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well hello friends today we get to sit down with the great Tim March Jazz
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guitarist performer and educator and you know a YouTube Phenomenon with you know
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his great demos of of of pickups and playing Styles and and uh he he was in
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town for a uh a seminar you know a guitar seminar and uh we happened to to
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to hook up and uh and we decided that we were going to do this and so uh thank
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you Tim for for making some time to uh to sit down with us here here in the lounge thank you I'm so pleased to be
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here in the hollowed halls I so many of my heroes have sat in this seat and I'm really happy to be here when when we met
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for the first time in person you said that I was much bigger in real life bigger in real life and and because of
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that I I you know I'm I'm going to you know I'm not going to give you the easy interview this is going to this is going
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to be I've got a little bit of an ex to grind come on baby yeah so you know of
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all the guitar styles that you could get into you know why did you get into jazz when you know of course you know that
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I'm kidding I'm just giving you you I have an answer for that question okay go ahead cuz I don't like
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crowds that's why you got into jazz I'm I'm uncomfortable around people no but
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seriously what is it that got you into jazz cuz you know most people would get into the Beatles or other things and and
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then you then they would kind of make their their route you know they some somehow they get pulled into jazz so what pulled you into
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jazz um I just loved it first time I heard you know Charlie Parker
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my brain exploded you know and and uh I really uh felt hard for Art Tatum and
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Tiny Grimes I heard jazz guitar uh in the form of tiny Grimes I bought this
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record I don't know exactly why I was probably 15 or maybe 14 years old I've been playing guitar for a while and I
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liked you know pop music and blues and I really liked the bino album and you know all that stuff Lea record and those
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things then I got this Art Tatum record Art Tatum is this fantastic piano player from the 40s and he had this guy who
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played a tener guitar with a Charlie Christian pickup on his on his es150
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tener uh and he played really beautiful stuff you know and um kind of Charlie
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Christian esque but a little bit more bluesy and his name was Tiny Grimes and then that led to other players of that
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ilk I just got the bug you know and I really love George Barnes You' ever heard George Barnes George Barnes is my
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favorite early Jaz guitar player unfortunately uh often overlooked but he
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could play Melody so beautifully and he had such a he had a a joyous style you
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know and then Charlie Christian sort of overshadowed him a little bit because he was so great right um and uh but I
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really liked the sort of rock skimming over you know how if you throw a rock on a flat it's go and I felt like jazz was
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the musical equivalent of that feeling I got yeah skipping over the top of yeah right and so the the Rhythm would be
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swinging and the solo solos would be just skipping over the top and floating over yeah that's that's a great I just
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loved it you know and I what when I was that age you know what was I my friends
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you know my cohort were listening to pop music of the day and I like some
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of it but I didn't like a lot of it it didn't really resonate with me you know the sort of hard rock stuff I I didn't
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like uh much it didn't I didn't have the right attitude for it yeah you know um I
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like the opening solo to all the young dudes and I liked uh the solo on Killer
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Queen to me that was like Melodies played cleanly on the guitar you know
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and I like Peter Frampton you know cuz he and I found out later that that he
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was a jazz guy disguised as a rocker you know and so that's what I gravitated
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toward and I then little funny anecdote I had this sound in my head and I don't
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know I for the longest time I didn't know where it came from and then I watched a a rerun of the Beverly hill
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blies which I used to watch very religiously um when I was about I must
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have been 5 years old and then Ellie May you know comes on the scene or they open
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up the the doors to the mansion and you're something like
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and then you know or whatever and ellite made you know on the in the cement Pond or whatever that was a guy name I found
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out later a guy named Perry botnik yeah and he played beautifully um and uh but
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I didn't know what it was at that you know at that time so Perry botnik
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unknown guy really great guitar player in The Beverly Hillbillies and it's and it's interesting because that show was
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was this you know the fish out of water that was the whole point of The Beverly Hillbillies was you had the fish out Out of Water it was the the
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hillbillies Hill and so and they would have at times you would have these you know obviously the theme song was you
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know flatten scrubs you know doing you know the banjo Bluegrass thing but then it was interesting in that you have the
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mansion and you have these moments of jazz guitar playing in there and it just kind of you don't think about it but
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then it adds to the J position it's like here's jazz guitar and here and here's
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you know here they are in their blue jeans and their you know their crumpled hats and you know all the yeah you know
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Perry bodnik did it for the first few years and then after that it must have been Howard Roberts and maybe Tommy Tesco and maybe even Barney kle or other
