Joined: 10 Sep 2004 Posts: 27 Location: Highcation; it's all the same really...
Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:09 pm Post subject:
Guthrie wrote:
Duncan M wrote:
Greg, Guthrie's already answered the G3 question, and talked about his favourite guitarists on the other thread! Pay attention at the back!
I missed that little intervention when I was replying to Greg's questions! Duncan, sir - although I'm generally a diplomatic fellow, it has to be said that you make a good case there. I feel bad about ignoring YOUR questions now
Not at all - in fairness I should have read over your replies again before risking have you run over old ground. Sorries chief! _________________ I before E except after C? Man, what a weird society.....
Thanks for the tip in the other post about Ian Woolway, Guth. I'll be sure to check him out next time I'm in the Chelmsford area!
Just another few questions, once you've got your head around Sibelius (good luck!!)
First ones relate to your very talented, and very underexposed brother...
Does Seth dabble on the guitar, or is he strictly a 4-stringer?
Who is the main songwriter for tunes when you and Seth collaborate, and what sort of creative process do you two write tunes?
Another further question to basically reassure us that you're a mere mortal, and not an axe-wielding robot, but do you have any memories of a gig/clinic where things didn't go according to plan, or something hideously embarrasing happenned? (Any answer to this will strictly be between you, me, and the rest of the forum.....honest!)
Finally, "Wonderful Slippery Thing" was ripped off and used on a Guitar9 record release of unknown guitarists by a guy named Graheme Marshall under the title "Something Slippery". What was your immediate reaction to that news, when you found out that someone had nicked your work and claimed it as their own, and what (if anything) has resulted from this?
Thanks for letting me be really nosey!!
Last edited by trelloskilos on Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
Hey Guthrie,
just wondering if you could make a list of what you might consider must-have instructional stuff for guitarists. Books, videos/dvd's, whatever. Anything you particularly enjoyed, recomended to students or just think would be beneficial for guitarists.
List as many as you can think of.
Thanks!
Also what do you think of Greg Howe's playing.
Joined: 10 Sep 2004 Posts: 2783 Location: Chino, CA
Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 4:56 am Post subject:
Hi, Guthrie. Hope all these questions aren't wearing you out! Take your time. I'm sure we're all patient here. Just don't forget my questions about teaching and the acoustics! _________________ Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.
It seems like he's answering questions by everybody except Ed Yoon. Kinda funny Anyway my question is I know you're way into jazz and was wondering if you've heard Kurt Rosenwinkel and what do you think of him?
Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Posts: 25 Location: A small town in North Wales you've probably never heard of
Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2004 2:26 pm Post subject:
Hi, Guthrie. Here are a couple of questions, if you've got time:
When soloing, do you put any thought into structure in the solo, or do you 'fly by the seat of your pants', as it were? This is my major bugbear with my playing at the moment, so any insight would be very useful - I've asked a very similar question in the Theory section, actually.
Do you ever get times when you really can't be arsed with playing? I sometimes do, and then feel guilty that I've not touched ye geetar for a few days - should I just slap myself? What do you do in this situation, if it happens to you at all?
Other than that, I'll just second Trell's questions. Cheers. _________________ Mmmm...Sacrelicious.
I'll defintely ditto Finks last question!! _________________ Guthrie Govan
Matthias IA Eklundh
Rusty Cooley
Steve Vai
Tom Morello
Michael Angelo
Yngwie Malmsteen
Buckethead
Most times I've seen Guthrie he's used a Jazz III XL Series. I tried them after spending years with Jazz IIs.
I've got a few Bassment based questions:
1) Would the Fellowship ever consider putting their spin on a Zappa tune? say "We're not alone" from "The man from Utopia"?
2) The Bassment version of Afro Blue seems to shorten the last three notes of the response in the call and response motiff (if that makes sense). At the risk of sounding like a 'jealous listener', was there a reason for that?
3) Have you guys been tempted to cover Pharoah Sander's tunes? _________________ Fabulous powers were revealed to me the day I held my magic Suhr(d) aloft and said "by the power of great scale!"
Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Posts: 25 Location: A small town in North Wales you've probably never heard of
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 11:15 am Post subject:
Mmm, Jazz IIIs. James converted me to them from my...ahem...idiosyncratic former picking technique (big triangular .75mm bass pick, held between thumb and first two fingers and not being anchored anywhere on the guitar - I tried it lately and was staggered how weird and difficult it was. Talk about not making it easy for yourself). _________________ Mmmm...Sacrelicious.
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2004 12:15 pm Post subject: Various questions
frankus wrote:
Jazz III XL Series.
Worthy picks, imho - was it not Duncan M who was bemoaning the itty-bittiness of the regular Jazz IIIs? Well, the XLs are the size of "proper" picks, so they have that pointy bit we all crave but they don't fall out of your hand when you do frenetic funky stuff.
At risk of getting all Eric Johnson on y'all, the red ones and the black ones sound completely different! I still wish they'd make Jazz IIIs out of other materials, too - Tortex might be a nice option, and I think the GatorGrip material would work well, too. Still - I don't see any JDunlops in the registered users list, so I guess I've picked the wrong venue for such rantings
frankus wrote:
1) Would the Fellowship ever consider putting their spin on a Zappa tune? say "We're not alone" from "The man from Utopia"?
