The Alternative Acoustic Podcast
A deep dive into acoustic artistry, with the guitarists who play their own way. Hear the stories behind their innovative guitar playing and receive exclusive tips and tricks to enhance your playing and creativity.
The Alternative Acoustic Podcast
Episode 1 - Jon Gomm 'Acoustic Explorations'
In this episode Chris chats with Jon Gomm. This podcast is brought to you by Ibanez UK. Join the mailing list here. https://chriswoodsgroove.co.uk/thealternativeacousticpodcast/
Welcome to the Alternative Acoustic Podcast. I'm Chris of the Chris Woods Groove Orchestra and this podcast is brought to you by Ibanez UK. So what can I say? This is our first episode. Our first of many inspiring conversations with inspiring artists. The whole idea behind this podcast is to have conversations with real acoustic artists. Acoustic guitarists who really play things their own way and I promise in every conversation to do my best to bring you the elements that make these players so inspirational and interesting to listen to. Now our first episode is a conversation with John Gorm and I couldn't imagine a better guest to start this podcast off with because he is truly, truly unique in his approach to playing guitar and I think it's fair to say has had a profound effect on the sound of acoustic guitar as well as in technical ways of playing but I think for me personally anyway John is a real inspiration in the sonic element of acoustic guitar I know you're going to enjoy listening to this conversation because well John is great to chat to it's probably an hour of just introspection enjoyable chat but also there's a lot of really fantastic information here that john gives on the ways that he approaches acoustic guitar that i think for any guitarist of any ability of any style will really get something from so Now, before we get stuck into the conversation, this podcast is obviously at the very beginning of its journey. And even though there's a whole host of episodes already recorded and we've got fantastic guests lined up, in all honesty, we need your support to spread the word and also your support in making it possible for us to let you know when new episodes are released. So please join our mailing list if you head to chris.com. woodsgroove.co.uk forward slash the alternative acoustic podcast you'll find a mailing list that you can join now by being part of that mailing list between now and December we're going to put all of those emails into a hat and one lucky person is going to win an absolutely stunning Ibanez acoustic so please make sure you go and do that and if you enjoy listening to this episode please give us a rating on whatever platform It is that you're listening and share it with your friends and generally spread the word. Thanks for listening. And even though obviously we're going to talk about guitar majoritively, I think that's a really interesting... thing to start talking about especially with yourself
SPEAKER_00:say we're going to talk about a guitar pejoratively I'm just going to insult it no no no no
SPEAKER_02:guitars they're such
SPEAKER_00:dicks
SPEAKER_02:aren't
SPEAKER_00:they
SPEAKER_02:I'm not even
SPEAKER_00:oh man John I'm
SPEAKER_02:not
SPEAKER_00:even they're phallic as well they're not even trying to hide what dicks they are
SPEAKER_02:I'm not even sure of what the word pejoratively means anyway pejorative is insult I'm not sure that's what you said though I don't think so I don't think so sometimes I do like to throw out words that I don't really understand though and then just test the water with them
SPEAKER_00:I think that's a good way to do it But you're in the wrong company because I'm both, I have a large vocabulary and I am a pedant as well. A pedant? Yeah, pedantic.
SPEAKER_02:Ah, right, good. Well, this is, what I enjoy about podcasts is the learning element of them. But yeah, we are going to talk about guitar and technique and stuff, but I think it's quite interesting where we started to loosely chat about being away from home and touring and such, because from my observation of John Gomb, it's that you obviously tour now, but also previously, maybe more of that sort of relentless driving around and gig, gig, gig, gig, right? Yeah. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:so back in the old days, I think I did probably more schlepping around and you probably were more aware of it because it would have been mostly in this country as well. So I really built it up from just starting out playing local gigs in my town. And then gradually increasing my radius of travel to kind of the north of England and then around the country. And would be driving myself everywhere. I would take my own PA system places quite often. So I wasn't really restricted by, you know, if somebody wants to book me for a gig, but they don't have any sound, they don't have a sound system, which sounds weird. Like why would a place that doesn't have a sound system be trying to book gigs? But sometimes they're the best ones. There's a thing, there's an old-fashioned thing in the English-British entertainment world on the grassroots where you would be described as a self-contained act. And a self-contained act would be an act who goes into the working men's club or wherever and has their own PA system, so they don't need the local sound system. But also, crucially, they don't need the local band. They don't need the house band. So you don't get up on stage and play with the organist you know say organist because it's a keyboard but it would be an analogue organ thing with bass pedals and the drummer because every working men's club would have a house band or at the very least an organist and a drummer so when you're self-contained you have your own PA you don't need anybody else basically so I was a self-contained act and yeah so I did that a lot and then as things have kind of progressed both kind of naturally and logically and smoothly and completely irrationally and confusingly and crazily, that becomes less of a thing. So I'm not going to take my own PA system and turn up to random places that invited me in China. I want to do an organised tour there because otherwise I'm screwed, really. I'd just be, you know, lost. So yeah, that's changed as time's gone on, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But how do you find that from a... living and life and feeling perspective that sort of change in travelling and go on
SPEAKER_00:yeah I mean for me I really need to be on my own a lot so I find social interaction and I'm not talking it's always worrying when you say that and you're talking to somebody because then they start to get paranoid but this is fine just fine I find social interaction hard because i i mean so the modern interpretation of that which is useful um is that i'm neurodivergent you know a lot of people are and um just means that i often as you can hear right now struggle when it's important and it really matters i struggle to find the words because i i don't know how to communicate things that naturally in that way so Um, it's really hard to describe. I spent a lot of my life apologizing. This is a, this is a fact from when I was a little kid for upsetting people. Um, because I'll be very blunt and say things that you're not really supposed to say. Um, or I will say the first thing that comes into my head without filter. Um, and it can be really socially unacceptable to do that for good reasons a lot of the time. And, um, Yeah, so my social batteries tend to run out pretty quick. So touring is kind of perfect for me in a way because I just get to do all of that social interaction. Not all of it, but a lot of that social interaction is artificially weighted in my favour. So I'm on a stage with a microphone. You know, I win. That's fine. Or I'm meeting fans after the gig who... probably already decided that they love me before they speak to me it's just like do you know what I mean it's it's cheating it's cheating and then a lot of the rest of the time I'll just be on my own traveling or in a hotel room or whatever so it suits me in a lot of ways but then also I do need social interaction the same as anybody else so I do miss my family and my and my friends and stuff back home for sure um so yeah that's how it affects me really it's not perfect for sure but it's um it does suit me in some ways So
SPEAKER_02:a bit of a mixed bag, essentially, as an experience.
SPEAKER_00:I would say so. I think that's true for most people that I know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And what about, say you're talking about needing time on your own, is that still, do you think that's been helpful in driving an insane amount of time on playing guitar? Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:just because it's a joy of sitting there and playing. I
SPEAKER_00:think for solo artists, it draws a lot of people who tend to be like that. So for me, when I was a kid, the guitar was a place of refuge, really. So it was a place where I could express my emotions in a way that's different to verbal expression. And it was a place that I could hide as well. So gave me an excuse not to be doing something else people use video games in the exact same way I think and yeah so I would even take my guitar into school so that I could practice at school but quite often I would practice usually on an electric guitar unplugged in a room maybe with other people like in the classroom where there's other kids you know not during a lesson but at other times so I don't have to interact in the same way I've got this constant other distraction, which really, really helped me. So, yeah. And it's also why I play solo, because when I work with other musicians, it can often go badly.