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guys like that that played these little cues yeah and they were just these you know what a jazz guitar player say give
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me 30 seconds you Howard and he would go you know play a little chord melody or something you and I've noticed that you
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you uh you mentioned George Barnes who who was one of the the jazz players that
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played with a clearer brighter tone especially for the Jazz guys that tended to have the really thuddy sound he had a
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really clear sound where you could really hear his chord voic and where well and everything kind of was clear
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you know I don't know when that that dark thing happened but Charlie Christian had a slightly
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dark sound but all those early guys many of them had a relatively bright sound
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Howard Roberts had a a bright sound and in the ' 60s before that West Montgomery certainly had a fairly bright sound he
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had quite a bright sound then he's toned it down I'm not sure when maybe with the pro prominence of of Jim Hall and
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certain of the darker players but I've always liked to hear the angel singing
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so I don't use flat lound strings I use round W strings and I I have a relatively bright sound not hugely
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bright but I mean I can make it bright on this thing yeah so I guess that kind of you know that kind of gets into the
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whole you know Telecaster thing which you know there's this whole now there's this whole you know
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kind of school of jazz Telecaster players and you know I guess it goes
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back to you I guess Ed bickert would probably be one of the one of the first that was really doing you know because
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of course you had the Jazz guys that had a Telecaster that would use it on rock and roll dates right but the studio guys
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you already had one had one Howard Roberts had one uh John Collins had was
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given an early Telecaster to play with Nat King Cole and it didn't last very long I don't think there's any film of
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it there's a picture of him holding it is is that the one that's white with the all pled Parts yes and um of course
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there's Jimmy Bryant who was ostensibly a a country jazz player and he used the
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early broadcasters from an early time um but yeah the Telecaster
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uh funny little thing didn't catch on in any of those worlds really in the 50s yeah took it
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took a little while to to to catch on but um so you you have kind of and it's
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amazing because it would be easy to to lump into where it's like okay these are the you
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know Telecaster Jazz guys and they all sound the same but they don't at all because there's a huge difference
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between the way at bicker versus bill frelle versus Julian L versus you know
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all these other cats yeah mean and then the hybrid cats too like Jim campal Longo complete Jazz he doesn't but he
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he's he's he's a jazz inspired and influenced guy and he he's a straight up
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you know Telly guy yeah B the neck you know and and I mean there's lots of lots
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of guys who are just more comfortable in the the taster regardless of what style they're playing but you're right it's
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it's not a guitar that gives you one thing yeah you know we know that you
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you're the Telecaster Maven of the world you talk about it a lot I do I'm fixated
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on I'm obsessed and one of the characteristics I mean you can tell you can tell often tell a Telecaster when
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you hear it but it doesn't necessarily predict a certain approach right you
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know I mean there's plenty of great rock and roll records that have telecasters Lord knows there's um you know country
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things and R&B and yeah the R&B probably the R&B is probably the first place they
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really caught on yeah you know because that was an an audience you know the the
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players were willing to gravitate to it more because they weren't worried about
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they wanted to make a statement yeah and they weren't so worried about being you know compared to the guys that had archt
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Toops that were called it a a boat paddle or something and tonally though to fit into a big like the Philadelphia
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sound or even ear these really richly produced records you
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know you you needed you needed at least
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this and you're not going to get that out of an es175 with a flat long strings you know not necessarily you know so
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what brought you to the Telly um couple of things Roy Ban's livestock
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yeah great great record um and
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uh Ted green and Ed biger uh I always just loved that I
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would fantasize about it you know um I got a Les Paul type guitar early on my
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first kind of really good guitar electric guitar and I just didn't it didn't seem
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like a good fit for me I tried various things when I got a Chelly I was like oh
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oh and there's something because you know for a lot of guys they feel like the bridge pickup is kind
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of like the business end of a Telecaster but there's really so much that the guitar has to
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offer in north of there north of there you know because of how kind of it just
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has this this this resonance and this solidness to it this solidness to the
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note when you hit it it just has it has an assertiveness to the guitar even if you're playing on the neck pickup you
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don't have to be playing um James Burton licks on the on the bridge pickup right
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and and I we should clarify that the neck pickup on a Telly is is wonderful I
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I'm very comfortable with it I don't need these funny things necessarily to do my thing um I have a beautiful danter
