Surfing with the Alien (song)

"Surfing with the Alien" is the first song in Satriani's second album. The song refers to the comic book character Silver Surfer. The song was considered the 30th greatest guitar solo ever by Guitar World Magazine readers and is one of his faster shred guitar style tracks. It also is Downloadable Content from the Guitar Virtuoso Track Pack for the popular game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, and a downloadable single for the Rock Band series.

Joe Satriani made the melody one morning he went to record. He plugged a wah-wah pedal and a Tubedriver into his 100-watt Marshall and he decided to use an Eventide 949s. Then they recorded the song and the solo in about half hour. But the Eventide broke down and they couldn't recreate the original effect. They decided to leave the original version and make another one.^[1] The Song was also the theme song for the Nintendo 64 game NASCAR 99.

The song is in the key of G and progresses back and forth to C. However in the guitar solo, Satriani experiments with different keys and modes include C sharp Phrygian dominant, D sharp Phrygian and F before returning to G.

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