CM : How did you get interested in the guitar and what was your learning style and training ?
JUSTUS HAJAS
Solo artist and TikToker
CM : Walk me through your current live rig and tell me how your live and studio setups differ .
Hajas : I run a lot of Ernie Ball Music Man stuff . My main guy is the Jason Richardson Cutlass . Music Man guitars are amazing . I remember Jason was on tour with All That Remains , and I got a lesson with him . I played his guitar , and I was like , ‘ I need one of these .’ And that ’ s what led me to working at Tim Hortons for two and a half years . I run 10-gauge strings , typically Cobalts or Paradigms from Ernie Ball for seven strings and 11-gauge strings , if I ’ m tuned down a whole step . I usually run drop A or drop G , depending on the song ; I ’ m trying to stay away from drop G now just because I like the way 10s feel so much more with the appropriate tuning . I mainly run a Helix by Line 6 , for my rig . That ’ s pretty much for my sounds that I ’ ve developed . And then I have this really cool cable that Ernie Ball sent me that I use for my in-ear monitoring system , where I literally just plug this cable into my Helix , and that goes to my guitar , and then I run an in-ear set into the cable , and that ’ s my in-ear monitoring set . It ’ s a pretty low-key setup , but it works well for what I do . And then I run a Shure microphone into it , and that ’ s my live rig . I don ’ t think you need too much to really do a lot these days . Everything is so digitized and so convenient . In the studio , it ’ s pretty much the same thing , but everything ’ s plugged into a set of Kali monitors and then I have my Macbook and then a UAD Arrow interface which I ’ ve had for years .
Hajas : I grew up in a musical household . My father was a recording engineer . A part of it was just in my blood . And I think when I was 12 , or 13 , I was just like , ‘ I want to play guitar .’ I was into playing video games and shitty , early 2000s rap music and for some reason , just one day , I was like , ‘ I want to play guitar .’ because I thought maybe it ’ d be something more beneficial to my time than playing video games . And I thought it would give me a better chance with the ladies . My dad bought me one for my 13 th birthday . As soon as I picked it up , I could not put the frickin ’ thing down . I fell in love with the instrument entirely . What really got me into it was the music of Jimi Hendrix ; the first real solo that I learned was “ Purple Haze .” And then from there , I wanted to see how I could relate my video game stuff into guitar . And I was really into Call of Duty and Black Ops II and shit . There were a couple of DLCs with Avenged Sevenfold music on Black Ops II . And I just had their music so ingrained in me from that , that I just started picking up solos from that video game . Hearing [ Avenged Sevenfold guitarist ] Synyster Gates ’ guitar solos , I was just like , ‘ There ’ s no way someone can play that good .’ And then that just ended up with me learning a couple riffs and then I really started my journey of , ‘ I want to be able to play that good .’
I ’ m at Metalworks Institution on a full scholarship for guitar performance . Very , very honored to be there . It ’ s great . It ’ s a great experience . It ’ s a two-year advanced diploma , so I get four years ’ worth of information .
52 CANADIAN MUSICIAN