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that has a beautiful neck pickup on it that I use all the time too uh but that means with modern wiring you know the
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the the neck pickup without the the dark C the dark circle and it's funny there's
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maybe there's two kinds of guys there's two kinds of guys with telecasters one guy sets the amp up so that it sounds
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good with the bridge pickup and then the neck pickup is a compromise right usually and then that's why we hear
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things like wow the neck just sounds so whatever yeah cuz they made the back pickup sound really good yeah notice I
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call the back pickup yeah um and then there's guys that dial it in so that the neck pickup sounds really good and then
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they do something like roll the tone down uh and bypass the tone circuit on
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the you know all these tricks where you take you don't have the neck pick up through the tone pot so you can control
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the back sound um or there's other guys that just use all of it like Roy Vian
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used the whole thing yeah you know he got that his neck pickup sounded beautiful all and it's that uh the
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documentary that they did about him where they're really showing off his versatility and they have him you know
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playing um you know Misty with mundel mundel which mundel was yeah M was
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actually quite quite uh supportive of
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of shout out to Misty yes Garner yay yeah and Lenny Lenny bro I mean cuz
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that's I mean isn't that where that that kind of harmonics thing comes from doesn't it come from him or does it come
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well there's a little story that he told me is that he had heard t farlo play this way with a pick between the second
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and he would put a pick here and then he would touch you would touch a a single
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notes yes and play bbop solos that way yeah and so then he heard that cuz he
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loved TP form then he heard Chad do that which is what I call pairs
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he turned a six uh yeah into into
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thirds just by doing this right but he didn't do the Rippling
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I think Lenny is the one that did the Rippling this one you know that sort
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of and I learned it from I think the first thing I learned it from was a
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Guitar Player magazine thing then I met Lenny and he showed me other things to do with it and then Ted green really
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took it uh maybe at least it's far if not further than Lenny and he showed me
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some things to do too like the chime
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chords where you just make an octave out of the bottom note and it makes an inversion so this
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chord becomes this chord and you just do it
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on so that's another thing I love I love it and it's gotten quite popular these
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days and a lot of people use it as a little party trick you know to sort of look mon No Hands kind of thing yeah um
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and so what I've taken upon myself is to try and as best as I can to just
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incorporate it into the to the whole flow of the music and not have it be something special or even really noticed
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right except for how beautiful it's CU it is a nice thing you know it's a you're holding down a chord let see you
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say
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and you're holding down the chord and it's not interrupting the flow you're not going right and it turns a chord
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into a scale basically so it's a really nice technique and it sounds particularly good and churchy and
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Beautiful on a Telecaster it does it uh it really there are some guys that do it
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really really well and uh it's always beautiful to here and again that's one of the advantages of the guitar is it
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just it really has an a an assertiveness to it and and notes kind of you know ring out well they may not be as warm
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and midrangey and something you might get otherwise but yeah mid-range is tricky
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you know mid-range cuts through mixes and that's often why we like those kinds of sounds but for a solo guitarist I
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like I like it softer in the mids yeah it's a little more forgiving and I like the melody to stand out I like the Bas
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to be warm and I don't want the middle voices to be overpowering sonically I
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like I might play something that has U get back I'm sorry if I'm playing different volumes you guys can figure
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that
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out so I'll play that kind of
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a and I want those middle voices to be supportive like a cheering section but I
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don't want them to overpower so one of one of the the things that's that's really daunting
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like there's a lot of people that are watching you play right now and it's like you are speaking in a foreign
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language and I'm not talking about what you're saying I'm talking about what you're playing because a lot of guys you know maybe they come from a a blues or
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an R&B or or a heavy metal or or whatever kind of background so the guy
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that's wanting to learn like C let's let's just take cord Melody okay and let
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what would be kind of like the entry into chord Melody where you're like I'm
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I'm a guy that either your country guy or I'm a guy that's playing power cords and stuff like that what do you feel
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like like like how do you get started into into you know chord Melody like in the most basic kind of way first of all
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listen to music that you can play that way whether it be the Beatles or Cat Stevens or Frank santra or a jazz tune
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or not right so I don't really think of it the C the word chord Melody is a little bit of a misnomer because it
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suggests that everything's about chords and the melody sort of stacked on the top um I just think of it as playing a
