Steph gives an inside view on songwriting within Deftones, complete with e Custom ESP guitar on show. Taken from Guitarist DVD-3. For more guitar news, advice and interviews, and to find out more about the magazine, visit http://www.guitarist.co.uk

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42 Replies to “Songwriting Battles with Deftones’ Stephen Carpenter Guitarist Magazine”

  1. The dichotomy between Stephen and Chino fascinates me so much. It's amazing how despite their differences in taste, writing habits, collaborative approaches how they're generally always butting heads, this band remains one of the most impactful, influential, innovative, relevant bands today and they've been working together since the 80s.?

  2. It's funny….if I just looked at Stephen, I would (unfairly) conclude he wouldn't write music I'd be into listening to. When it comes to the guitar, I prefer stuff like My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground…really psychedelic shoe-gaze sounding drones and riffs. But….I fucking love Deftones…and Stephen's playing. He's a metal guy at heart…but his songwriting has MUCH more of an idiosyncratic pathos edge to it than your standard "nu-metal" band. Deftones are one of the few bands who are still making truly creative music within the "hard rock" genre.?

  3. Subjectivity.

    Stephen's riffs and songs are beautiful, but they exist on an entirely different plane than Misha's and Tosin's. None are above the other, they are entirely on different playing fields.

    If anything I'd say Misha and Stephen are more comparable, but Tosin? Man, that guy is on a completely different mountain.

    But hey, why feel the need to bring it into a contest. Those three are three of the best guitarists we have today. If they ever collaborated it would be fucking insane.

  4. I know 100% what I just said. You are the one who misunderstood it.
    Sure, those guys run circles around Stephen when it comes to technical stuff, but Stephen Carpenter's songwriting is on another level compared to Jeff Loomis, Tosin Abasi, Misha Mansoor etc.

  5. I myself am only just getting started on music theory – even though I can play pretty fast challenging stuff, up until now I had no clue what I was doing, hahaha! I think Jeff Loomis is quite the diverse guitarist, though. I think he could pull off pretty much what he wanted on a classical guitar, which is also true for Tosin Abasi. Which of course can't be said about all shredders.

  6. You can't compare Loomis and Abasi to Carpenter, totally different style. Of course, Loomis and Abasi are obviously better guitarists, but they do their thing, Carpenter does his – and they're all awesome in their own way.

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