Wombat Radio: Matt Scott

WR: Who is the guitarist who first made you think "I need to do that" ?

Matt Scott: Easy. Jimmy Page. From a pretty early age I'd taken great pleasure in singing - writing songs on the fly, little melodies and ideas in passing based on whatever my parents, cousins, friends were listening to. Christmas 1994 or so, I bought my Dad a 4CD Zeppelin box set that I had largely written off in leu of green day, RHCP, STP..the stuff that I saw on MTV everyday. I don't even remember the moment when I first started listening more closely....though I'm guessing it was in 8th grade and in direct correlation to an ever-expanding appreciation for pre-teen boobs and rebellion - Zeppelin felt dangerous, exhilarating and unique by comparison to anything I knew at that time. Prior to Jimmy there had been other guitarists and tones that stuck with me - tom morello from rage against the machine, jay yuenger from white zombie, kenny withrow from Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians (I blame his use of filters on the solo for "What I am" as the song that catalyst for a fascination with synths, talk boxes, heaving q'ing and throaty wah pedals that continues to this day.)

But to get back to it, what really separated Jimmy from other guitarists I knew of at that time...it was the first musician to take solos that to my ear, sounded an awful lot like a melody you might sing. I could imagine Jimmy speaking every note that came out of the guitar - sure it was sloppy on occasion, but you could tell he'd played every slurred note exactly how he had intended. To this day, I still can't listen to the guitar intro and solo of "Since I've Been Loving You" without the hair on the back of my neck pulling towards the ceiling. I guess in short - Jimmy Page was the first guitarist to make me listen less as a fan and more as a guitar player. The last thing I'll say about Pagey is that his tone is virtually unmatched, and wonderfully consistent across the breadth of his recorded work. Aside from being a man of 1000 riffs and formidable choppage, he knew the worth of finding a tone to call his own- and I think that's an art that too many guitar players have thrown by the wayside in leu of studio magic and/or laziness and apathy.

WR: Who is the guitarist who completely changed your mind about what the instrument could do?

Matt Scott: Thankfully, I have the good fortune of being able to say that for me, that guitarist changes every few months. Youtube never ceases to amazes me with its ability to introduce me to new guitarists I can't believe aren't better known, while simultaneously reminding me how infected and "dick in hand" bravado ridden the culture of guitar playing can be. That said, here are 4 guitarists who have been a guiding light for me over the years and really helped reshape the way I thought about fretboard approach, playing with space and most importantly: Tone.

Ichirou Agata (Melt Banana): There are a lot of reasons to appreciate Melt Banana. It's brazen, loud as fuck and it couldn't be more clear that the band a whole is as tight as it gets while simultaneously playing so jagged and with such immediacy that it makes you wonder if they've ever, ever practiced (the answer, btw. Is yes. And probably a lot more than you do.) Ichirou does things with a whammy wah that I can only assume are probably illegal in some areas of the far east. Proof? Check out this intro:



This guitar playing Baffles me. It stretches the conventions of the instrument to a paper thin sheet...and is so raw and unyielding it took me a dozen listens to accept the fact that someone could even produce those sounds in real time with strings, pickups and effects.

Bill Frisell: Bill has a way of playing that marries the best of a jazz musicians technical, chordal and melodic efficiencies blended with someone who exists in the realm of pure sound scape and tonal ambiguity. He is Jagged and noise making, swelling, airy, lilting, wildly original and consistently brilliant in any ensemble or solo effort. I've barely scratched the surface of his technical prowess because ever time I feel like I've gotten a grip on what makes Bill, Bill- I remember he operates at a level few can, and is truly a chameleon of the instrument paying homage to everyone and no one at once.





Djelimady Sissoko (Super Rail Band): I was introduced to the Super Rail Band my freshman year in college by a roommate that entered college at a level musically which most students would be lucky to have attained upon graduating. His taste and breadth of musical know-how was light years ahead of my own, and I still owe him a great debt of graditude for giving me free reign of his extensive cd collection which boasted more jazz and "world music" then I had even known existed at the time. Super Rail Band's album, "Mansa" for me was an incredible crash course in poly-rhythms, clean articulate picking and attention to detail. Accessible primers to a world of music you probably don't know shit about- you simply cannot go wrong starting with Mali, Djelimady and the super rail band. The title track to their 1996 album of the same name, "Mansa" is below.