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song by yourself okay let's let's let's change that then let's say solo guitar yeah and I don't mind chord Melody it's
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not wrong everybody knows what it means you know um and uh but yeah so solo
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guitar unaccompanied guitar and playing a song so um you know you have a song that seems like it would work uh let's
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say that that's the situation a um one thing I would suggest learning is how to play Triads all over the fingerboard and
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one great way to do that is to take a major scale at first because you know it
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better and take a Triad that's a d Triad
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right and then harmonize that up the key and so that's a D major
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scale harmonized with a with a third underneath
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and then maybe make some Melodies around that
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like right find out where the what I call the neighborhood around each of those stations along the way
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yeah and that can help you whether you want to play nice bills for a singer songwriter or or jazz or whatever it is
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you so learn the lay of the land via Triads and not on just that one set of
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strings and not in just that one key um so you're going to say no go keep going
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you're flowing okay so now that sounds fancy but it was just
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Triads right and then if I play
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that was also Triads so it doesn't have to sound all fluffy like the first thing I did yeah you know and you can learn
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about voice
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leading just by playing a five chord in front of each of those Triads so you start to learn about about the way a
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piano student would learn how to play piano they learn Little P pieces little triadic pieces and we often skip that
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step and we go straight to whatever you know yeah we go crazy train yeah we we
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we tend to be either either I'm strumming a cord I'm hitting a power
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cord or I'm playing a solo or I'm playing a line and then there's all this mythology about Triads like oh Larry
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Carlton sounds really cool and the way he does it as he play is he's playing Triads people don't often know what that
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means he's using Triads melodically but I just mentioned this popped into my
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head crazy train right but the the main RI after the is
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um you know it's Triad I can't remember exactly how it goes but that thing that that uh the kid played on there was
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basically Randy Randy rhods played this cool triadic thing you so they're all over you could play great R&B a lot of
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stuff that that all the R&B guys played is Triads it's it's all it's all over
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the place and and and we need to know those and every fancy chord every expensive
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chord like for instance if I did the same thing with a with a D scale using seventh chords like D major 7 E minor 7
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these are what people call Jazz chords right but every single one of them has a Triad in
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it that's just with a different rout so it's really good that if you're going to learn one thing about so-called guitar
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music theory or whatever learn how to play harmonized Triad scales it's really
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great major and minor yeah um then the next thing when we actually put that
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into use is take a song that you want to learn how to
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play can I use that
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yeah I'll just play that of it so you why don't you Le learn how to play Misti it's a great song it's great to know
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it's a good solo guitar most people know it so you learn the melody on the top three
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strings and learn it beautifully so you can so if you were a saxophone player or
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somebody singing it or whatever and then the next step make a duet out of the
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roots of the chords
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SP roots and the
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melody looks like I'm playing chords but I'm just playing the outside to us
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yeah okay then when you do that maybe you can then add fifths
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flat I'm still but but the fifths are moving right then when you do that
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you've created a scenario where your hand is in a particular location the melody is being sung beautifully the
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bass notes are the root andn fits of the chord then the the cheering section is
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is if it's not right under your fingers you can't do it so you say okay uh let's
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fill in the middle and I was already doing that so
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why don't I just put the rest of my fingers down and play that
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chord maybe we can do a little bit of fill there
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that was just a little invention to get where the melody sort of stops and then I want to do a little
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funny thing that I learned from Art Tatum or something like that but so this
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the thing that sets you up for success is don't start with chords start with Melody add Basse make a beautiful duet
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fill up the spaces with maybe a little movement if you can hear it and then find out from from this framework What
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notes can I put in you know and then you you have a good
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start so one of the reasons I want to ask this because I found out that you
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recently uh you know created a website for you know for some teaching so tell tell us about this okay thank you for
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asking yes uh the website is Tims guar workshop.com no apostrophe just straight
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letters Tims guitarworks docomo to Tim lch.com or going straight
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there um it's a subscription website and for the first time I can put I have
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something that's substantial enough to put um all of my uh teaching interests
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all my musical interests in one place so we have a blues vein that you can follow