SPEAKER_02:Creative differences.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. You could kind of say creative differences in that I can't tolerate any creative difference. Okay. And that sucks. You know, it's not some kind of... Often through your history, you hear people talked about and it's like, yeah, he was really stuck to his beliefs as if it's some kind of noble thing. But often it's just people being intransigent or inflexible, which is what I am in that way. And it's not because I have some incredibly strong vision. It's just because I don't want anybody else. You know, the same way that you wouldn't want somebody, you know, if somebody, you're at a restaurant and the waiter comes over and And he's got his thumb in the soup, right? His thumb is in the soup, right? It's not even clean. You can see he's a dirty
SPEAKER_01:man.
SPEAKER_00:He puts your soup down in front of you. Enjoy. And it's like, you're not eating that soup, right? You're not eating it. That's gross. So to me, having anybody else involved in writing music with me is like that. It feels gross and icky and white. It's wrong.
SPEAKER_02:That's interesting, man. I think... from my experience of working with other musicians was very much a, especially from the sort of virtuosic guitar way of thinking where I would write quite complicated parts and pass them to those musicians and then realise that even the greatest, finest musicians in the land that I could find wouldn't play it in exactly the way that I would want it to be done, even if they're playing it to the note. And that's that sort of... I don't know I don't want to put this on your good self but it's like a it's a control thing right isn't it you can you can when it's yourself you can do it exactly as you want it to be done but when it's someone else it's it's just not possible no one can play
SPEAKER_00:it no for me it's not about control as such because I think everybody else's music's better than mine so why wouldn't I want that you know not everybody but there's loads of people that I would love to work with there's loads of people that I would love to work with for me it's more the sort of thing and it's more it's more like what's the word like just a reflex it's just a reflexive thing it's like a it's a reflexive social issue you know so yeah anyway it's hard to explain but I am I'm just a bit fucked up you know that's okay and when I do work with other people now I always when that happens I which is rare, but when it does happen, I always want to choose somebody whose work I love and I just want them to express themselves. I want that. I want them, which is what normal people do and it's much healthier. But for me, it's pretty weird because then is it me afterwards, you know, or is it them? But that's not something that most people worry about in that way. So, I don't
SPEAKER_02:know. The Alternative Acoustic Podcast is proudly supported by Ibanez UK. Now, the Ibanez V-Series has long stood for high quality at seriously affordable prices, available in all kinds of finishes, shapes, and sizes. Now, I got to try all of them out recently, and a particular favourite of mine was the Incredible Mini, which is the perfect travel-size guitar. I mean, it sounds way bigger than it looks. The entire V-Series and all Ibanez guitars are available Available now at Gear for Music. So make sure you go and check them out. Do you think playing all the parts at once is kind of a... Does that sometimes then feel like a bit of a necessity, maybe? Do you think?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I wouldn't say that at all. I mean, I know loads of acoustic performers, acoustic guitarists who don't do that and they just play... regular guitar and still like I love I love PJ Harvey and she obviously plays mostly with the band but she writes very simple guitar parts in terms of how much is going on with her fingers or whatever but they're awesome and they're huge hooks and they're massive riffs and they sound incredible and Stephen Wilson Jr literally never heard of him until yesterday and I saw him have you heard of that guy? kind of like a bit kind of grungy Americana guy but he's a contemporary artist and a friend of mine just actually a fan who's become a friend really who's come to loads of my gigs over the years and always introduces me to new stuff some of which I like and some of which I don't like as much but this was really cool and I saw a video of him playing um something in the way by nirvana a cover just with nylon string guitar and voice but he was running a nylon string guitar through an overdrive pedal or or a dirty amp or whatever with absolutely loads of reverb on it as well quite filthy reverb and he was and he had a really cool riff that wasn't the original riff that he'd come up with it didn't look you know super difficult to play i wouldn't say and it was in a weird tuning as well and what was he in I think from watching it, he was in like open D but down. So like open, not traditional open C, but like if you imagine open D tuning, so D, A, D, F sharp, A, D, but down a step. So it becomes in the key of C. So I'm pretty sure he was there. And yeah, it's just sounded immense, but he's not playing drums on the guitar. We're trying to play lots of things at the same time. For me, it's, that's the other side of it, which is like, I like, making complicated things so there's the other side of guitar playing so Kaki King who I love she described it as being playing guitar or learning to play guitar as being like a video game that you can never complete and I think that's really cool and I'm not a gamer but it's but the thing of getting better and better and better or just upping your stats and getting better you know I don't know numbers or weapons or whatever for your character that kind of thing it's like that with guitar you can just keep finding new stuff and it's endless music is endless it's all of humanity so there's styles of music that I would love to love to learn if I had a million lifetimes I would just learn to play you know Indian classical music or um Balkan folk music or all these different styles from throughout history, I'd learn to play them. Although I would... chris i don't know how you feel about this but if even if i was learning all those things i would learn them all on the steel string acoustic guitar because it's the best but i don't know how you feel for
SPEAKER_02:sure man for sure i think in uh like in conversations in like music education stuff where piano is king just doesn't make any sense to me why that is because there's so there's so much limited to the parameters of playing a note do you know what i mean on off and volume in this sort of spectrum do you
SPEAKER_00:know why that is chris because a piano is not a musical instrument you know what it is it's a machine it's a machine machine no but it is for sure it's a machine you don't play the note you push a button and it plays the note it's a mechanical device so yeah it is really limited in that way but obviously it's really easy to play easier than any other instrument because you don't have to learn how to create sound you just push a button and it does it anybody can like cats famously absolutely play the piano with varying degrees of success
SPEAKER_02:absolutely and that is genuinely and why the guitar is so interesting isn't it and so why and the idea of this podcast was conversations with people around the acoustic guitar because everyone has such a i don't want to sound too cliche but has everyone has such a unique voice everyone plays notes in such a different and unique way that's yeah special to the person and approach more so than the electric I think as well I think there's some I don't
SPEAKER_00:know I think it's yeah electric guitar I think you can be more kind of expressive with a single note because you can do lots of vibrato and sustain you know and you can add more dynamics into it but you can't do all the other stuff at the same time. And so you're expressing that, but you're relying on other people to create the kind of landscape around you while you do it. Otherwise, what you do doesn't make any sense. Whereas with acoustic guitar, you can do all of that. So, yeah, there's definitely little trade-offs. The only sound an acoustic guitar can't do is... a swell, like a note that increases in volume. So that's the only thing you can't do. You can't play a note and then have it get louder. With an electric guitar you can, because you can cheat with your volume control or whatever. And with a violin or a wind instrument, or brass instrument, you can start it quietly and then bow it or blow it louder. But with an acoustic guitar, the only thing you can't do is that, which annoys me.
