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AcousticGuitar.com 5

CONTENTS

10 The Front Porch

48 Holiday Gift Guide

80 Marketplace

81 Ad Index

January 2016

Volume 26, No. 7, Issue 277

On the Cover

Glen Hansard

Photographer

Manfred Pollert

18 Music from the Melting Pot

Rustic folk artist Woody Pines

steps from the street to the stage

By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

20 Hard Labor

The heartfelt fierceness of

Christopher Paul Stelling’s

Labor Against WasteBy Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

26 Ramblin’ Man

Irish troubadour and Once

creator Glen Hansard returns

to his busking style

By Kenny Berkowitz

30 Made to Order

Custom-built guitars can provide

a personal touch at (almost)

any budget

By Adam Perlmutter

Features Miscellany‘Some people

rely on their lyrics.

And some rely

on their voice.

I rely on my

guitar playing

as the vehicle.’

CHRISTOPHERPAUL STELLING, p. 20

J O

S H U A W O O L


6/84

6 January 2016

CONTENTS

NEWS

13 The Beat

Jewel returns to her folk roots;

Dylan ’65–’66 boxes;

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band turns 50

16 Five Minutes With . . .

Gary Clark Jr. on his acoustic side

PLAY

37 The Basics

Everyday Rhythm:

3 ways to lock in solid time

38 Weekly Workout

How to build unconventional

jazz voicings from open strings

Songs to Play

44 JambalayaHank Williams’

country-Cajun classic

46 Ol’ 55

A sentimental ballad by Tom Waits

54 Pride and Joy

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s

blues powerhouse

AG TRADE

61 Shoptalk

Inside the Woodstock Invitational;

Tascam 4X4 production studio;

new Radial Acoustic DI

64 Guitar Guru

Stiff vs. active backs

66 Review: RainSong SMCX

Thoughtfully designed carbon

guitar sounds clear and robust

68 Review: Faith FMSB45-BNC

A parlor guitar with rich,

woody tones

70 Review: Henriksen’s

‘The Bud’

A powerful, portable

acoustic-friendly amp

82 Great Acoustics

The buzz about the Bee Guitar

MIXED MEDIA73 Playlist

The Legendary Shack Shakers’

The Southern Surreal exposes

their weird Americana roots; also,

Jon Stickley Trio’s Lost at Last ,

the compilation Legends of Old-

Time Music: 50 Years of County

Records, Kinky Friedman’s The

Loneliest Man I Ever Met , the Oh

Hellos’ Dear Wormwood , and The

Acoustic Blues & Roots of Duke

Robillard . Also: John Renbourn’s

The Attic Tapes unearthed

RainSong’s

carbon-fiber

SMCX guitar,

p. 66


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8 January 2016

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Enjoy a recent Acoustic Guitar Session episode with psych-folk guitarist

Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance. Visit acousticguitar.com/sessions

to check out interviews with and performances by Richard Thompson, Ani

DiFranco, Seth Avett, Peter Rowan, Della Mae, Bruce Cockburn, Valerie

June, Julian Lage, Eliza Gilkyson, Preston Reed, Laurie Lewis, and many

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10 January 2016

attentive, considerate, humble, and imbued

with a seemingly boundless curiosity.

He reminds me of a younger version of

Richard Hoover, the founder of Santa Cruz

Guitars, who has an almost saintly aura. There

may be people who know Richard better than I

do who might cringe at that assessment, but

I doubt it—even amid the controlled chaos of

the NAMM showroom floor, Richard displays a

level of calm and caring that is most refreshing

in this mechanical world.

During his visit, Andy and I passed his

guitars back and forth, and talked about the ways

in which guitars reflect the personalities of theirmakers: The almost zenlike presence of Richard

Hoover, the sharp intelligence of luthier and AG

contributor Dana Bourgeois, for example. I asked

Andy how his own personality is reflected in his

guitars. He hesitated and humbly said that he’s

probably not the best person to evaluate that. I

will say that from the innovative instruments he

brought along from the Taylor shop, the remark-

able improv he shared on camera, and his unflag-

ging enthusiasm, this former surfer-turned-guitar

builder, whose fingerstyle playing is gentle and

joyous, appears to be on the verge of game-

changing things. And that’s darned nice.

Play on!

—Greg Cahill

There are times when it looks like the AG

editors are just goofing around on the job.

When I’m not planning coverage, editing copy,

checking facts, chasing sources, tracking down

gear, answering emails, fielding subscriber inqui-

ries, or policing Internet trolls, there are inter-

mittent moments of, well, fun. Recently, those

have included trading stories with Robert Earl

Keen, who dropped by our studio for AG Sessions

(you can watch it on acousticguitar.com/

sessions), chatting at length via phone with

Martin historian Dick Boak (always an educa-

tion), and testing a pair of interesting new

Fender acoustic amps with a co-worker (you canread about those in the February issue).