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we have a jazz vein that you can follow we have a theory vein that you can follow and Essentials and Basics vein
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that get you prepped for whatever else comes next um and I have a team which is
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really cool because uh they can write stuff out for me so I just you know the
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way it works is I make videos and teach the way I like to do and then instead of having to write it out myself or you
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know do the tedious work there's a guy really good at it and he writes it out and then they put it together with sound
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slice most of the time so there's a video and then underneath the video is the Tab and the
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notation and uh we have a forum where people can get to know each other and
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Team Up or Do collaborate collaborations and whatnot if they want to they can also answer each other's questions so
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someone might ask ask a question on the Forum and I'll see that it's there but I know that if I wait one day maybe
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somebody else will answer the question well already and so that's even better right it's not to get me out of work I'm
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happy to answer it but it just creates more of a Community feeling um and I might learn something you know from here
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and somebody explain something that I that I didn't explain uh so it's a great
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thing I really am digging it and it's still new uh we still have a little bit of a discount on the entry price and
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it's like a lifetime discount on the price I think right now we're it's uh $1 199.99 for the for a month or um there's
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a yearly price as well you can find out about all that stuff yeah yeah well well
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give us give us an idea of what are some of the more you know the the I guess you
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know simpler you know Concepts that are that are that someone can begin with and
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then maybe some of the more complex stuff so people kind of have an idea of the breadth of uh well I'm I'm i' we've
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been working on getting all the material that we need to sort of have a foundation and then I'm going to keep adding stuff all every every week you
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know um we have song of the month and we I create a lot of content based on the
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song of the month so that's really good too because people can be working on it how to accompany how to simple Parts
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like just the basic chords okay how do you play a Baseline and a chords together or how do you solo over this or
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what some simpler solo Concepts and and they always ask me what are you thinking about and I always say I don't think
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about anything when I play but when I practice I think about this and that and this um but I have a basic section and I
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may lean more toward uh Preparatory material because I realized like your
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your original question suggests lot a lot of people have gone that far with it
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you know and they think I think some people think I'm want to learn jazz because I need to learn theory and then
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they don't really care about jazz so much but they want to know about chords and scales and stuff and that seems to be the way it's presented I just want to
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celebrate this the music that I love the great old songs improvisation about
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those great old songs Blues of different Styles than maybe are most contemporary
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right now um so there's it's really quite a broad thing if someone never
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played chords in their life they might want to do a little work before they join if someone's never played um like
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solo guitar I think that there's enough material there to to get them started you know like this thing I talked about
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Triads there's a whole section about that and we be more because I believe in
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it so much the the Harmon chord scales with seventh chords just a big section there um we have primers about uh
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learning how to improvise um and learning how to have the the um the building blocks in place
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then realizing that the building blocks are not it right I think that's something that
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gets missed as well and having someone sitting in front of you on the screen who can really turn an arpeggio into a
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monotic line right is I think very helpful and who remembers um that that's important and
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often elusive something has to go beyond an exercise exactly it has it has to
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become music right and that's and and that's yeah that's why I'm glad to have transcribe a a wonderful transcriber
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because so much of for instance Jazz uh vocabulary lessons is just straight eight notes like okay play this
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scale play this arpegio and it's not very interesting and it sounds academic
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even if it's played you know beautifully it's still not quite there so I can play
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Just as I play I might tone it down a little bit in terms of the concept you know I might make a I tell myself at the
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beginning okay keep it simple Tim make it Melodies Tim you know and then it gets written out and it's got all these
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little nuances and diblo and fos that I kind of can't help but do that are in
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there it's from the very beginning you know so if you say um if I'm going to do Misty
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now that that's okay but it's not how I play so I might say take
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this right an E flat major p and play
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and then all those were Aros and scales but they it turned into music because of theing in the expressiveness of it right
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so we I tried it to um and then someone would say well what were you thinking about when you're doing that you know
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and then I then I got a chance to explain what I wasn't thinking about what I might have thought about while I
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was practicing how to get there and all those kind of things so it's an organic thing and I'm I'm in it so I'm not just