SPEAKER_02:But that leads us to plugging in though, doesn't it? And that's like a huge part of... Yeah, I guess so, yeah. Well, if I think of the John Gomm sound, I think of it as a, you know, acoustic electric ambience, a mix of the two, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I don't... I'm not an acoustic purist. I don't... come from that world and I find it a bit weird so I don't so there's one thing I hate in music or art or life which is the paradigm so what I mean by a paradigm is what it means is the perfect example of something that lives in your head so when Socrates Socrates paradigms or Plato when he was talking about paradigms one of those really old one of those dead chaps It was a philosophical idea, which was, you know, what is a spoon, you know? And they would say, well, a spoon is the perfect example of a spoon that lives in your head. And every spoon that you ever see comes up against that spoon. For some people, it might be really ornate, but for most people, it'd just be perfectly functional, a perfectly functional spoon for whatever specific thing you need a spoon for right now. And that sounds silly, but if you talk to a chef, they'll probably have an exact spoon they love for an exact job, you know? And this is where, with musicians and particularly guitarists, the example would be tone. And people have the perfect idea of the perfect tone. And to me, it's the death of expression and individuality is having that idea. What,
SPEAKER_02:of good or bad? The aesthetic of this is good tone, this is bad tone. Yeah, exactly. This is a good acoustic guitar, this is a bad acoustic. Yeah. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There's no, it's like you get into terms like quality. Mm-hmm. Like quality. It's so popular now for people to talk about a quality sound and things having a tonal quality. And as you're saying, being good or bad. And I just don't agree with that. And with acoustic guitar, it tends to be things being very, very sparkly and bright. And that's great. But I also want to hear loads of bass. And I want to hear loads of chunky, warm mid-range. So you can get that from the way you build a guitar, which is... what I've tried to do with Ibanez. And then you can also get it electronically from adding pickups, which is what I've worked on with Fishman. And yeah, to me, it's really important to do that because what I've always wanted to do is have a guitar which allows me to create my own voice, not to just, you know, be... some pristine object that you are handed and then it makes a perfect sound and all you have to do is play it. I don't like that
SPEAKER_02:idea. Or sounding like something before, perhaps.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Yeah. Well, that's exactly what it is. You're not really, when you have those paradigms, they're not really yours. They're cultural and they're decided for you. And you've just agreed to it. You know, that's not.
SPEAKER_02:It's really interesting, man, especially again, like for acoustic guitar, because so many of those iconic acoustic recordings, if you like, are the guitar doesn't sound in that what we would term as a, you know, a really good sound. acoustic guitar sound it might be slightly trashy or thin or you know boxy or quite a lot of negative
SPEAKER_00:terms but then they become paradigms it's bizarre so you get guitars which are built deliberately to sound like that so the kind of so what's so in Nashville when you kind of standard Nashville recording session the acoustic guitar in a band context serves a purpose which is to provide sparkly jangle as it's strummed like an airy sparkly jangle above what the piano or keys or the electric guitar or whatever is providing. And so then you get guitars that are built and pickup systems that are designed to just create that sound. And then people try and use them to play fingerstyle guitar where you actually are trying to be the only sound being heard. And it's a disaster because there's nothing there for them. They can't use it. You know, it's nasty. It's like they're playing their guitar through a phone speaker the whole time or something. But
SPEAKER_02:that's like, if you can, go on, make a noise on your guitar so listeners can actually sort of hear the fullness of it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so I hope you can. I've not ever plugged this system into a live stream before, but... So hopefully what I have is a whole load of what I call piano bass at the bottom. So that's my kind of grand piano bass that I try to aim for. And then I do want the sparkly top as well, but then hopefully there's plenty of almost nylon stringy kind of warm mid-range for melodies. And then also I've got to be able to... pick up all of this. All of this stuff. And that's without any effects. And as soon as I add the effects, like the reverb and stuff, it'll get fairly... I mean, that's a big win there. I can go way bigger than that.
SPEAKER_02:And are you... John, do you... That's a lot of reverb. Yeah, no, more, more. Don't apologise for your reverb, man. Do you practise plugged in? Because that's obviously, you know, the life of the note and how you control that is dependent on what's coming out of the speakers at the end of the day with that,
SPEAKER_00:isn't it? Yeah, both. Both. So I practise unplugged and plugged in. And I do... Again, everything's really weirdly kind of based on these... almost kind of moral choices that I make, which is like, so one of the reasons I play unplugged is because when I played, play acoustic rather, is because when I was playing electric guitar more, I would get frustrated with the amplifier, like a ball and chain. And it was like the sound was coming from somewhere else and I needed it. to be able to make a noise. And it felt really limiting. It sounds stupid because every time I play a concert or record, I'm relying on electronics to capture the sound. But I just want to be able to go into a room or just go into a space where there's other people or just on my own and just make a noise and do my thing and make my sound and express myself the way a trumpeter or a violinist can without having to worry about being plugged into a load of stuff. So even though I use loads of effects and loads of pickups, I don't write songs that rely on them. And I don't write songs using them. I'm always unplugged when I write songs. I don't want to write a song that relies on an echo or I don't loop. I love listening to looping and watching looping done. It's really exciting and awesome, but I hate doing it. And this is why. So I never write songs that rely on being... I always need to be able to do it acoustically at an open mic night or to my mum in a room or in the woods alone to the squirrels, you know. So, yeah, I practice both ways, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That's interesting, man. That's really, really interesting. Okay, well, can we talk about your picking skills? hand because I think that's and through other conversations and my observations from playing and meeting other players and teaching is that this is you know this picking hand is your voice you know that fretting hand doesn't really change things so much but it's that
SPEAKER_00:it's not like that for me because so much I don't pick so much I don't pick so your fret hand
SPEAKER_02:is actually your voice, or equally.
SPEAKER_00:They're just together. It's just together. Equally, yeah. Equally, so many of my notes are not... are not plucked. I can play... So, I have a piece called The Ghost Inside You, which is extremely... It's an instrumental, and the melody is very simple on the guitar, but very strong. And I don't pluck most of it. Most of it is tapped with my left hand, because my right hand's busy doing something else. Okay. And... yeah so yeah I don't I don't do that and I don't it's weird for me to think think of myself as a finger style that's so interesting it's hard player because I pluck so little how much
SPEAKER_02:percentage wise is landing on your
SPEAKER_00:I've got no idea but but I what are the
SPEAKER_01:stats
SPEAKER_00:I don't know I don't know somebody would have to work that out have to feed my tab into chat GPT and have a look but if I'm doing I don't know Try it. So I'll be plucking some stuff. There I'm tapping some notes. I'm plucking others. But I'm plucking them over here. And sometimes I'm just tapping everything. And now I'm plucking it with my right hand, but behind my left hand. Now it's tapped. Now it's tapping and plucking. So one thing that's really important to me is to have as many different textures inside the music as I can get. So I want some notes to be tapped, some to be plucked, some to be harmonics. And then I'll talk about if I'm teaching somebody how to play something and there's a lot of left-hand tapping... or any kind of tapping, I'll say to them, okay, you have to be careful here because you don't want your guitar to sound like a MIDI guitar. You know when you've got a tab file in Guitar Pro or whatever and you play it back in Guitar Pro and it has that MIDI guitar sound. You've got to be really careful to avoid that, especially if you're doing loads of tapping because the notes are less expressive. So I'll try and include slides and vibrato. What, to sort of disguise that sort of... Yeah, not always. I quite like that attack. I like that attack, but just to bring variation as much as anything, and texture. What about that
SPEAKER_02:behind-the-nut thing,
SPEAKER_00:that extra resonance? I just don't care
SPEAKER_02:about it. Okay, that's kind of part of the aesthetic, if you like.