Dave Fiuczynski- Screaming Headless Torsos/ KIF/ Meshell Nedecello/ Hiromi's Sonic Bloom: Eastern microtonal fretless guitar? Yeah- not too more guitarists out there doing that 18 years ago, let alone today for that matter. To the best of my knowledge, Dave is what happened when Steve Vai, John Mchlaughlin and Dimebag Darrell found themselves in a locked closet with a knife, needle and thread and instructions not to come out till they've "married the best of themselves". Spooky good. As a side note, I also have great respect for Dave's taste in band members and ensembles.....the Screaming Headless Torsos circa 1996 remains as one of the most freakish ensembles I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing.

Brainfood: Guitar International Interviews

Had a great Sunday afternoon reading through the Interviews archive over at the PRS sponsored Guitar International. These were the best of the best -- enjoy.

Mike Stern talks about working with Miles Davis & Jaco Pastorius

Earl Klugh on George Benson and "Naked Guitar"

Derek Trucks on Staying Genuine and Eastern Music

Ben Verdery and Bill Coulter on New Directions in Classical Guitar

Jamie Andreas on Guitar Fundamentals and Proper Practice

Emmett Chapman on why he invented The Stick



Sample Gem from Ben Verdery:

"I feel everybody should own about four technical books that are always around. Just play something different, don’t play the same scales all the time. The most important thing that I learned about practicing is trying to improve your study habits. One thing I do tell people often and I do it in my own way is to write a little sign on your music stand that asks “Where is your mind,” because so often I’ll be practicing and my mind will be wandering. I’m playing a passage and I’m completely somewhere else.

One thing I do is I have a timer. Every 15 minutes it goes off, and it just wakes me up. It all has to do with being awake. Being goal-oriented and setting reasonable attainable goals, so when you achieve them you feel a great sense of joy.

Also one of the most valuable techniques in practicing is playing slowly. That’s where the metronome comes into play. It’s something that our bodies don’t want to do, but really slow practicing will help you learn and calm you down. Sometimes it would be really food for you to imagine that you can’t play and not taking it for granted. If you’ve ever hurt your finger you know your world falls apart. So you should approach each day like this is the last day I am going to play, I could die tomorrow. Be thankful that you have an instrument.

Djelimady Tounkara's Sigui

It was when I first became obsessed with the music of Mali that I realized how little information is actually available online. Despite the hype, the World Wide Web remains mostly advertising copy in English, and the only places you can really see multicultural globalization at work are porn sites. If you want to seek out meaningful facts about other cultures and continents, your best bet remains the local library in 2012. Even then: Slim Pickens.

When it comes to African music, that tide has been turning slowly over the past 20 years, thanks in large part to the work of musicians like Ry Cooder, Bela Fleck, or Bill Frissel -- all of whom are white, established musicians with a spotlight to share. Music critics are so far incapable of taking in the music without reflexively comparing it to Mississippi blues (or even, bizarrely, Techno) and so the artists remain in the exotic top shelf of World Music, where CD purchases are a cultural signifier, intended to be seen not heard.

And, well, shucks. That's the ecosystem you get when your culture is less than an inch deep, and at least the money pipeline keeps Vieux Farka Toure and Tinariwen touring in the US. At the end of the day, I'm grateful that it's fashionable to simulate an appreciation for African music. There's a lot of money in Faking It.

Bill Frisell, of course, is anything but. A musician of remarkable range, he's a seamless fit here. He's also unafraid to step out and make the song his own, and the result is probably the best rendition of Sigui this cracker has ever heard. The drummer is especially insane, his dynamics and beat juggling had me rewinding at a half-dozen points when I first watched this. (There is also a lesson to be appreciated in how attentive the violin player is: tuned in like a fucking hawk. Dig it. Her responsiveness is pure Bruce Lee, you won't see it at first.)

My introduction to the unparalleled sound of Djeimady Tounkara came through this Super Rail Band track, Kongo Sigui. I was old enough to recognize he was taking full advantage of the slapback delay in that beautiful & slippery intro, but his articulation and behind-the-beat phrasing still amazed me.



At the time I was really studying the Super Rail Band catalog, because they're one of the finest examples of Mali compositional theory for a kid raised on rock to wrap his head around. These are big-band, electric-amp arrangements of traditional melodies, bridging the gap between a Saturday night hotel bar and the ritual celebration of Mande music. They also fucking rock.

I later found out that Djeimady is even more amazing on the acoustic guitar when a good friend & mentor passed me a burned CD of Big String Theory, which approximately melted my skull.