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posting something once a month and then you know leaving coming back I feel like
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I want to be in it the in the mix with it but yeah I love I love the touch that
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you have with the guitar I love you know you you pull such a great tone out of the instrument you have a lot of you
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know expression and that's something that takes a long time to to gain
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because there's there's so much of a mechanical aspect of of learning how to play a song and then learning how not
33:30
just to play it not just to play the notes but to have expression throughout it and it's like how long am I going to
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hold on to this note and how hard am I going to hit it and all all these other things am I going to am I going to have
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a little vbr to it am I not am I going to play it straight what am I going to do yeah yeah I equate it to singing and
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and the other day we were doing a fun thing uh Workshop um and uh I whistled a
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little Melody to the guys and I said when I Whistle it you whistle it back to me and and I whistled a little you know
34:01
kind of Quasi Jazzy little phrase and they whistled it back and I got a little bit more rich with it and they whistled
34:07
it back they did great almost the whole room in unison whistled back the idea and then I said well how did you do
34:16
that nobody knows how we do it yeah I mean you could go in and say well you're such such of cavity goes in the tongue
34:23
and blah blah blah but even if you know all that you still don't know how you heard that sound and Ma and manage to
34:28
get your body to just whistle it right back out in with in tune in Pitch right yeah we don't know how to do that
34:34
someone starts singing happy birthday and know the whole room joins in there might be a few outliers that don't know
34:39
have bad you know ears or something but mostly people can do that if you start singing Happy Birthday in one key and
34:45
you go wait wait wait let me start higher and you start singing it in another key almost everybody's going to get it yeah and it's like whoa key
34:51
change oh my God you know so I think that we want to try and teach ourselves
34:56
to to play AR as close as we can to how we can hum or whistle and and so there's
35:03
a method that we need to learn about where stuff is but then there's also another method which is uh if for
35:10
instance if you're trying to learn a lick or Melody sing it first yeah and then you got the greatest slow Downer
35:19
ever right and you probably don't sing it yeah right and so you turn this you
35:27
know something it might sound like this when you're first learning it and you sing
35:35
it you know and then there's it's it's musical it's more musical because we've been probably singing longer a lot of
35:41
musicians don't believe they can sing I can't really sing very well but I sing all the time you know and uh we earlier
35:48
before we started we were singing it was fun so so thank you for me noticing that
35:54
and what I really just try and do is make these things go beyond the
36:01
mechanical or at least take the mechanical toward ever closer toward the
36:08
musical you know and I don't use fingernails I use flesh I sacrifice
36:14
speed sometimes although I I can do okay you know fast tempos with just my
36:19
fingers um but I really want to make every note have some
36:28
personality and and its own volume in relationship to the other things and so I put a lot of energy into the right
36:34
hand particularly but the left hand has to do mean you have to be able to plant the note and really have it solid in
36:41
order to get a good tone out of it absolutely so it's it's both and and I care about it and I I I think this is my
36:49
my sort of intuitive idea that as soon as you start thinking about your tone
36:57
your tone won't start getting better because and until you do it won't you
37:03
can chase knobs and stuff and petals and string gauges and everything all but
37:09
until you start Imagining the beautiful tone that you want in your imagination
37:14
in your mind it's not the tone from a record it's actually the tone of your perfect
37:20
guitar then that's when your tone will start getting better I think you know if you have the patience for that
37:29
let's talk kind of tone and and you know
37:34
kind of gear and and just in because there's things that you kind of learn about yourself and you learn how that
37:39
you like a guitar set up and you learn like you know we were fortunate enough
37:45
to have a a dinner the other night with Dan strain Dan or castra guitars and so it was it was a nice you know fun you
37:51
know conversation and uh you know you talked about you know getting that guitar and
37:59
and no matter what there's always these little things that we do to guitars because we we want to get it so that
38:05
we're comfortable on it so that we're able to make music instead of instead of trying to get comfortable or being
38:10
distracted by a some sort of deficit or something yeah yeah um well I have a recipe for the external and I have a
38:19
concept at least and a philosophy for the internal yeah and find try to find a way for them to meet um so on this
38:26
guitar this is a uh a Fender Custom Shop nocaster from about 2000 it started out
38:33
its life as a closet classic and it's been I've been chipping away at it ever since I love this there's there's some
38:39
wear kind of on the uh on the upper back side that's really nice right there yeah that's that's just chipping I but and
38:47
it's and it's black because I I this is my solo guitar and and it's a black suit
38:52
that turns into that color it's on the back it's and it's all checkered and stuff um I cleaned the neck for a long
38:58
time I didn't clean the neck and everybody was yelling at me when look like you're going to get Hepatitis come
39:04
on clean your NE it's got too much growing on it yeah and so it gets but now I learned that it has its charms um
39:11
but it's got a fairly large neck as you can see it's like n6 which is quite large because you know
39:18
a lot of old necks you even back in the the early black guards are usually about
39:23
you know8 up to like 92 there's not that there's very
39:30
few that are your on that I me that's that's I likeit into this thing yeah and
39:35
it works yeah but the thing that I like about it and you know I feel like you
39:41
it's hard to run if you're squatting yeah so I figure opening my hand up and having a little distance between my
39:47
thumb and my fingers helps me to do what I do also I like it so that it doesn't change size very much as it goes up
39:54
right so it's not a a high graduated it's subtly graduated and it can't
40:00
really get that much bigger when you're starting at96 then you might get up to one yeah
40:05
right it's about one yeah so that's first thing um I like it I I like the neck to be very straight and I like the
40:13
action to be quite low but I use 12 16
40:19
20 uh 38
40:25
30 whatever is on this this thing it ends with a 54 okay so it's the Dario
40:31
set that has a l g by 12 to 54 it's just regular round L strings because I like
40:39
that there's something about this kind of sound that I just love
40:46
yeah it's it's not Bo yeah and the angels are
40:52
singing But but it's not D the flat one especially the bass streams they feel
40:59
good and they sound cool but for Rich harmonic stuff they don't have it
41:05
because they all they give you really is the fundamental and that's why people like them that's why they sound good in the mix all that kind of stuff yeah I
41:11
understand that I never really liked them I tried them for year so uh relatively close action I mean is that
41:18
close action yeah yeah um and uh then these pickups are Lawler Charlie
41:25
Christian pickups and wired so that they're similar in in wiring to a
