Joe Satriani – Flying In A Blue Dream

In the YouTube video "Joe Satriani - Flying In A Blue Dream (Satriani LIVE!)" by mangus, Joe Satriani can be seen playing an Ibanez S8QM 8-String Guitar.

In the YouTube video "Joe Satriani - Flying In A Blue Dream (Satriani LIVE!)" by mangus, Joe Satriani is seen playing an Ibanez RX20 Electric Guitar.

In the live performance video of "Flying In A Blue Dream," Joe Satriani is seen using an Ibanez Destroyer guitar.

Used on Not of This Earth, Surfing With the Alien and Flying in a Blue Dream. Among online sources, it is first mentioned in this January 2012 Vintage Guitar interview.

Do you have a favorite tone or setup?

I don’t think so. I’d say just about anything through a Marshall is really good. There are so many different ones, but the basic Marshall is the 'kitchen sink' sound – it gives you everything. More than you want, maybe! It’s the most revealing amp you’ll ever plug into, I think.

Early in my career, I tried to run from it. On the first couple of solo records… for Not of This Earth I didn’t even bring one into the studio. I was such a contrarian, I remember calling [recording engineer] John Cuniberti and saying, 'I’m gonna use whatever is in the closet.' I thought that was a cool, artsy way of doing things. What happened to be in the closet was an early-’70s Pro Reverb, and I just plugged little (effects) boxes into it. We’d record quietly and use microphones like a C12A, Boss pedals, and early tube drivers made by Paul Chandler.

Satriani later stated the C12A's use on "Flying in a Blue Dream" in this December 26, 2011 Tumblr post.

DAVUDTESCH asked: I've read that you used a Mesa Mark IIC+ on Flying in a Blue Dream... Was it just on the song or the whole album? I ask cuz I love the voicing you get out of your tone in the beginning of part 2 of the Bells of Lal.. When I'm dialing my tone if it feels similar then I know I'm in the ballpark. I use that and the riff from Crystal Planet... those are my tone-testers :)

On that song I was using a silver face Fender Pro Reverb amp with a Boss DS-1 distortion pedal, and put an AKG C12-A microphone up close to the grill.

The use of the C12A on Surfing With the Alien was stated in this February 17, 2017 Music Radar interview about the album.

“We used a [Roland] JC-120 for almost all of Echo. John had a very clever way of recording the JC-120 with six different microphones, an [AKG] C12A and this and that, and using the DS-1. It was just really interesting how we got a lot of mileage out of that amp. It was the perfect antidote to the Marshall stack or the little Silverface Pro Reverb or Princeton that was there that we used for a lot of the album, too."

Used on Not of This Earth, Surfing With the Alien and "Flying In A Blue Dream". Among online sources, the amp is first mentioned by Satriani in this January 2012 interview with Vintage Guitar Magazine:

"There are so many different ones, but the basic Marshall is the 'kitchen sink' sound – it gives you everything. More than you want, maybe! It’s the most revealing amp you’ll ever plug into, I think.

Early in my career, I tried to run from it. On the first couple of solo records… for Not of This Earth I didn’t even bring one into the studio. I was such a contrarian, I remember calling [recording engineer] John Cuniberti and saying, 'I’m gonna use whatever is in the closet.' I thought that was a cool, artsy way of doing things. What happened to be in the closet was an early-’70s Pro Reverb, and I just plugged little (effects) boxes into it. We’d record quietly and use microphones like a C12A, Boss pedals, and early tube drivers made by Paul Chandler."

Satriani later specified this amp to be a Silverface in a December 26, 2011 Tumblr post, which also revealed that the Pro Reverb was used on the track “Flying In a Blue Dream”.

DAVUDTESCH asked: I've read that you used a Mesa Mark IIC+ on Flying in a Blue Dream... Was it just on the song or the whole album? I ask cuz I love the voicing you get out of your tone in the beginning of part 2 of the Bells of Lal.. When I'm dialing my tone if it feels similar then I know I'm in the ballpark. I use that and the riff from Crystal Planet... those are my tone-testers :)

On that song I was using a silver face Fender Pro Reverb amp with a Boss DS-1 distortion pedal, and put an AKG C12-A microphone up close to the grill.

This dispells a popular myth that a Mesa/BOOGIE MKIIC+ was used, as discussed in this May 3, 2016 post in the Fractal Audio forums by user marklumsley.

While Satch did indeed use a respectable bunch of amplifiers during his 'Flying...' album - including the Mesa/Boogie Mk IIC+, it was NOT used during the recording of the title track. Used instead was a silverface Fender Pro Reverb as stated by the man himself on his Tumblr account whilst answering a fan's question, seen here:

The amp is brought up a third time in this February 17, 2017 Music Radar interview about Surfing With the Alien.

“We used a [Roland] JC-120 for almost all of Echo. John had a very clever way of recording the JC-120 with six different microphones, an [AKG] C12A and this and that, and using the DS-1. It was just really interesting how we got a lot of mileage out of that amp. It was the perfect antidote to the Marshall stack or the little Silverface Pro Reverb or Princeton that was there that we used for a lot of the album, too."

Used on Flying In A Blue Dream, as featured in this advertisement for Rockman.

From a 1989 interview with Guitar World magazine:

Interviewer: What is your actual demoing process?

Satriani: I have an Alesis HRI6 [sic] and that goes into track one. After the groove is established, usually I’ll record the bass, using an old P-bass.

Used on Flying in a Blue Dream, as featured in this 1989 ad.

"Well, when I'm at home, there are two ways I do it. I've got my Marshall heads that have recording outputs, which are really amazing sounding. The recording out feature on the new Marshall heads is so reliable and it sounds organic. So if I really want the amp head sounds, I'll do that.

But I'll tell you what I started doing about two years ago, is recording DI and using software guitar amplification, primarily because I thought if I put in a performance that's a once-in-a-lifetime performance on this particular song, I'm going to want to keep it. And I don't trust doing it here at home. But if I record it direct, it'll sit there in the session and then when we get to a real studio and we've got the real band recorded with microphones and a big room, we can re-amp that performance, and re-record it. And that's what we did quite a bit for the Black Swans and Wormhole Wizards record. There are quite a few songs that I had recorded using SansAmp or Guitar Rig, but they were all recorded DI. I would monitor those software patches at home, and then when we got to Skywalker, we either used a combination of those software guitar patches, or we would send the DI out into Marshall amps and different speakers and mic them anyway we want based on what we had captured from the band.

(...)

I remember the first time we used a SansAmp, John and I were recording Flying in a Blue Dream, and they had just created one and he was hip to the idea of 'hey let's use SansAmp so we get out of the hassle of trying match guitar parts in different studios,' because we were kind of moving around a lot at the time. One song might get recorded in three places and he was thinking this was going to be insane for Joe's guitar sound unless we can take it with us. And we had done that before, going directly into mic pres or using the Tom Scholz Rockman and we tried every little funny piece of gear, because we were trying to do anything that was the antithesis of mic'ing up a Marshall stack."