SPEAKER_00:You can't hear it. Nobody... Nobody ever talks to... Nobody has ever mentioned it to me except guitarists when they just started doing Tamco. Sometimes it can be their guitar's not set up that well. Sometimes it can be because they're not playing loud enough because the louder you play, the kind of note you're aiming for will get louder. So just to be clear what you're talking
SPEAKER_02:about. Yeah, yeah. And if you can just... Because obviously it's an audio thing too. If I
SPEAKER_00:play this note here... If I mute it... I can't because I've pressed the pedal... There we go. If I play this note, you can hear I'm aiming for this note, but I also get this note. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So sometimes people call it the back note. So it's just you're getting a note between your left-hand finger and the nut, which is not a nice note. It's not in tune. It's not anything. It's not even a... But
SPEAKER_02:that's been...
SPEAKER_00:For those
SPEAKER_02:who can't see us, obviously, so that's because you're not striking, not plucking the note. Well,
SPEAKER_00:you still get it if you're plucking the string. You still get it every time you press down on a fret. Assuming you do it reasonably quickly, you still get that. You just can't hear it because the plucked note will drown it out. But it's still
SPEAKER_02:there. As you put your finger down, you mean?
SPEAKER_00:Every time you press down on a fret, assuming you do it reasonably quickly and don't do it very slowly, and then pluck the string, then... Yeah, you will get that. But you can't hear it once you're plugged in and people just won't notice it. And what they're more likely to notice is things like string squeak, which can be really annoying. Not so much for guitarists who tend to tune it out and forget that it's happening, but more for audiences where somebody's playing, perhaps really softly, and then every time the guitarist moves their left hand up and down the neck, you get that horrible screech and you see the audience like... you know, wince in pain at this sharp, horrible noise that the guitarist just has long since become oblivious to. But they never notice this back note business. It's only guitarists who notice that. And as soon as you plug in or just play loud or put a microphone in front of the guitar, or like I say, just play stridently and clearly and loud, you won't be able to hear it because the better you play, the clearer and louder you play, the bigger the difference will be between how loud your actual note is, and that back note won't really get any louder, it can't really. So
SPEAKER_02:yeah, you're using volume to sort of drown it out to some
SPEAKER_00:degree. Yeah, most people play too quiet, you know, when they strike a guitar. Some people do it on purpose. So Mike Dawes, you'll be familiar with, he plays super soft. He's got a really soft attack, and he just plays really quietly. Yeah. But it's just because he's just so physically weak. No. No. Well, he probably is. I don't know. But he's... No, it's just... I don't know. I think it's a stylistic thing and it's a choice. And it's almost... He uses it because sometimes he gets really loud and it means that his playing is normally... Whereas my playing might... Generally, I'm aiming for like six and a half, seven out of ten... for my kind of standard volume, that only gives me another three to go for a max volume, whereas he might be trundling more around five. So he's got way more headroom to get more dynamic, you know? So, yeah, he's no fool. So he knows what he's doing. Yeah, but then, you know, his guitar still sounds absolutely great.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so... But is there any kind of... Okay, so if I've been writing a style file for guitar techniques or something about a guitarist, there'll usually be like a system. Do you know what I mean? A sort of... Then this is really talking about picking hand again, which makes you different. But there's these sort of particular... patterns that always come out. Travis picking is a fine example of playing on the beat with the thumb and the off beats being upstrokes. So it translates between strumming and picking, for example, or some people using thumb and two fingers, but the thumb is always on the lower strings. But I'm interested by bearing in mind, you're talking and talking about using both hands. So in such a even way, Is there any kind of system there that you're using? It's literally just a fluid... I wish there was, man. It sounds like you need a
SPEAKER_01:system.
SPEAKER_00:No, there's no system at all. I wish there was, but unfortunately... So your choice
SPEAKER_02:from tapping in your fretting hand rather than playing it with your... Picking Hand is not because of, oh, it's because it fell on that beat and you're sort of going on and off the beat. It's just... No,
SPEAKER_00:it's nothing like that. No, my playing is more constructed and I don't just have like a natural approach, but I certainly did learn Travis
SPEAKER_01:Picking.
SPEAKER_00:And I remember noticing little differences, the kind of ways of making it modern that I noticed that people did. So I learned it when I was a kid. I had a book, Mark Hanson, I can't remember what it's called now, but they made two classic... book with CD on the cover things, and he's an amazing guitar player, but he would have... Okay, so it's that kind of... So that's Travis picking, named after Milt Travis, as we know, and it's basically alternating bass between at least two notes, or sometimes three notes, which I, for some reason, hate the sound of myself, but I'd like to. But then I noticed that modern guitarists, I don't know what I mean by that exactly, but more... Guys that had a sound that I liked more, I guess. So I noticed first, I think, Nick Drake doing it. He would often leave out the third note. So instead of this... He would have this. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. So on three, there's no bass note. So then when you play with your fingers as well, instead of this... You now have this. So it's less rhythmically kind of like... like a march or something, and it's less driving and more floaty and ethereal just by dropping out that one note. And I noticed people doing that, so I tended to adopt that if I was ever using that. And I do have a couple of songs that do have those kind of what I call alternating bass. I was
SPEAKER_02:going to say, because that's still, if you like, the system of... Even though you're not playing that third down, was it? So you were going like one, two... So
SPEAKER_00:your base notes would be the root note and then your higher note and then nothing and then your higher note again. I can't hear if
SPEAKER_02:that's
SPEAKER_00:correct or not. Just
SPEAKER_02:pretend it is.
SPEAKER_00:But if that... Yeah, I think, so it's like, so you're playing on the fifth and fourth strings with your thumb there, right? So you'd be playing five, four, four, five, four, four, five, four, four, and that'd be a bass line. Yeah. And then the fingers can do anything that you like, really, either on the beat or in between beats.
SPEAKER_02:But that system, that sort of, you're still almost doing that downstroke motion on you so you've got that even sort of ebb and flow, if you like, of down and up pulsing all the time, even though you're sort of missing that out. So do you find in your picking those little moments where John Gobham is being a little bit more normal? Do you sort of slip into that sort of metronomic or pendulum?
