Vito Bratta
Vito Bratta was the guitarist with 80s rock group 'White Lion' with whom he recorded 4 albums from the early 80s to 1991: Fight to Survive, Pride, Big Game and Mane Attraction.
I first got into Vito's style of playing after hearing the song 'When The Children Cry' from the album 'Pride'. The song is s a ballad lamenting what we as humanity have done to this world, and what we are leaving for the generations to follow. It's a great song, mainly based on an acoustic sound, but with a beautiful, soulful guitar solo.
What particularly interested me was that apparently, Vito composed most of the songs for the album 'Pride' on an acoustic guitar, which doesn't necessarilly translate directly to electric when playing in a rock band. Which is why, when you listen to a lot of White Lion tracks, there is a lot more interest in the guitar parts, as he had to rework the chord shapes, using muting, inversions, etc. so that the songs worked in a rock guitar context.
The following images are from an interview he did with Guitar World magazine which appeared in the September 1989 issue where he explains some of his techniques for finding chord voicings and talks about his compositional style. He talks about stumbling across melodies and such during his daily pratice sessions, which become the germ of an idea for a composition; he suggesst the importance of being prepared to use different kinds of guitars in a song, nylon-strung, acoustic, clean electric, distorted electric, etc. to achieve different dynamics; he talks about his choice to experiment with different chord inversions, which don't always work when distorted, and hence force him to discover other ways of playing the same chord. He also talks about specifics of his playing, modifying the sound for specific purposes, and his guitar set-up.
(You can also download a PDF version of the interview which is scanned from the magazine and reduced to fit on four pages.)
For those unfamiliar with Vito's style of playing, here's a small playlist of some of White Lion's videos to get an idea.
Check out some Vito Bratta exercices for developing fretboard dexterity in the Learn to Play section of the site, originally published as part of the September 1989 interveiw.
And discover more great tips, advice, lessons and interviews over at www.GuitarWorld.com