It was some of the most geometrically perfect music I'd ever heard, a sweet spot between classical and folk and the aching high notes of the Qawwali Arabic devotional jams I'd been into for a few years prior.

It was also Bajourou that first gave me a taste for the fact this is Desert music. (Side note: if you haven't already, check out this classic David Byrne lecture on Architecture in Music. There's always a stage.)

Which brings us back around to what, exactly, a "Sigui" is. The name refers to a Dogon ritual that's practiced once every 60 years, involves three months of purification and preparation, and gets conducted entirely in a secret language that remains forbidden outside of the chosen few who are charged with perpetuating this tradition. This is a pattern you will find everywhere once you dig into Mali music -- these waters run deep.

It may be an academic point, but I want to clarify that the Dogon are not "the" indigenous peoples of Mali. This is something you see repeated a great deal, especially in connection with the legends of Sirius and the Nommo. The Dogon are themselves the product of geography, with a history shaped by the incredible Bandiagara Enscarpment which kept them separate from the Mande and Songhai empires that shaped the rest of Mali.



I'll do us both a considerable favor and not even pretend to summarize or explain the mythosphere at work here. Just listen. That's Oumou Sangare in a Sigui context...and here's Oumou Sangare doing trip hop in a London studio. The next Sigui comes around in 2027. Here's a toast to both of us being around for it.



Related: Guitar Atlas: Africa, by Banning Eyre

The Nommo will be back eventually.

The Terror and Beauty of Jerry Donahue

Having grown up dazzled by the MTV allure of shred, I am fairly jaded when it comes to technical skills. Seeing something radically new still devastates me, though, and I'm grateful for that. Sure, I was struggling with pinch harmonics at 14, but 14 years later I was nonetheless stunned into silence when I first saw Kaki King. Just as surely, I was humbled all over again by this footage of Jerry Donahue from the (superb) BBC documentary Twang Bang Kerrang. I did not realize the technique of string bending had such expansive potential to further humanize the voice of my guitar.

I've been doing a lot of documentary digging these past two months -- both for this project and a few sundry others. I've been filling up pages of notebook but sweet hot damn, Jerry Donahue has stuck with me. That spooky fluidity is like discovering a different dimension to me, finding a depth hidden in the fretboard -- and being completely exposed by an unassuming guy in a red flannel shirt, no less. Donahue is a magician, no question.

Some exercises I've been finding helpful in limbering up to this kind of articulation:

1. "Django Scales" is a brutal drill I abandoned immediately when it was first taught to me. I have re-adopted it in recent months and sure enough, it's made a huge difference on chord flexibility and left hand strength. Django is of course Saint Reinhardt, the Gypsy Genius, who was injured early in life and lost the use of the third and fourth fingers on his fretting hand. That's a pretty serious handicap but he more than made up for it. Django Scales, then, is running through your familiar pentatonic patterns using only your first and second finger. This means you'll be alternating between two and three fret gaps and requires a more active and physical fluidity to execute a smooth scale.

2. "Walking Bends" is a surefire method to get comfortable with nailing notes via bending strings. I like to do this when I'm watching TV because otherwise, well, it's hard to justify watching TV. Start on the 10th fret of the high E string and slide up to the 12th fret, then back down. Then replicate that change in pitch by bending the string instead of sliding up. (Of course you can also be hammering on up instead of just sliding, he said, dancing about architecture. Takes all kinds.) The point of the drill is to get comfortable doing the bends accurately and repeatably. Once you're comfortable doing that, start moving the exercise down the fretboard and changing strings and watching Continuum or old Carnivale DVDs.

Once you're comfortable doing that...I recommend starting with the classic power chord position, just the root and fifth. For me, that was the easiest place to start since my first and third fingers were stronger than the other two. However, I cannot overstate how different other positions are. Muscles and tendons are learning uncomfortable new tricks once you get into bending chords coherently, smoothly, like Donahue does. For instance, doing a simple root / major third form with the first and second finger was a spaghetti mess of a challenge that left my shoulder and neck feeling worked the next day.

For further instruction, I recommend this Guitar World series, Around the Bend, parts of which are mysteriously missing sound.

Acoustic Fingerstyle with Rick Ruskin

This was a truly exceptional piece of work. Having gone through several hundred instructional videos in the past few years, this was a standout gem. Rick Ruskin is both an amazing player and a natural teacher, and the songs are dope, too. On the technical side, Ruskin has the whole Kottke tool kit at his disposal. He takes apart six different songs with a confident and patiently paced attention to detail. Personally, my favorite part of his approach was his non-stop compositional notes: instead of just showing you how to play passages like he does, he also demonstrates alternate fingerings and voicings.