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, for sure, yeah. I try to get the kind of metronome going all the time in everything that I'm playing, but it just tends to not be patterns like that. And whenever I write stuff, I don't I don't write by finding a chord and then picking it with a pattern. I just, I never do that. Okay, so
SPEAKER_02:that's huge. That's hugely different, isn't it? Because that's fingerstyle so much of the non, well, of the American sort of American primitive and country and folk that's chordal and it's patterns. And that is something that... Yes, some of it is. Are you
SPEAKER_00:under
SPEAKER_02:attack? I am a little bit, but it's going to be okay.
UNKNOWN:LAUGHTER
SPEAKER_00:Whoa. So, yeah. Well, quite often I do have other kinds of patterns. So maybe tapping patterns, for example. Okay, okay, okay. So one of the common tropes in kind of modern post-Michael Hedges finger style would be to have an ostinato in the left hand, which might be very simple or it might be very complicated, but usually when people do them, they're very simple. So you might have just like an on-off. Okay, just hammer on some pull-offs. Let me find a reverb that's not quite so ridiculous. Okay, so... So I might have a little on-off thing, and then people do... So somebody might have like a left-hand thing going, and then they're adding all other things around it, you know, and that left hand then going on-off, on-off, on-off, which it might do differently... to that hopefully there's a lot you can do anything with that that's just the easiest one um becomes like your thumb yeah yeah just keep keeping that beat it's more it's more pianistic in terms of the way that you're finding a groove not with an up down motion of your arm but with an on your finger on off kind of motion or your finger moving between two places and um Yeah, that's another kind of way that you can get that kind of pulse. But there's many. Often my pulses will be drums. So... So you can hear the reverb of my voice just on my guitar pickup. I like
SPEAKER_02:it. It accentuates the importance of what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. I should insist on maybe, you know, those Tonewood amps. Can you fit them to your body?
SPEAKER_02:I'm sure you can.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe I can just strap it to myself and just walk my whole life. I'll just be in the pub having a drink and everything I say has a reverb on it. Wow, this guy is like really wise. Whoa. Instant wisdom. But yeah, I'll often have a drum groove, which will be my kind of up-down thing. So I'm really into strumming patterns, historically. Okay. And I like the way they work and drum patterns as well. So I'll have like... So that's a little, like a 3-4 strumming pattern. Just turn the reverb off, it sounds cheaper than that. So... So I might have a little one, two, three, one, two, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, that kind of strumming pattern just with downs and ups. And I'm just, I'm playing all of them, but just accenting certain ones. And that's a typical kind of thing. But then over time I've added like...
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:So within the same motion... or get more complicated, which can then break the motion. But that still becomes, if I'm doing this... It looks weird if you've never done it before, but that feels so natural to me. And your wrist is still going down and up. Yeah, my arms rotate and my body's going. I think getting stuck in just the up-down thing, because it's binary and it's just one thing, it can become a little bit simplistic. It's things, a rhythmical... limitation that other instruments like drums don't have. So, you know, it's, I guess they have a left or right thing, but generally they do a lot of exercises to avoid that becoming dominant. So, yeah, I would say that probably my patterns are different to just having fingerstyle patterns, but I do fingerstyle warmups every day. I'll play fingerstyle patterns every They're pretty weird. Do you want to hear the weirdest thing about my right hand, Chris, when I'm doing finger style? So I use my little finger.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, man. I feel like we should end it there, really. Let's talk about that. Why not? You're a sort of a
SPEAKER_00:rare breed, aren't you? I don't do it well. It's really hard. But I do use it in songs. And when I'm warming up in particular... I like to write really complicated little patterns. So I might play like a... Let me think. So that little pattern there, what I'm doing is... I've got my fingers there planted on the... Strings five to one. I've got five fingers, don't know about you, but fortunately I've got five. So I've got my thumb on the fifth string and then one finger per string. Okay. You could just go up and down an arpeggio. I don't know, what chord are you on there?
SPEAKER_02:I'm just holding a little C. A little C?
SPEAKER_00:So I can play something similar to a C. I'm in a weird tuning, but we could just go up and down like... So P-I-M-A-C-A-M-I-P-I-M-A-C. Do you know what C stands for for the little finger? No, go on, tell me. It's so lovely. It's Chico. Spanish for small. So we have pulgar, index, medio, annular, Chico.
SPEAKER_02:Little Chico is actually... It's not so weird. I mean, I'm awful at it, but wow.
SPEAKER_00:So what I'll do then is come up with a pattern to accentuate how awful that little change around is between your third and fourth fingers. So I'll have like... So P-I-M-A-C-A-C-A-M-A-M-I. So it's a little triplet pattern. And that's really hard. But I think it really helps. And to be honest, even if you don't use that finger, if you use it when you're warming up, you're warming up your whole hand and everything's going to be easier because you don't have to use your effing little finger anymore. So it's... Oh, nice. So you
SPEAKER_02:push yourself to sort of the limit and then everything feels comfortable after. So little finger, I mean, that's seriously cool, man. But is that something that you did... early on or is that like a later I
SPEAKER_00:don't probably probably a little bit well probably a little bit later but because I learned classical guitar and obviously you never really use it and and flamenco guys use it but usually not as part of kind of arpeggio patterns but they certainly use it for a lot of stuff all the sort of percussive noises yeah strumming but also it can be like it can be here anchoring also occasionally being used to strike the guitar but I also do quite a lot of kind of eight finger tapping stuff where I'm playing just with my right hand ah I see. So you're tapping. So that is all, what I'm playing there is all just being played by tapping with my right hand fingers. Because I went through a phase of trying to be Stanley Jordan. If you're not aware, if people aren't aware of Stanley Jordan, he's one of the greatest guitar players of all time. And he's primarily a jazz guitar player. But he plays with both hands on the neck, almost like as if it's a piano. He does play piano beautifully as well. In fact, I've seen him play Chopin with one hand on a guitar neck playing piano. the left hand part and his right hand on the piano playing the right hand part. Um, he's a savant and he's also one of the loveliest men I've ever met. Thankfully. Um, I don't know why I say thankfully, it's just, it's just such a relief. It's nice when you think
SPEAKER_02:someone's awesome and then you meet them and they're like, ah, you're a good guy. It
SPEAKER_01:was more
SPEAKER_00:awesome than I, I guess what I'm thankful for is actually having met him because he's one of the most incredible people I've ever met in my life. Great. And, um, Yeah, I went through like a few months, I guess six months or something of thinking, right, this is it. This is the ultimate way that you can play the guitar. I'm going to learn to do it like this. And then after six months going, no, it's impossible. And it is. It is. What he does is impossible. And it's kind of freak guitar, which is I think an awesome thing. I love guitar players who play in an absolutely freaky way and make beautiful sounds not just I don't know if they don't make good music but but it's it sucks in other ways because it's really easy for other guitar players to write that off I've noticed so a lot of times Stanley Jordan would people would say oh he sounds like two bad jazz guitar players And he doesn't. He sounds like two really good jazz guitar players, but he doesn't really sound like two jazz guitar players. He sounds like something else. It's something different. Okay, okay, okay. Do you know what I mean? And I think we get that a lot. It's like, oh, he's hitting his guitar. It's stupid. For sure,
SPEAKER_02:for sure,
