ! Those Clasical sounding Arpeggio’s of the Final battle blew me Away! I didn’t know how he played that! Even with my good ol’ Ibanez Rock and Play, I couldn’t hear it…
‘cause all that I’d been doing was playing Pentatonic stuff and some scales which I didn’t know the Names of…
So I decided to look beyond the Gibson Les Paul guitars I saw on MTV Musicvideos, I went to look in Musicshops for Cooler guitars with 24 frets! I fell in love With the IBANEZ JEM! The one with the straight monkey grip all black with piramid inlays!
This was the guitar I needed to go further on my musical quest!
So I did Paper rounds, Mowed some lawns and washed some cars etc! You get the idea! And Finally I bought this 2 thousand dutch guilder guitar!
And man! It was insane ! All the stuff I could do what that guitar! The Tremolo system worked like a charm! So My 5 hour daily routine of playing went up to 6-7 hours a day!
And I also got Myself some cool magazines!
Guitar World and Guitar for the Practising musician! Those 2 magazines were my teachers back then! Because I never took any lessons actually.There were cool articles about scales and Chords which I had never heard of…

A few years later a Local musicstore held a competition. Guess what piece we had to play!
Eugene’s Trickbag! The Final piece from the movie “ Crossroads”!And they handed out the sheet music too! both in Standard notation and Tablature!
I was Happy!

So I practised it for a while and decided to enter this thing! The winner would get a
Nice Fernandes electric guitar…

I won the Compition! They handed me the guitar … Well…. ooh ,aah…. hummm… I wasn’t really impressed with the thing…
So I went nextdoor , to the other musicstore, And I traded it in for an Ibanez RG model! The same day!

Next I found out about a really cool player That goes by the name of : Paul Gilbert
His playing terified me beyond belief! He has had the biggest inluence on my playing !Even now, He still has …So I found out that there were Instructional videos on the market by him Released by REH Videos…
I bought “ Intense Rock 1&2 “ and a whole other bunch by : Ritchie Kotzen, Yngwie, Joey Tafolla etc…

And a whole bunch of Album Transcriptions:
Joe Satriani’s : Surfing with the Alien, Flying in a Blue dream,And his lesson book! all of Yngwie’s books, Steve Vai’s : Passion and Warfare, Eat ‘em and Smile and Skysraper.
And would play these “ Note for Note” No Compromises…

I’m pretty sure there were way more then that! But I can’t remember them all!

At that time ( 1990ish) I was really strugling with trying to understand the Chords / Scales and how they related to eachother. But it slowly came to me…
I could see diatonic chord progressions and the Names of what scales to play over them. When playing some non-diatonic stuff ( key-Changes) , I looked and listened very closely to Joe Satriani’s “Flying in a Blue dream” , and songs like his “ Lords of Karma”.

Now I started to know and understand WHAT I was playing, and I could Apply it!

Around 1991 I started working in A Local Musicstore ( the one where I traded The Guitar I won), and during that time I met and Jammed/ Played with some very Interesting Guitarists! Steve Lynch , Neal Schon , Michael Angelo Batio to Name a few.
I hung out with Michael Angelo after his Clinic and Showed him my New Guitar , The Ibanez PGM 100 which I bought that same day! We both had Beers and played for about an hour! Swapping ideas around. That was a pretty intense moment! No Digital Cams yet ! Back then…

At That time People/ Customers from the shop started to show appreciation for my playing and asked me if I could teach them. So I started doing that. It gave me a lot more insight on guitar playing! Even my own playing!

Also working in the musicstore had it’s advantages ! I could get my gear a lot cheaper!

In the Years that I worked there I bought another Ibanez Jem, The Green multicolor, An Ibanez Universe Multicolor, an Ibanez PGM 500,  A Yamaha Attitude Limited 2 In Blue, ADA Pre-amps , Digitech Stuff and an Ovation Limited model. I couldn’t keep everything unfortunatly, so I traded a lot around…

 In 1991-1992 I discovered the Prog/metal band “ Dream Theater”, That shook things up quite a bit! I really liked  John Petrucci’s Playing! It was clean, Precise , Emotional, Techninal etc…

I remember transcribing “ Metropolis pt 1 “ and “ Erotomania “! No Internet , Powertab , Guitarpro back then! I did use my Ibanez “ Rock an’ Play” to figure out some of the dense, Complex parts in their music! Nowadays one can just look it up on the internet and search for the “ Tabs” , and practise it! But Beware…. One should also UNDERSTAND what one is playing!

Then in 1995 came the fax that changed my live around …

Read The Thailand Story……