2) The Bassment version of Afro Blue seems to shorten the last three notes of the response in the call and response motiff (if that makes sense). At the risk of sounding like a 'jealous listener', was there a reason for that?
3) Have you guys been tempted to cover Pharoah Sander's tunes?
1) That would be splendid! "King Kong" or "Peaches..." would certainly work, as might "Marqueson's Chicken" or "Moggio"; actually, the most Bassment-compatible track I can think of is probably "Uncle Remus"...I fear I'm the most obsessive Zappa fan in the band, though, so working any of the above tunes into the setlist would take some evangelical work on my part!
Intriguingly, I think Zak is more familiar with FZ in the "unfunny" orchestral context, as "The Yellow Shark" et al cropped up a lot when he was doing his music degree... Zappa aside, my more immediate goal is to poison Zak's mind with the Deep Purple/ Led Zep back-catalogue; imagine the Buddy Rich Big Band doing "Lazy", and you'll hear where I'm coming from!
(As a quick related aside, everyone who hasn't heard "Pat Boone In A Metal Mood" should probably investigate it forthwith - unlike similarly hilarious stuff like William Shatner's spoken word offering, this one belongs in the "actually quite good" category...)
2) I think I know what you mean - the F-G-Am bit, where we spend a beat on each chord instead of a beat and a half? No real reason - Pete suggested it once upon a time, and it seemed like some harmless fun...
3) Not until now
trelloskillos wrote:
"Wonderful Slippery Thing" was ripped off and used on a Guitar9 record release of unknown guitarists by a guy named Graheme Marshall under the title "Something Slippery". What was your immediate reaction to that news, when you found out that someone had nicked your work and claimed it as their own, and what (if anything) has resulted from this?
That was surely one of the oddest things that's ever happened to me! (Well - similar stuff has happened before, where people have stolen clips from the Cornford site or GT magazine and posted them on Harmony Central or similar, passing them off as their own work, but actually putting them on a compilation album seems like a whole new level of cheekiness!)
Funnily, it took me 8 years or so to find out, and even then it was only because a friend spotted the anomaly on Guitar9 and thought I might like to know about it. The guy who released that compilation CD was very helpful and reasonable about the whole affair (also, he's called Richard James, which means he shares his name with the Aphex Twin guy and is therefore deemed to be Very Cool) He gave me the phone number of SOMEONE called Graeme Marshall, who's currently teaching guitar somewhere in Scotland... but is it the same guy? Who can say?
I debated the whole "should I phone him, shouldn't I phone him?" issue with myself, and decided that there really wasn't any point. I made (literally) 2 or 3 quid out of the "Alchemists" compilation , and I figured Mr Marshall probably got a similarly handsome retirement fund from his little scam, so it's hard to stay indignant about it, really. He'll have to bear the shameful burden of his guilt at some point, be it in this life or the next There's even something perversely flattering about it; "Gee, Mom - of all the obscure guitarists out there, he chose to steal MY intellectual property! He must REALLY like it..."
trelloskillos wrote:
something hideously embarrassing
Running onto a stage in front of 5000 people at an open air festival and playing the opening power chord of the Asia set with no lead attached to my guitar - I think that's the best one to date!
trelloskillos wrote:
Does Seth dabble on the guitar, or is he strictly a 4-stringer?
He dabbles in The Way Of The 6-String - but this is a fairly recent development. I don't think he has any intentions of airing his guitar playing in public, he's just dabbling out of idle curiosity.
Various posters wrote:
What do you think of...?
Legal disclaimer; I'm fairly sure it doesn't MATTER what I think - if any listener likes a particular player, then that player is good for the requirements of that listener. For instance, I break out in a nasty rash whenever I hear Kirk Hammett trying to solo... but a lot of people like it, so in that sense he must be good - ultimately, what he does makes a lot of people happy, so it's 100% valid.
In more specific terms, though... Greg Howe seems to keep cropping up here. Just for the record, I think Greg is a fantastic player - no one could deny his immense "widdly" capabilities, but what I particularly like about him is his feel - when he plays funky stuff, it never sounds like he's forcing it; it sounds very natural. I'm guessing he gets all those pop gigs because he can GROOVE more convincingly than the competition; if we focus too much on being impressed by the sweeping/tapping aspect of what he does, I think we're actually doing a disservice to a very well-rounded musician. (Ditto Richie Kotzen, who can stun a whole crowd with a single note...)
(A quick pop quiz for Ed, our noble moderator; I believe Lee W knows Greg rather well, and indeed guested on one of his albums. Any "inside" info from that source?)
Re Kurt Rosenwinkel; I got one of his albums from the good people at Amazon, listened to it once and decided that I'd rather be listening to Wayne Krantz. Maybe I was in a funny mood that day - I'll check him out again. Thanks for the reminder!
Shawn71 wrote:
just wondering if you could make a list of what you might consider must-have instructional stuff for guitarists. Books, videos/dvd's, whatever. Anything you particularly enjoyed, recomended to students or just think would be beneficial for guitarists.