The opening track, "6 String Conspiracy" serves as a single-lesson introduction to the advanced vocabulary of techniques here. The song begins on a simple riff anyone can learn, then fills it out into chords, then an alternating bassline, and by the 8th bar or so, you're going to be fully immersed in classical American fingerstyle ragtime apocalypse blues. Naturally, how long it takes to make that transition will depend on how much experience you've got attempting to replicate John Fahey or Mississippi John Hurt. Still, it's downright noble for a high-level lesson plan like this to make itself so accessible to the newbz.

Between all the songs, Ruskin drops a ton of gems on practice drills and how to develop your own fingerstyle compositions. This is a full 2 hours of a world class lesson and I'm going to be learning from this for years to come.

VERDICT: 10/10 This is gold standard material.

Learn to Play Django-Style Gypsy Jazz Guitar by Paul Mehling

Paul Mehling is a master player and this series of lessons is a bargain. This is a meticulous examination of Django's work and Mehling is careful to strick strictly to the original voicing...and even tone...based on surviving recordings of Gypsy King at work.

Mehling is a solid teacher. He exceeds at teaching you how to hear Django's work effectively. He explains the shadings and embellishments individually until all the complexities gypsy chord progressions start to make playable sense.

VERDICT: 10/10 This two volume set represents a pretty total instruction in an insanely complicated & ornate style. This is one of the best challenges you can take on.

Arranging for Solo Guitar: The Queen Titles by Edgar Cruz

If you're smart enough to be a Queen fan, this is a goldmine. Cruz is a serious talent and an effortless teacher. The music is gorgeous and the arrangements will really give your chops a workout. Turns out Brian May is a big fan of this, too -- definitely a good sign.

Four tracks get featured here. Might not sound like much on paper, but of course that adds up to a huge amount of instruction because the techniques involved get so beautifully complicated. The lineup: Killer Queen, We Are the Champions, Crazy Little Thing Called Love and best of all, Bohemian Rhapsody.



As you can see, the technical toolkit here is heavily classical, skewed towards flamenco and jazz chord voicings. Those are all Very Good Things if you're into exploring the instrument. Just as a riff generator, this material has been a valuable tool even when I'm not focusing on learning whole passages.

VERDICT: 9/10 As a lesson in composition and dynamics, this is hard to beat. Cruz is masterful and this DVD is a gem.

Intense Rock Volume 1 & 2 by Paul Gilbert

Paul Gilbert is a completely hilarious human being. His enthusiasm and energy are on par with a hyperactive 12 year old, and if you want to learn how to shred...this is the encyclopedia. I will be spending years with this. Of course, that's mostly because shredding is a low priority skillset for me.

As a teacher, Gilbert is hit or miss. I have heard many a mammal lament that his precision and casual speed are actively discouraging as hell. Personally, I find it inspirational. It's important to set the bar high if you want to be any f'ing good, right?

Surely hair metal is a rock bottom moment in the collapse of the Western World, but it was also a meritocracy. Shred represented the bleeding horizon of showoff guitar techniques: maximum flash with minimum effort. While it's easy to sneer at the conventions and excesses of the format, remember that it's also COMPLETELY AWESOME. The whole spectrum of sweeping arpeggios, alternate picking, cascading tapping, pentatonic modes, it's all worth interacting with as a player.

#ProTip Thanks to digital video you can slow down playback to get a more comprehensible sense of the high speed contortions involved with Malmsteen pyrotechnics.



VERDICT: 10/10 For what it is, it's the best there is. Paul Gilbert outlines the whole vocabulary for a generation of guitar players.

Guitar Atlas: Africa by Banning Eyre

Banning Eyre has been documenting and studying African guitar techniques for decades, including months of study under the Super Rail Band legend Djelimady Tounkara. My sole complaint about this book was the brevity. Considering how much there is to learn, the reader will probably feel there's far too few exercises here. There's also not a lot of background theory and history here, despite featuring some superb writing about African artists and music.

In a field with so few available works, however, Guitar Atlas: Africa is an indispensable guide, for now. It will probably remain so long into the future, thanks to Banning Eyre's infectious love for the sound and his far-ranging approach. The roadmap he provides here may be sparse but in the Youtube era, intelligent readers can flesh it out into a fuller education.



VERDICT: 8/10 - Flawed but essential, sparse but ambitious, good writing and solid teaching.