SPEAKER_00:for sure. We get that as percussive guitar players, and I ignore it. And also, I fundamentally disagree with it. I'm not hitting my guitar to play drums or tapping on the guitar because I... suck at writing songs and don't actually have anything to say I can't fucking shut up as you might have noticed quite the opposite so in my case I'm doing it because I just think it makes a really nice sound and I think it has value and I think the guitar is a naturally fantastic percussion instrument and once you start doing it it's really hard to stop because it's like it's such a shame to have this beautiful big wooden box. So resonant and to not hit it. Um, and yeah, but it's, it's a really easy thing where people get, get criticized or written off or ignored because they do something different and new. And Stanley Jordan is one of those. Sometimes people get lucky and, and, um, they do something in a, in a freaky way and, and everyone, everyone buys into it. Um, but that's usually for, for other reasons. Like, I think if Eddie Van Halen had spent his whole career playing like guitars, tapping instrumental guitar solos, he would get written off more, but he was in a really popular, you know, commercial rock band. So, you know, I don't know. I
SPEAKER_02:have a sort of a fairly unique entrance into the, percussive guitar world because I remember... That's all right. Involuntary guitar noodling syndrome. I had that too. But I remember seeing the Andy McKee drifting video a friend sent that to me. At the time, I was sort of noodling in sort of John Martin-esque styles.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Just by listening and sort of percussively hitting the strings and that sort of stuff. And I remember having... that reaction that we're sort of criticising of saying, what? No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00:I've never heard anyone say that before. I assumed I was going to get the standard drifting story. No, no. Sometimes I get with one of my songs, but I hear it so much with drifting where people say, oh yeah, I saw drifting, it changed everything. I wanted to play fingerstyle guitar, but you're actually saying... I
SPEAKER_02:did. I saw it and I feel so bad for having this reaction because apart from the fact that I I adore Andrew McKee's music and I think he appears to be of absolutely wonderful
SPEAKER_00:human being he's really nice yeah we're good mates and he's really he's a lovely guy yeah
SPEAKER_02:but when I saw it I had that sort of reaction what's the point of that and then you know now uh you know percussive acoustic guitar book and 15 20 years later and i've made it my my day job but i think i think at the time It's that response of, I don't know, it's maybe that human, oh, that's different. Why are they doing that? You're not allowed to do that. Yeah, it's really strange coming from that perspective. So I kind of understand it. But now I feel incredibly frustrated when I see, you know, comments on videos talking about, you know, oh, he's just hitting his guitar. What's the point? But I completely agree with you. It's the most natural response. It's the most musical common sense
SPEAKER_00:thing in the
SPEAKER_02:world.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, you've got kids. I'm sure the first time any of your kids ever had a go at a guitar, they just hit it. Yeah, yeah. And it makes a great noise. It's brilliant. Totally. And then, you know, my daughter's having guitar lessons at school now and she has to sit playing melodies with, you know, just a couple of fingers on each hand. But to be honest, she really enjoys that because that is in itself rewarding. And I think everybody should do that and learn to play... guitar um if they've got access to kind of traditional knowledge and traditional learning then use it just don't don't make it your thing to live by creatively but you don't think you can have too much too much knowledge um
SPEAKER_02:It comes down to that idea of something being wrong or right, doesn't it? Or being a good sound or a bad sound. And that sort of, for me, I think as a younger person, it was maybe living in that realm of believing something was the correct way or the wrong way or something was good or bad. And now it's like, ah, anything's okay.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And Andy McKee is a really good example because firstly, he doesn't do that much because of guitar. He doesn't, well... I mean, So he's one of the absolute most kind of simple guys when it comes to the tech stuff. But he also writes incredibly beautiful melodic music. And it often sounds really simple, though it's often not. But it just sounds like pop music a lot of the time, which is what he likes. He likes kind of 80s Christopher Cross music. Tears for Fears, you know, he's done that great cover of their song or he likes big, big melodies and that's what he writes. So when I first saw Drifting, it was, I didn't have any reaction like that because I'd already, I already knew Andy before he had like a YouTube
SPEAKER_02:viral video. I see, I see.
SPEAKER_00:And I'd heard Drifting seven years earlier, you know? Oh,
SPEAKER_02:wow.
SPEAKER_00:So, It was nothing unexpected to me. It was great to see a video of him. But when it went viral, really, really big, that was nuts. And that changed a lot for me as well, even just that happening to him. And he was the second, I guess, percussive or modern fingerstyle guitar player to have a big viral video like that. The first was Eric Mongrain. Oh, yeah, yeah,
SPEAKER_02:yeah. What, from the Jules Holland air tap kind of thing?
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah, although his video that went viral was from before he went on Jules Holland. That's why he went on Jules Holland. He had a viral video. Ah, I see. I'd forgotten he went on Jules Holland.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But, yeah, so this was from a French-Canadian TV show, and I think he uploaded the video on his own channel, actually. I've not seen Eric or spoken to him for many years, but he's a really good guy, and we've done shows together in the past.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, he had this tapping piece that went really viral. And then Andy's went viral like a year later or something. And it opened the doors, I think, for others of us to have that good fortune as well. So, yeah, I'm really... What brought you around from this kind of initial reflexive rejection? Personal growth.
SPEAKER_02:No, I do. I think genuinely personal growth. I think it's that moving from that, like, being at school and thinking in that way of, you know, I thought only rock music was cool, you know, if it involved guitars or, you know, or... that idea of what was good or bad. And I think, honestly, just growing up a bit and going, and that's cool. That's okay. And also, I suppose, because I was percussively playing the guitar and those things were sort of unfolding for me anyway. Do you know what I mean? Playing more percussively and then seeing that, okay, well, this is a natural way. But I do, I genuinely think just realising that, There's no rules to it. It's interesting though, isn't it? It's kind of... I feel uncomfortable saying it in some ways because I think Andy McKee is so wonderful to sort of go, yeah, sorry, didn't like that at first. But I think it is... I think it's good to say because it's maybe seeing a bit of empathy for, because there is so much of it, man. And there's a lot about it with Instagram as well now, right? With the sort of hyper, incredible precision, especially like shred guitar, to a new level of insanity. And then there's lots of
SPEAKER_00:negative comments below it. I mean, I still, it's odd because I'm super into like electric guitar shredding as well. Mm-hmm. as well as the acoustic stuff and stuff that I see yeah it is like the technical I mean I think it's strange the way things are with the fact that you can learn things online it's incredible it's so amazing people can learn so much stuff but I think that I'm not saying this almost as a musician really I think it's something that people who are just music lovers would say too is that what we crave as music fans and music lovers is to be like touched emotionally I mean not physically but you know like music emotionally we want to be moved and we want to that will happen and we also want to be excited um and that can happen because it's something new but it doesn't have to be um You know, something that's kind of novel. But if we hear something which sounds really, really good and impressive, but isn't exciting or doesn't move you emotionally in any way. It doesn't have to be like it makes you question your own existence or fills you with... Your eyes are welling up with tears. You can be moved emotionally to dance, you know, just with joy or fun or just the groove of a tune. But I often find that a lot of stuff that people are making for short form videos doesn't give me any real emotional reaction, which sucks. I'd even like... I don't mind if the emotional reaction is... It's disgust and horror. At least it's a reaction. But often it's nothing. I don't have that. I just have, oh, this is really good, and the video's really good, and the sound production is really good. Everything sounds great, but it's just not reaching me, you know?