I've been hearing a lot of good things about "Creative Guitar 1 and 2"
On a less facetious note, I think the video/dvd issue is an interesting one. Seems to me that there are two kinds of "good" instructional product;
1) The disciplined, structured ones, such as anything by Frank Gambale, Paul Gilbert or indeed Vinnie Moore, where you get very specific morsels of information, presented in order of difficulty, and
2) The ones where the biggest buzz is the one you get from just watching a great player do his/her thang. The Eric Johnson stuff falls into that category for me. Ditto the Scotty Anderson video, which is deeply disturbing - I'm not sure that Scotty is one of the world's born teachers, but it feels like a privilege just to watch him do those unfeasible circus tricks close up!
(In general, I'm more enthusiastic about this second category; I'd rather be forced to think hard about something, rather than being given 20 licks on a plate - but we're all different ...)
If I could bounce that question back to the rest of the forum - what products have helped everyone else around here?
Alun wrote:
whose playing do you like on oter instruments?
Ah, a fellow bassist, methinks! It goes without saying that Jaco is God, naturally... Other bass players who particularly cheer me up at the moment would include;
Richard Bona (he's not faking it - he really does have that Spirit Of Jaco thing; it's uncanny)
Oteil Burbridge (George Benson plays 6-string fretless!)
Dominique De Piazza (if that's how you spell it - I always get him muddled up with the name of a celebrated style of curry. He played with John McLaughlin in the late 80s and, bizarrely, no one seemed to notice how incredibly musical he was!)
Anthony Jackson (there's something kind of dark and demonic about his sound - I can't quite explain it, but I think it's v cool...)
Laurence Cottle (kind of a Welsh Jeff Berlin, I guess - if in doubt, Google him and you should find a wealth of mp3s at your disposal on his website.)
In case I'm giving the impression of being a jazz snob, I should also throw in James Jamerson, Paul McCartney, Andy Fraser, Billy Sheehan, Tony Levin... well, all the usual suspects!
Stay tuned for next week's installment on the all-time great bagpipe players
alexkhan wrote:
Just don't forget my questions about teaching and the acoustics!
What questions would those be? I must have missed that meeting
No, teaching can be a lot of fun if you have the right students. For me, this has nothing to do with how accomplished they are, or even how quickly they learn - it's more a question of whether they want to be there and have a real interest in music.
I've had private students in the past whose parents were basically paying me to keep their kids occupied, so there'd be at least one hour a week where young Tarquin wouldn't be sniffing glue or trashing payphones... That kind of teaching is no fun at all, and I started turning those kind of students away as soon as I could afford to.
If you have a genuine student with an enquiring mind and open ears, however, it's a completely different story.
I think I can speak for everyone on this forum who teaches (and I gather there's quite a few of us!) when I say that none of us actually started playing with the ultimate goal of becoming a teacher, but being forced to explain all those things which you take for granted in your own playing is a very positive thing - I reckon it makes you a better player/communicator in the long run...
Acoustic-wise, I have a battered old Takamine spanish guitar (quick note to UK folks; it set me back a piddling 50 quid from Cash Converters, who presumably didn't check the label inside the soundhole ); it records well enough, though a serious classical player would doubtless find fault in it. I don't pretend to play it "properly" - if I grew the requisite RH nails, I'd have to stop playing country licks, tapping with more than one finger and all that good stuff - so I just cheat with a pick, a la Strunz and Farah, McLaughlin et al. It's quite an unforgiving instrument, so I think every electric player can pinpoint the holes in their technique if they spend a little time struggling with a nylon string, trying to hide the string squeak, finger the chords perfectly and all that...
Planet Acoustic is a whole different world to me; my girlfriend has all these back issues of "Acoustic Guitarist", and it fills me with shame to read about all these famous acoustic players that I've never actually heard! I would submit the following brief observations, though;
1) The John/Al/Paco trio was great - loads of energy and fun in there alongside the burning technique. However, Paco wins that round for me - his tone is so much more substantial and full-bodied compared to that of his pick-wielding buddies...
2) Hitting your guitar is the sport of the moment; there seem to be all these percussive players out there, presumably building on the legacy of the mighty Michael Hedges - Preston Reed, Thomas Leeb, Eric Roche and so on. Hitting your guitar is cool.
3) Acoustic guitars sound remarkably self-contained. If you hear a Nick Drake track where he's just singing and strumming, it sounds complete; if he'd recorded the same track with a Strat, you'd wonder what happened to the rest of the band.
4) For anyone who didn't know... Nick Harper (Roy's son) is, for my money, one of the most entertaining and technically accomplished singer/songwriters ever to brandish an acoustic; think Jeff Buckley meets Adrian Legg. If he ever does a gig in your area, you MUST go! His Lowden is tuned way down to A, and he's fitted those Scruggs pegs you find on certain banjos, so he can do bizarre whammy stunts with harmonics... whilst singing. (Any other fans?)
Anyway... back to the Sibelius manual, which has making my head hurt of late. Apologies to anyone whose questions have been neglected - I'm doing what I can here!
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