41:30
Stratocaster um so right now because of the of the noise um natural's kind of a
41:35
noisy town you know to it is they've got some uh funky wire I don't usually have this too much trouble but I put it in
41:42
the both pickups on so that it's some canceling and it's not quite as quacky
41:47
as a strap but it's a little bit of that quack which the harmonics like it because the harmonics don't like it when
41:53
you're when you only have one source and they like it when it's for two sources um and this is a Hal BS which I think is
42:01
basically the guts similar guts um and then on this guitar I have a pole pot
42:06
which I can get all three together or the outside to Y so if I never get it
42:12
never needs to sound more like a Telecaster and it's in a range of tone there's videos on YouTube that help me
42:18
demonstrating all the different tone um but that's my thing I don't I usually
42:23
use a Princeton we're we're playing a beautiful headstrong uh little King and it's a great sounding amp and um I
42:31
usually don't I try not to play too loudly CU I want the I don't I really there's something happens that most
42:37
people like where something extra comes in there's an extra you know Mojo in the
42:44
soup that you get when you turn the appway up y That's I find that to be a little distracting for me and and and so
42:50
I prefer to play quieter but I I can crank it if I have to you know on a blues gig or whatever you know I love
42:56
that and like fret wise do you like bigger Frets smaller Frets these are stac medium mediums yeah
43:04
.52 there a number of them and I like them because they're they're bigger than
43:11
the flimsy ones that come on the guitar where I because I don't like to feel the wood real strong under my fingers
43:16
although I don't want I don't like jumbos either right real tall isn't so good so I think these are about as wide
43:22
as like a 6150 or something like that but they're just a little bit lower I can't can't remember the the microscopic
43:29
numbers but yeah yeah and then usually uh I haven't had any fret work done in a
43:34
while Mike LOL uh who's recently departed this planet used to do a thing
43:40
where he would uh put the do a fret job and then the above the 12 fret he would flatten the Frets a little in the center
43:47
not the the wood but just so that I could get a little bit of more clearance
43:52
for bending strings I don't bend much on this guitar because of the heavy strings yeah my other guitar and might if I'm
43:58
playing a blues gig or an everything gig or never know I don't I don't know what it's going to be I have another telling
44:04
similar to this without the middle pickup with 11 to 50 that Diario set
44:09
this called balance tension yeah got 19 G and that seems to be a good compromise
44:15
so I'm not going too crazy with the difference um and I used to tune this
44:21
guitar down a half step all the time and I stopped doing that I love the way it sounds but since I stopped doing it if I
44:28
do it it seems a little soft to me and it kind of messes me up a little bit especially on a long gig where you as
44:35
the gigles on you start pushing a little harder and stuff yeah uh anyway that's the story yeah one of the things you
44:42
were uh you were saying the other night was that I mean you you kind of have a preference for Saddles and and like oh
44:49
yeah I forgot I love Glendale Saddles they're these compensated Saddles that just feel right to me I gotten used to
44:54
them I've played some other ones that are fine to yeah um but these are they look cool they look good I mean and they
45:01
the the the screws don't stick up that's a real yeah crazy making thing for me and they're compensated so you put them
45:08
on tighten them up till they meet each other and it's almost always perfect clean to and and you like brass Saddles
45:14
yeah I like brass yeah yeah um you know and all the same I like them all the
45:20
same I got used to it um and then Glend also makes a set that this guitar has
45:26
called the the deep in tone and it's for heavier strings or lower tunings so you
45:33
can pull the you can pull the this this string is tilted back further okay the
45:38
Loy yeah um and I probably ought to talk about you the other the other part of
45:44
this internal mechanism of tone making uh I I put Flesh on the string uh one
45:51
thing I like about these pickups and I look for in a pickup is I don't like the the top string to be s it should be on a
45:57
different guitar or has a different tone setting so I like the top string to have the same girth
46:04
and as as all the rest of the strings cuz I wanted to sing up
46:10
there cuz the melody is often on the top two or three strings at any given
46:19
time and then I have a lighter touch in the middle my first and second fingers are quite light in the middle and the
46:25
thumb is whatever it needs to be um but I try and
46:33
get even out of a thinner sounding setting I like to get a nice round tone
46:39
and I get it by kind of planting the Flesh on the string and pushing down
46:45
rather than whacking at it yeah or hitting it with a nail or something so if I play you know
47:02
I want those the melody to sing out I have a little nail on my little finger so that if I'm playing a a Melody note
47:09
it ends up being a little brighter and it's two inches closer to the bridge because you know or so and it's so that
47:16
also helps things stand out
47:22
yeah you know so that all that stuff is important to me that B that what I call
47:28
the internal Dynamic of the vertical event it sounds huant but it just means how loud each of the notes in a chord
47:35
and the melody is compared to each other one
47:41
thing I don't want to make you self-conscious but this is something I've seen in a lot of players where they
47:47
will make sounds with their mouth guitar all the time yeah and so it's it's
47:53
something that seems to be like connective tissue or something that that goes along but this is a lot
47:59
of great players do this where they they have this you know as soon as they start playing they'll you know sometimes it'll
48:05
get real well I do it and I I do it um it started because it it's what I think
48:12
it does it humanizes this mechanical instrument yeah it puts something to your body and your
48:18
breath um to the notes but I can't sing like George Benson yeah right but I
48:25
always sing when I'm playing and then the grumbling is just me trying to suppress the singing a little bit so
48:31
that I and and but I definitely connect people always say what are you doing with your breath are you are you what
48:36
you know so yeah I you know if I'm playing uh you know play you
48:49
know and it's connected to the music it's not just sort random it helps me phrase so I can't sing beyond the seat
48:57
for breath I don't hold my breath I stay relaxed I stay in the moment and um I
49:02
also have favorite like I love MOS Allison and he you could hear him he'd
49:12
say and for me that's just something romantic that I do but you're right you
49:17
notice it and I think it helps yeah um I also think that you can't think too much
49:23
when you're doing that I think I I think it helps keep you focused on on keeps your body and I tend
49:31
to some guys are very still I got play with me people who are wonderful players and they'd hardly move a muscle and but
49:37
I'm always like you know grooving and moving and and not to the point where it distracts me from this action you know
49:43
the the activity at hand but I'd like to feel it you know and I feel if I'm not
49:48
feeling it chances are you're not feeling it right I you know we have to
49:54
we have to hit on this so you don't really use pleum a lot I do I play I play in Pearl Jango I play with almost
50:01
all I yeah and so this is fun so yeah you know this is a offender extra heavy
50:06
that you have a little uh you know B ring on there and yeah we were talking
50:12
about it earlier how it uh gives you you know something to you know kind of give you a landmark where where it is on your
50:19
right the story on this is I found out that that Fender stopped making this size the 351 in extra heavy in tortoise
50:27