SPEAKER_02:But it's just that passing judgment thing, isn't it? And that's like that original reaction to the drifting video or... talking about seeing Instagram videos now that maybe you don't feel anything from it's just like well that's just not for you crack on absolutely
SPEAKER_00:yeah no absolutely and also it's part of an ecosystem where people are learning from each other but yeah like I said I said earlier that you can't have too much knowledge and you can't but there's more to art than knowledge you're using that knowledge to express something that existed before you had any knowledge that's what you should be doing
SPEAKER_02:That's it. End of podcast,
SPEAKER_00:John. That is it, though. I think that's all that matters. You learn all of this stuff so you can say the thing that you couldn't say before, but you still felt it. You still needed it. You still needed to say it and express it. But you can learn all of this stuff so you can do that, not just for its own sake, because there's no point to that. But anyway, what I wanted to ask you, Chris, because I'm really into just looking for new music all the time, but because it's a guitar podcast, I wanted to ask you what guitarists are out there right now that you really like?
SPEAKER_02:That I really dig?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so people who are maybe that you haven't heard about before the past couple of years or something. that you really like?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I guess I'm going to be predictable and say Julian Large or Larger or how we say his last name. Do you know this guy? Yeah. Also, someone who I'm looking up on Instagram to get his name correct as we speak is... The chap who makes the Bigfoot engineering overdrive pedals, Rhys John Stubbs, he's a cool man. I get really into the sort of, I don't know, people approaching notes on the guitar with just the ability to do it with pure clarity and simplicity sometimes.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Do you know what I mean? There's this thing of... And I guess Andy McKee does that sometimes as well, doesn't he? The melodic lines are just... It's not this sort of wavering up and down. Sometimes there's this beautiful consistency to it, which brings out a bit more contrast.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. How about you? Well, I did a tour last year with... a woman called Josephine Alexandra from Indonesia. She has a background in playing classical guitar, but she plays steel string now. And she's known mostly online. I'm not really super online. So... I don't really necessarily know, but she's, she's known mostly on her TikTok, which is massively popular on her Instagram for doing covers. And we see that a lot. Fingerstyle guitar players playing interpretations of, of famous songs. And she does that a lot. And she's really great, great, great player. And what I found seeing her live was she was trying out loads of her new compositions and, I'm hoping her album's going to drop really soon because her writing is amazing. She writes bangers, Chris. She writes bangers, okay. Not exclusively, but when she wants to write a banger, like a kind of four to the floor kind of, just solo acoustic guitar, but it sounds like it could be like a dance tune or a kind of, that thing where you get that kind of rock dance crossover vibe. Which she's really into, that kind of stuff. Okay. I don't know what to think of to tell you what I mean. All I can think of is... Oh, no. I can't even remember the name of that. But anyway, stuff that's where it's kind of rock vocals, rock guitar, but it's clearly aimed at a dance market as well.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And she's really into that stuff as well as loads of other things. But she... When she writes a banger, it's a banger. There's massive riffs, massive melody. And yeah, she's truly tremendous. So everyone should check out Josephine Alexandra. And then what about people that, you know, acoustic players who you may be people, you think people haven't heard of that may be gone under the radar, even if they might have been around or might be dead. Well,
SPEAKER_02:you mentioned Nick Drake earlier, man, and I'm always, I mean, he was a huge influence for me, but I'm always quite shocked by, not in a, well, you don't know who he is, kind of way, but a lot of people haven't discovered the beauty of his rhythmic
SPEAKER_00:picking. That's the problem with the kind of online recycling of videos is that Um, you miss out on another kind of musical education, which is finding stuff by listening to the, finding the cool radio station. So in this country, it would be radio six where they still play Nick Drake, you know, fairly often actually. And, um, going to the second hand record shop or whatever. And it's a different kind of education, um, or going to gigs and, and, When you start going to gigs, in particular small gigs, you meet people who tell you about stuff, whether you like it or not. They re-educate you. Even if you're the artist, even if you're the musician on the stage in the pub, they come up to you and say, have you heard this? And it's funny, I went to a gig last week and all I wanted to do afterwards was say to Neil Cowley, jazz piano player. Oh, yeah. Never seen him before. And all I wanted to do is go up to him after the gig and say, are you into this guy? Are you into this person? Are you into this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But obviously I didn't because it's... he's, you know, he's a 50-year-old man. He doesn't need me fucking telling him who he should be listening to. But I'm not telling him, I wouldn't want to be telling him who he should be listening to. It's like, I just want to, oh, he might have heard of this stuff that I like that nobody else really knows about. So, yeah, it's an interesting thing. So Nick Drake is somebody I think where music fans might know of him more than guitar players do these days, which sucks because he's a beautiful fingerstyle guitar player using loads of crazy tunings that he invented himself I'm writing beautiful songs yeah so yeah I always want to mention people that I know who I think have gone under the radar a little bit so one of my favourite acoustic guitar records ever ever ever ever is called Aria Mechanica by Sergio Altamora who's from Bologna I don't think he lives in Bologna anymore. I can't remember, but he's Italian. And it was on the Candy Rat label back in the day. But he's never had that kind of super, I mean, he's an artist. He doesn't care about his viral videos in the least. And he doesn't really care about, you know, guitar music in any kind of dweeby way so much. He just uses it as a vehicle for making music. art he's a very artistic guy and he's a but that album is just stunning I can't really put into words it's kind of definitely post Michael Hedges guitar wise but it just he's on a different plane of his own completely of his own and it's completely unique but the music is totally accessible and very very beautiful and he's great live he does looping he does quite a lot of looping and I remember seeing he has one tune I think it's called something like Octopus And it's got loads of percussion on the guitar, but it's quite weird. Very, very cool and sounds awesome. And then he creates loops and gradually builds loops, but it's quite atmospheric as well. And then he'll always, he's always buying weird little gadgets, like cheap gadgets from like a, you know, the Italian one pound shop or dollar store or whatever. That are mostly marketed to kids, I think. Yeah. So he had, he bought, what he brought to this gig he brought a among other little stupid little electronic gizmos he just brought like a little portable radio that he got that day and he just tuned it randomly and then switched it on and put it into his guitar so it was picked up by the microphone of his guitar and overlaid that on top of his loops and just whatever happened happened the time I did it I saw him was the first time he'd ever done it he got football commentary nice And then the next time I saw him, it was like the news. And it's just, but it's just really, you feel like you're in a scene in a movie. Like it's a very transportative experience watching him play. So yes, Sergio Altamora is A-L-T-A-M-U-R-A. If people want to check him out, then do so. I don't think anybody would regret it. It's gorgeous stuff.
