thePULSEPlaying Outside the Metal Box
By Alex Kantarelis
When someone thinks of hard rock and metal, the last thing that comes to mind is the violin. It’s a classical instrument! It doesn’t fit in with rock music. Mark Wood was told just that his entire life, but he refused to listen.
If you haven’t heard of Mark, you’re missing out. Mark Wood is an electric violinist. He plays the violin the way Jimi Hendrix played the guitar. The style is so new that he had to invent his own violin that could make the music he wanted to play.
Wood kicked things off with a full scholarship to the Juilliard School straight out of high school ~ in total, he had 10 years of classical violin training during his youth. At the age of 15 he began building violins on his own. His mother was a musician and his father was an artist who specialized in woodworking, so it was fitting that he would start designing his own musical instruments and then playing professionally at the age of 19.
Though he was trained to play classical music, it was not his passion, and after just two years at Juilliard, he dropped out to pursue his real passion. “I wanted to play like Eddie Van Halen,” he told me over the phone while driving to one of his shows with metal guitarist/god Steve Vai. And that’s just what he did. After several years of practicing and designing new instruments to fit his style, Mark Wood was ready to explode onto the music scene.
His goal was to sound like the electric guitar gods that he looked up to, but he had to break new ground to make it happen. “My biggest influences were not violin players so I had to gravitate towards guitar players throughout the 70s and 80s. I used that cutting edge and applied it to my violin playing,” he explained. But in a world of rock where the electric guitar dominates the sound of the genre, why stick with violin? “The violin is uncharted territory in the rock world. I didn’t want to be a mediocre guitarist among my heroes,” he said.
The first major step was inventing his own instrument, which he calls The Viper. A normal violin has 4 strings, is fretless, and is considered an acoustic instrument. The Viper is an electric violin that has 7 strings (more than a guitar) and is built with frets. In many ways, it is a combination of a violin and an electric guitar. “Frets allowed me to pursue a new sense of music and theory,” he said. “The violin world is overly conservative and I’m trying to break out of that box,” he added.
His inventions helped pioneer a new chapter to the violin world, lead by his website woodviolins.com. There, he sells many different versions of The Viper, as well as other electric violins and cellos that he has designed.
Wood is also a member ~ the lead violinist and string conductor ~ of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, currently on a sold out arena tour hitting the DCU Center on November 10th and Mohegan Sun on November 11. “It’s a great pride and pleasure of my career to be part of something so huge,” he said. “For me to be able to play in front of 10 to 15 thousand people per show, playing the music that I love, is just a dream come true,” he added.
After releasing several CDs of original work, Wood has plans to hit the studio again in early 2008 to record a new material. But he isn’t stopping at just making music, he’s got a whole range of goals for the future. “Violin was the leader for centuries as the most popular instrument, and we’ve totally lost that. It’s not because of the instrument, it’s because of our training. String players are not trained to think outside the box. Guitar players don’t even take lessons. My heroes never took lessons! They don’t know how to read or write music and they create music that connects with millions of people,” he said.
For Mark Wood, bringing violin to the front again is his ultimate goal. So think outside the box, get ready for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and check out Mark Wood.
myspace.com/electricviolinistmarkwood
www.markwoodmusic.com
Photo: From the 2007 NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) show at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA. Courtesy of markwoodmusic.com. Photo by Wayne Denon.
When I was in fifth grade I got the opportunity to go to Electrify Your Strings with Mark Wood. I played a pink electric off brand violin. I waited in line for many hours to get my violin signed but he turned me (no one else) down. He did this because the instrument was not made by him. I was so shocked I didn’t argue. I wish I could have a word with this man. He is not out for kids like he says. Instead he is proud and cares about PROFIT. He crushed my dreams and I will never forget him.