Kevin Schwartz started playing guitar when I was 12 years old. His dad bought him a $5 no-name acoustic guitar from a garage sale and told me to start playing. He just discovered Metallica and this fueled my urge to learn how to play the songs that had me constantly headbanging. Kevin formed his first band Iridium in Middle School with his 4 best friends. The first show they ever played was for there 8th grade graduation. There were close to 1,000 people there: 300 in the graduating class including mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandmas, and grandpas... and it's still one of the biggest shows he has ever played. When Iridium broke up, he was left without a band for a few months until his friend asked him to play for his death metal band Abomination. This is the first time he had a chance to play music with Oscar Ramirez. They were good friends in high school but had never played in a band together till then. He stayed in Abomination for about 2 years and then left the band to form the death/thrash band Disintegrator. We released 2 EP's, one of which you can download for free at (http://www.mediafire.com/?mmdfmmz3myj). They played many local shows and a few big fests with bands such as Exodus, 3 Inches of Blood, Agent Steel, and Helstar. After 4 years with Disintegrator the members mutually decided to put the band on hiatus. It was after Disintegrator that I got the offer to join the mighty Pathology.
Kevin's style of guitar playing comes from all different styles of rock and metal. He is completely self-taught and learned everything he knew from watching guitarists play or listening to music. As long as he have been playing guitar he has been working to improve his soloing. He gained influence from many virtuosos such as Marty Friedman, Jason Becker, Paul Gilbert, Guthrie Govan, Greg Howe, Eric Johnson, and John Petrucci. Kevin quickly began utilizing a variety of techniques such as sweep picking, legato, finger tapping, and string skipping. When he picks up a guitar I will usually warm up with some finger strengthening exercises for 5 to 10 minutes, then begin improvising leads using the different scales I have picked up. I found this is a great way to improve one's playing ability. Improvising forces your mind to think on the spot and helps you connect specific licks and scale patterns to each other. This ultimately increases your musical knowledge and ability from the realization of these connections that you were not aware of before. If I can give one piece of advice to a guitarist, it would be to practice your licks at a speed that you can play them CLEANLY.
When he was first learning Necrophagist's "Foul Body Autopsy" in high school, there was no way I could play that song up to speed without it sounding like complete shit. He practiced each riff slowly and began piecing the song together. It took more than a month before he was able to play along with the CD and nail very single note. If you want to play clean and fast you have to play slow first, and eventually work your way up to the speed that you desire.