SPEAKER_02:Beautiful. Thank you, John. I think that's... I've stolen enough of your time. It's been a joy. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:You're really welcome. It's really, really good to see you again, Chris. And just before you go, how are you finding your new guitar now that you've signed up with Ibanez Guitars? How are you finding it? Well, a joy, man. A real joy.
SPEAKER_02:There's sort of the sound port in the side. Oh, yeah. Do you have this? I think I've got one of those guitars. No, not in my
SPEAKER_00:guitar. Okay. Yeah, I've never had one. It's kind of,
SPEAKER_02:I mean, in some ways it's ruined the guitars for me because it's sort of, because everything is louder and bigger and more in your face. So then when I pick up something else, I'm like,
SPEAKER_00:what? I always worry that I'm losing sound out of the front if I have a hole in the side. I really don't think so, man. Does it matter? I
SPEAKER_02:really don't. You don't think you are? I don't think I am. But then, you know. I
SPEAKER_00:don't have any evidence for that. It's just always been my reaction. Yeah, but they are. It is very alluring when you play with a sound port because you can just hear so much better than you normally can.
SPEAKER_02:Really, as a personal experience.
SPEAKER_00:But
SPEAKER_02:pickup-wise, man, it's been a game changer
SPEAKER_00:as well. Okay, so that pickup is the one where it's got a pickup kind of built into the... No, I can't see it. Has it got a tiny magnetic pickup built into the end of the fingerboard? So
SPEAKER_02:no, it's piezo and then contact pickups under
SPEAKER_00:the body. So no, I don't have one of those.
SPEAKER_02:And then it is... Well, currently I've got the blend coming out by plugging a mono lead into this one. But I can then treat them differently in John Goff-inspired ways. However, in all honesty... I've actually started just plugging directly in. As I've got older, I think I've got slightly less.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I think that's probably healthy. I get more complicated. I'm now running all my sound through a laptop all the time. I'm always looking for more and more effects and things that I can do.
SPEAKER_02:More control over that. Because the new Fisherman that is going into the new Ibanez model is three out. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so in my signature model, it's three outputs. There's three elements to the pickup. Wow, man. And I like to have different EQ and compression settings for each pickup. And then, so when I'm doing that stuff with the crazy reverbs, like I did before, let's see. Find another crazy reverb here. Oh, my God. Um... That's a different one. And what I've got there is loads of pitch-shifted reverbs. I've got a delay that's got overdrive only on the delay, not on the guitar itself. So you get this kind of crunch afterwards. But all of that, pretty much, is only on this pickup, the magnetic pickup. Okay. And then when I hit the guitar, I think I've just got... I have got some echo, but it's a different echo. And it's got reverb... but it's a different reverb to what's on the strings. So I can really change how each pickup sounds and what it's doing. And it's really, really fun. I even figured out something that I've wanted to do for years. I could do this with some kind of expression pedal, but I wanted to find a way of doing it. So some songs I use overdrive, but sometimes when I hit the pedal and switch on the overdrive, In some contexts, that can be a bit jarring. So now I have a setting where I can hit the pedal and gradually fade in the overdrive. And then fade out
SPEAKER_02:again. So just
SPEAKER_00:with one pedal and a lot of MIDI. I can do that so that's really really yeah it's you know it'd take me hours and hours to figure out how to do that or to build one reverb sound and most people can't tell the difference between that reverb and another reverb and I might only be using it for one section of one song but I really really love doing
SPEAKER_02:that but that's cool man and that's I think I said this to you in a comment when you released the the Fishman thing and the the original signature as well it's that you're making that accessible to other people, which is, you know, that can change without getting too overblown. That can change the course of music, essentially, because you're putting that ability into other people's hands, man. That's
SPEAKER_00:really cool. Yeah, I mean, so one thing I forgot until recently was, so our Ibanez stablemate, Marcin, Patrick Salek, Marcin. I always say the name in their original accent and then in the original pronunciation, they repeat it in English. So Marcin, I asked him what pickups he was using. And so until he got his signature model, I completely forgot. I don't even remember what year it was, like 2016 or 17 or something. Fishman sent me some stuff. And I said, let's do a competition. I'll give it away. So I released a new video of an instrumental tune that's really, really, really hard to play. Of mine, I never play it live. Called The Secret of Learning to Fly is Forgetting to Hit the Ground. I just call it Orville for short, named after Orville the duck. But yeah, so anyway, it's really, really nightmare tune. And I released the video and I said, okay, I'm doing a competition. You can win this entire pickup system. which was similar to what I have now, but Fishman hadn't created the power tap element yet. So I had the Rare Earth humbucker and microphone and then these two old double bass pickups, which are contact pickups, which are really great for getting a kick drum sound. But they were originally designed for double bass. In fact, they were the first pickups that Larry Fishman ever designed because he was a double bass player. So anyway, yeah, I didn't want to do a thing where I was judging how good people are. because I have to do that in my job sometimes. I have to judge guitar competitions or whatever, and it's strange. So to make it more fun, I was just like, okay, the fastest person, the first person to learn this, if you can kind of play it, that's enough. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to play all of it. Just do your best. I'm just the first person to release a passable video of this. Wow. But that's an example.
SPEAKER_02:Alex
SPEAKER_00:Misko, another great guitar player from Russia, he came second in that competition.
SPEAKER_02:Really?
SPEAKER_00:By like about four hours.
SPEAKER_01:How
SPEAKER_00:amazing. And they both learnt it perfectly. You know, probably better than I can play it. Just really fast. It blew my mind.
SPEAKER_02:That's incredible, man. That's evidence of bringing this to... these ideas to a mass market how mass that is I don't know but you know affordable and you can go into a shop in other you know all countries and lift a guitar off the shelf that has a pick up system in it as standard that is going to bring out your percussive sounds it's like yeah that can kind of change I can change music really can't
SPEAKER_00:it? It can but they can do other things too as well so maybe somebody will pick it up off the shelf and think oh this can do this something that I've never thought of and the scope for that is enormous because it can basically this pick up system can do anything you do to a guitar it can then hear and reproduce And kind of also exaggerate as well, if you want. You can make it more. So my kick drum, when I'm plugged in live, sounds absolutely massive, subby.
SPEAKER_02:I've heard it. It's like a slap in the face, but one
SPEAKER_00:that I wanted. It's really big. Way more than you can get out of. Thanks, John. Do it
SPEAKER_01:again.
SPEAKER_00:Way more than you can just get out of the guitar. So maybe they'll do something different that I've never thought of. So who knows?
SPEAKER_02:That's exciting, isn't it? It is. It's really, really cool. Amazing. Thank you, John.
SPEAKER_00:You're really welcome, Chris. It's really good to see you. It's been a while and it's really, really good to see you and your caravan.
SPEAKER_02:I just revealed that at the end. Chris is in a caravan. We can edit that. Amazing, mate. Thank you so much to Ibanez UK for making this podcast conversation a reality and helping inspiration reach guitarists all around the world.