At NAMM 2020 I was displaying my Chordinero capos at the Strandberg booth, meeting a lot of wonderful musicians from different corners of the world. Prior to the show I had agreed with Lore Paz Ampuero to send her a Chordinero to try out and in the end we decided a friend of hers would meet me at NAMM and bring it with him to Chile.
This friend turned out to be Koke, and I’m very glad he agreed to be the delivery guy!
Before handing it over to Lore he tried it out and had a lot of fun with it. He actually wrote a song, recorded a great demo video and the song “Piel” even ended up on his latest album “Perspectiva”!
It’s great to see how Koke really takes advantage of the possibilities with the Chordinero and I’m looking
forward to what will come out of it in the future.
Koke is obviously influenced by a lot of different music and here’s some background on his musical journey:
When and why did you start making music?
I started playing guitar at 13 years old, motivated by seeing a friend perform songs that I liked at the time. Fortunately I had the support of my parents and very soon I began to study music with private teachers, the knowledge acquired and the different musical influences that I received at that time, were the incentive to want to start creating music.
What kind of music do you listen to, what are your main influences?
My influences are as varied as they are numerous. I started out influenced by grunge music, bands like Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam were the beginning of everything. Later I leaned towards the metal side, Megadeth and Pantera were great influences, among many others, but definitely the musicians and bands that most influenced my beginnings as a composer musician were rock or progressive metal bands such as Dream Theater, Liquid Tension, Symphony X and jazz or fusion guitarists such as Allan Holdsworth, Pat Metheny, Greg Howe, Frank Gambale, among many others, currently bands like Meshuggah, Animals As Leaders, guitarists like Guthrie Govan and an infinity of talented young people that I discover every day on social media, they are all a constant inspiration and motivation to continue making music.
Electronic music has also been very important to me and has provided many creative tools in my compositional process.
Today I still listen to many modern musicians and progressive bands, but I have always listened to everything and I take elements of all that music to create my own, from pop to the most extreme metal or from electronic music to jazz fusion.
How do you use the Chordinero in your work?
I’m always looking for ways to be inspired and creative, Chordinero has been one of those tools that has opened up more possibilities for me to get there, to create and experiment with my instrument, to have another vision and to find new sounds. Chordinero is a tool that gives me infinite creative possibilities.
Check out Koke’s work:
linktr.ee/kokebenavides