Last week, Taylor Guitars master luthier

Andy Powers dropped by to share a few instru-

ments he’s been working on. I can’t go into

details—some of those guitars will be pre-

viewed at the 2016 Winter NAMM and AG soon

will be presenting video demos of them—but

his visit underscored one of the things that is so

great about this job: You get to meet excep-

tional people in this business.

Some are really smart, others really indus-

trious. Andy is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever

meet. He’s also smart and industrious and atalented guitarist and a gifted luthier with a

creative mind always reaching for innovation.

But, beyond that, he’s also warm, optimistic,

AcousticGuitar.com • AcousticGuitarU.com

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

Editorial Director & Editor Greg Cahill

Editor at Large Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Managing Editor Blair Jackson

Associate Editor Whitney Phaneuf

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Production Manager Hugh O’Connor

Contributing Editors Kenny Berkowitz,

David Hamburger, Steve James,

Orville Johnson, Richard Johnston,

Mark Kemp, Sean McGowan,

Jane Miller, Greg Olwell, Adam

Perlmutter, Rick Turner, Doug Young

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TO SUBSCRIBE to Acoustic Guitar magazine, call (800) 827-6837 or visit us online at AcousticGuitar.com.

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Except where otherwise noted, all contents ©2015 Stringletter, David A. Lusterman, Publisher.

Taylor Guitars

master luthier

Andy Powers

THE FRONT PORCH

mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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NEWS

I n Picking Up the Pieces (Sugar Hill), folksinger Jewel decided to return to her roots,both thematically and in the raw, stripped-

down, emotional intensity she’s honed in her

20-plus years as a singer-songwriter. The

album—her first collection of new material

since 2010 and a companion to her multi-plat-

inum debut Pieces of You—finds Jewel harking

back to the marrow that launched her career—

her voice and her guitar.“When it came to producing and putting

this record together, shutting the fear out was

really just having to unlearn or at least be

willing to ignore what I know about the busi-

ness,” says Jewel, over the phone from Nash-

ville. “There’s just too many things that, over 20

years, you get taught that don’ t necessari ly

make honest music. I had to learn to shut all

that out and just say, ‘I know this isn’t an

uptempo record.’

“I know it doesn’t really have a genre. It’s

somewhere between folk and Americana. I

don’t know what to call this. This doesn’t sound

Pieces de ResistanceJewel returns to her folk roots on ‘Picking Up the Pieces’BY ANNA PULLEY

14 The Beat Dirt Band marks 50th Anniversary

14 The Beat New Dylan ’65 & ’66 bootlegs in a box

16 5 Minutes With . . .Gary Clark Jr. reveals

his acoustic side

THE BEAT

CONT. ON PG. 16

‘NEVER BROKEN’

like anything on the radio right now. I had to

let all of that go and just make a record that

was very uniquely me and very honest and my

style of songwriting and poetry.”

The self-referential bookend to her 1995

debut includes new songs like “Love Used to

Be” and “Mercy”—both driven by a plaintive

acoustic-guitar melody—longtime live show

favorites like “Nicotine Love,” “Everything

Breaks,” and “A Boy Needs a Bike,” plus collab-orations with Rodney Crowell and Dolly

Parton.

Helping Jewel strip away the veneer on the

14-song collection was an A-list session band. “I

tried to surround myself with people who had a

real sensibility for rawness and grittiness,” she

says. Those folks included Neil Young collabo-

rators such as drummer Chad Cromwell, as well

as award-winning pedal-steel guitar player Dan

Dugmore. It’s a sort of ode to Ben Keith,

Young’s sideman who died in 2010, and who

produced Pieces of You.

M A T T H E W R

O L S T O N

“I should probably not be here

today. I should probably not

even be alive,” begins the

foreword of Jewel’s new memoir

Never Broken: Songs Are Only

Half the Story (Penguin Random

House) released September 15,

the same week as her new

album Picking Up the Pieces.

The book, which takes its name

from a lyric in her hit song

“Hands,” is a blend of candid

stories (she once felt up Bob

Dylan’s nose with the aim of

sculpting it one day), poetry

(her first poetry collection,

A Night Without Armor , came

out in 1998), and personalphilosophies.

“I wrote a lot about pivotal

shifts in my thinking,” Jewel

told AG. “These sort of paradigm

shifts that helped me be less of

a victim [and] be the architect of

my life instead of just reacting to

life. I go into a lot of detail about

how I really believe that what

you perceive and how you

respond, that’s what builds your

life. It starts in your mind and

then your mind goes to actionsand then your actions build

a life. So if you’re not aware

of what you’re thinking or

conscious of what you filter,

you’re really going to be reacting

to a life instead of creating one.

When I was homeless, where

you’re stripped of everything

but your mind, you really start

focusing on your mind. It’s

really all you have left.”