panicked a little bit and I kind of put the word out on Facebook Hey guys anybody got any a batch of those they
50:33
tried to me didn't like them send them to me it was such a good response people sent me pics from all over the place but
50:38
then I would realized that I had a jar of pics as we all do that had been
50:44
retired because the the logo the embossed logo had worn off yeah and I
50:49
always put my thumb on that b embossed logo and I thought about it for a second and I I realized I could put something
50:56
on there and I decided that these these binder rings are uh by the way that's magic um yes it doesn't have anything to
51:03
do with the binder rings St if I turn it around I can also do it um it but it just gives me just a thin and you got to
51:10
use the plastic ones because the paper ones start to melt you know from sweat but it sticks on there it stays on there
51:16
it doesn't I don't notice it on a hot day or in my pocket or something coming out and all of a sudden this thing's
51:21
over there or whatever just gives me something to feel with my thumb and then I I gives me a sort of I know my thumb's
51:28
kind of placed you know it's not too precious I just stick them on there I don't put them in a like I don't like
51:33
measure exactly or anything but it's cool and it helps me also know if I drop it I can see it a little easier than you
51:39
know I drop it on the carpet sometimes you can't see the pig yeah yeah so I I
51:44
use the the Hands by themselves I use the pick by itself and I use pick and fingers or ditch the pick and do all
51:51
sorts of stuff it's all the it's even when I'm playing a solo gig sometimes I'll have to pick right there
51:58
yeah when you when you play geig do you normally just take one guitar and a small amplifier yeah and that's always
52:05
like the hardest decision of the day yeah what because I know you know you've got you know a number of telecasters and
52:12
T style guitars yourself so I have a lot of Tellies and me I have a growing collection of archtops because when I
52:18
joined Pearl Pearl Jango they wanted me to play archb and I like l7s and I you
52:24
know in the search for the perfect one that has the sound and the playability and the look and everything like that
52:29
you buy a few guitars I noticed I learned in my old age that they're a lot easier to buy them they are to sell yeah
52:35
um you know if there's there's a reason to buy them you know you do it for a living and you're you can ride it off on your taxes and do all that stuff you
52:41
know you tend to accumulate some things uh so I have a few l7s um and then I
52:47
have just a few things that are like something I thought always was the coolest thing ever you know uh and and I
52:54
don't take them out much but yeah deciding what what one thing to bring and lately I've been doing gigs where I
53:00
might bring a short little pedal board and uh with a RC booster um a Barefoot
53:07
honeybee um a h AO Halo the Andy Timmons yeah yeah
53:14
that's and a flint yeah because I like the the I don't use the Reverb on the Flint generally I use the tremolo and I
53:21
like the harmonic trim for this one lot of people I see it on everybody's but the whole board's about that big and
53:27
it's like one of those little um and I'll bring that if it's that kind of a game PE jangle is very easy I have a
53:35
like this old twe eh15 looking cabinet with a with a quilter inside and a 12-in
53:41
speaker and uh and it's you know easy to carry and one guitar and off to the deal
53:47
sometimes we walk on fairies to get to the gig on the island and uh because it's so much more expensive to drive on
53:54
and you don't have to wait in line so long and stuff um and having something you can just carry on a rolly or right
54:01
just in your hands is so good it's so much better yeah so yeah one one guitar
54:07
very rarely do I bring two sometimes I bring two and then usually only use one
54:14
yeah you have a number of books that you've uh released through the through
54:20
the years yeah I have uh three books with guitar Vivo the first one was quite
54:25
a good made a big SPL it's called the melodic the melodic jazz guitar chord dictionary and the premise of the chord
54:31
dictionary was that we wanted to sort of alphabetize the chords to a greater extent than they've ever been done
54:37
before so the way we decided to do that was we would classify and and collect the chords by the top note in the
54:43
voicing okay so that you could look up a chord let's say we want an A Minor 7 chord with a with a third in the melody
54:50
the flat third in the melody so we said okay well we want to be able to have that chord and then there's four or five
54:55
or 10 different colors underneath that that note and we further refined it by
55:01
saying that note is on the third string or that note is on the second string or that not is on the top string so we can
55:06
cover all of the a minor chords with the third and the melody you know we have this one we have this one we have uh you
55:14
know then we have it up here and then we have it up here you know you whatever sorry yeah and and uh
55:21
here so you know and then underneath the first ones like that chord basic version
55:27
of that chord with that Melody note and then maybe you know half a page more of colorful chords that would give you the
55:34
same Melody note but have a little maybe a ninth or a sixth or something in it to give it a little juice or Pizzazz yeah
55:40
um and it's been successful and then then the second half of the book is you know a little more instructive rather
55:46
than a reference material and then the second book we made was called melodic
55:52
jazz guitar Court phrases thinking that well you got the dictionary and you want to play some chord phrases so these sort
55:58
of melodic
56:05
um um two five ones or we actually started with single chords of all of all
56:10
uh varieties of sound you know what we call them tonalities um major minor
56:17
dominant diminished and all that stuff and we played what George Van's called chord streams one chord in many
56:23
different places with a little that creates a Melody just yeah then we did a whole section on 5 to
56:29
one then we did a whole section on 251 and then 36251 etc etc intros outros
56:36
parallel harmonies sort of these kinds
56:43
of those kinds of moves I would just sat in front of the the camera and played
56:48
and they wrote it up and talk about it and then the newest one is melodic blues
56:54
guitar soloing and it's using all the kind of classic stuff the the kind of Blues Tunes you need to know if you were
57:01
going to go to a jam session and play sit in and just um trying to be melodic and not strictly you know box shaped
57:09
riff fulla you know but try to make Melodies so the emphasis is on learning The Melody of the song learning the
57:14
actual song Melody of the song and using that as concept yeah and using that as a
57:19
as a platform to sort of build something from and and that all three of those books are being very well received and
57:25
I'm very thankful for uh they're available on Amazon so you could just search my name on Amazon and they'll all come up
57:32
yeah Tim I really appreciate you taking the time to to come down here while you
57:37
were in Nashville and uh it was it was a pleasure to you know because of course we did uh back during the old uh
57:44
lockdown we did a uh you know a a zoom you know kind of interview which was fun
57:49
to do but it was so much nicer to get to spend some time with you and kind of get to know and and and hear that guitar you
57:55
know close and in the room so thank you so much thank you Zach and and I wouldn't
58:01
have missed it for the world you know I'm glad we figured it out because it was a tight trip but um I watch the show
58:07
all the time like I said I'm in awe of this chair you know and how many cool really wonderful guitar players have
58:14
been in it and how uh really well you interview I dig it I mean that's
58:19
everybody should listen to Zach to learn how to have an interview because he's so good at it and it's really good so thank
58:25
you for you you've em you've embarrassed me now but I love thank you yeah well
58:31
done well done ask Zach