Nikola Nenin
- 2021: Produced and played drums on Forgotten Scream's album "Hourglass" (metalcore)
- 2021: Played all instruments, sang, mixed and mastered the first Direct Drive album ""Ruka Za Spas"" (grunge, alt metal)
- 2022: Co-written and played guitar on Vukašin Bakić album "Aveti" (world music, jazz fusion)
- 2023: Released a single with my progressive metal project Meridian Nine
- 2023: Co-produced Spesyd
Played at:
- EXIT festival (Serbia), LAKE festival (Montenegro), Lisinski Concert Hall (Croatia), Ljubljana National Theater (Slovenia) , Novi Sad National Theater(Serbia) , Teatro Stabile del Friuli (Italy) "
“Jazz guitarist by chance, a metalhead by choice.”
Nikola Nenin
Educator
My Story...
I saw Metallica’s Cunning Stunts when I was 10 and my life would never be the same again.
Mind you, this was a pre-internet era and metal concerts were a rare sight on TV in the “turn of the century” Serbia. I was so captivated by what I saw that I had to immediately do something about it. My older brother and I had no money and no guitars so we used the second best thing- tennis rackets! We would eagerly wait for the concert to randomly air on a national TV and when our parents weren’t around, turn the TV to 11 and just pretend we’re James and Kirk!
We did so for around a year until our parents got us an entry level classical guitar. I was pretty disappointed for 2 reasons - I realized that i suck at it and it sounds nothing like Kirk’s guitar.
Nevertheless, I started to fiddle around with it. Learned a couple of basic chords (I really had trouble with D major!) and intro to Nothing Else Matters. Good enough, I thought!
Here’s a little anecdote from that time - I had no clue that you actually need to tune the guitar lol. Pre-YouTube days were quite peculiar times- you couldn’t just type in “Guitar 101” and get basic information on a subject . So I was just rolling with some hybrid open tuning that the guitar had by pure chance. I even played some fancy chord voicings and based a lot of my fretboard knowledge on that “mysterious random tuning” until one of the strings broke! “No fretting” (pun intended), my father told me. “I’ll take it to my friend and he’ll replace it in no time!” And oh boy, was I in for a surprise - the guitar came back with fresh new strings and…a perfect standard tuning! Imagine my horror when I realized that I couldn’t play anything anymore and all of my fancy chord voicings sounded rubbish! Since I had no idea what tuning the guitar was previously in, all of my 6 months of progress went down the drain!
Anyway, at some point early on I got really serious about it. Obsessed even, one might say. I was woodshedding day after day. My goal was to become the fastest, most badass guitar player on the world scene. Quite ambitious, but at the time I really meant it!
I would make a detailed practice schedule and stick to it no matter what. At this point I was a 100% metalhead and if the music didn’t have blazing guitar solos, I wouldn’t even consider listening to it. Which led to me being just a good technical player. I was completely neglecting a whole world of improvisation, phrasing, art of tension and release…
…Until I started taking blues lessons at the ripe old age of 15 from a local guitar hero. After that I’ve noticed a drastic improvement in my playing. I got the basics of theory down (at least the one you need to start playing over blues) and spent a lot of time crafting my ideas when soloing. I would try really hard to resist the urge to just go all out shredding and instead develop motifs, leave space etc. This is not to say that shredding is not desirable - quite the contrary. The idea my teacher wanted to sell me was that even when you’re shredding you should sound musical and interesting.
As the years went by I was feeling the pressure of having to choose a career path for myself. Playing rock’n’roll wasn’t really going to cut it as I was earning very little doing pub gigs with my cover band. Instead, I convinced myself that I’m good at physics lol. I enrolled at the physics college in hopes that I’d be a physics teacher after I graduate and have a lot of time to do music on the side!
Of course, that plan ended in an utter failure. Physics is a serious subject to which one needs to give himself completely and I… I was dreaming all the time about being a rock musician. I dropped out after 3 months and really had trouble with reconciling my love for music and a career path that can sustain me financially. I went to some dark places during that time for sure.
In order to buy me some more time, I decided to formally study jazz at Belgrade’s top university of music. But that road was full of bumps and flat tires.
First of all, I had no formal education. Absolutely none. In Serbia, it means that you can’t simply walk into the Music university. Instead, you had to go to an elementary music school, Music high school and only then be eligible to apply to study there. I had to pass a test which summarizes 8 years of formal musical education… in 3 months time. That was challenging to say the least.
But I eventually managed to pass that exam and even pass the entrance exam to study jazz guitar.
In all fairness, I was very lucky to do so. That year didn’t have too many applicants and my professor was probably thinking something like: “Hey this kid sucks at jazz, but he’s trying really hard. Let’s see how it goes”. And indeed I did suck at playing jazz.
I had no idea how chords relate to scales and how to navigate the changes. All I knew was the minor pentatonic scale, and if the song was in F, I would just improvise over F minor pentatonic. But that’s not how jazz works unfortunately.
I spent countless hours learning the theory, scales and all the chord shapes needed to become a legit jazz guy. It was quite a frustrating period in my life - up until that point I thought pretty highly of myself. Now I realized just how much there was to learn and how far I am from being the player I dreamed of being. But I was determined to invest all of my efforts into this dream. And eventually, things started falling into place.
Around my 3rd year of studying I think I got pretty good at improvising over jazz standards. My theory background was strong, vocabulary improved and my timing in its prime. I eventually graduated and armed with this new knowledge completely reinvented my playing. I’ve never lost that metal music edge in my playing though. And jazz really helped me become a more focused shredder.
Right now I’m at a place where I’m comfortable with where I am as a player. It’s some weird blend of metal shredding, blues and jazz phrasing. And yeah, I skipped the part where I also became a metal drummer and a rock vocalist in the meantime. My music life is complete mess I know, but I’m enjoying every second of it and I’m super excited to share that with as many people as possible!