—Whitney Phaneuf


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14 January 2016

THE BEAT

The album was recorded live in Nashville to

help her “get back to what my bones have to say

about songs and words and feeling and

meaning.” It evokes the stark storytelling she’s

known for onstage. “We did the very old-school

style of recording where we put a microphone inthe middle of the room and pushed record, and

it’s one live performance,” she says, “so it’s very

honest.”

Jewel credits part of the unvarnished feel to

her decision to produce the album herself. “I feel

like you can’t help but be interpreted through

somebody’s filter as a producer, no matter how

transparent they try to be,” she says. “And I do

think me producing this left things undone

enough and raw enough and imperfect enough

that the emotion and the heart was able to shine

through, because it wasn’t about the craft, the

perfection, and the gadgets and the gizmos that you’re using. I couldn’t have made a different

record. If you gave me all the money in the

world and said, ‘Make a dif ferent record,’

I couldn’t.”

Jewel dedicated Picking Up the Pieces to her

grandmother Ruth, a poet and opera singer

who moved from Switzerland to escape the war

and start a new life in America. “[She] took me

aside with tears in her eyes and told me it was

worth it for her to give up her dreams to see

them come true for me,” Jewel explains. “She

made such an amazing sacrifice, and my dad

sacrificed. I wrote ‘My Father’s Daughter’ for

both of them.”

You have to love these official bootlegs.

There are Bob Dylan fans who would arguethat he reached his career apex with three

masterpieces released in quick succession in

1965 and ’66: Bringing It All Back Home , the

record where he famously “went electric” for

the first time (though half of the album is

acoustic guitar-based), and the fully electric

Highway ’61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.

Those hardcore Dylan acolytes are sure to

love The Cutting Edge 1965 & 1966: The Bootleg

Series Vol. 12, a new box set packed with rari-

ties, including unreleased demos, alternate

takes, and rehearsals of songs from those three

albums.There are three versions of Vol. 12 to choose

from: The two-disc The Best of the Cutting Edge,

offers multiple takes of such classics as “Love

Minus Zero/No Limit,” “She Belongs to Me,”

“Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and others

(many of them acoustic); the six-disc edition

features multiple takes of “It Takes a Lot to

Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry,” “Desolation

Row,” and “Visions of Johanna,” to name just a

few; and the massive 18-disc set includes

“every note recorded during the 1965–66 ses-

sions, every alternate take, and alternate lyric.”

The Cutting Edge 1965 & 1966 is available

on bobdylan.com, Amazon, . —Blair Jackson

DYLAN FORTHE CURIOUS& COMPLETISTS

NITTY GRITTYKICK OFF 50TH

ANNIVERSARY TOUR

To commemorate its 50th year as a leading

voice in American roots music, the Nitty GrittyDirt Band will hit the road this spring and

release a PBS-TV special scheduled to air

during the national pledge drive, March 5–20.

The PBS special, which was filmed at Nash-

ville’s Ryman Auditorium on September 14,

featured all-star guests, including John Prine,

Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Jerry Jeff Walker,

former Dirt Band members Jackson Browne

and Jimmy Ibbotson, plus Jerry Douglas on

resonator guitar, Sam Bush on mandolin, and

Byron House on bass.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band founding member

Jeff Hanna tells

Billboard: “We’ve got a lot ofplans that we are really excited about doing—

some big-event shows. I doubt that we’ll be able

to bring everyone from the Ryman out on the

road with us, but we’ve got a lot of music to

celebrate and stories to tell.”

In a cultural watershed, the band helped

nurture the then-burgeoning Americana move-

ment: With the release of 1972’s Will the Circle

Be Unbroken—featuring bluegrass, country, and

old-timey notables—the Dirt Band bridged the

generational gap between young and old by

introducing traditional music to a mainstream

pop audience.

For tour updates, visit

nittygritty.com. —W.P.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band


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2 0 1 4 P R S G u i t a r s / P h o t o s b y M a r c

Q u i g l e y

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16/84

16 January 2016

Which would you rather write on:

acoustic or electric guitar?

Most of my songs start on acoustic, because I

really can feel it that way. If I take the time to just wander around the house, try out different

rooms, and really zone out, I can hear the way a

song sounds bouncing off the walls. Then I plug

in later, dial some things in, and turn it up a bit.

Why is it better to begin on acoustic?

When I’m playing acoustic, I’m just trying to

figure out the chord progression, the structure,

come up with a melody. As I become more

comfortable, the song grows in my head, and I

get to a place where I start playing within the

chords, dancing around a little more. But the

acoustic is really the rock in all of this. Theroot. There’s something special about finger-

picking an acoustic guitar, the way it resonates

in your lap, and I just feel grounded. To me,

there’s nothing more raw and stripped-down

than playing acoustic guitar, sitting out in the

middle of a field somewhere. It makes me think

about the musicians that inspired me to pick up

the guitar, my teachers in a sense, and play

with them in mind.

Like who?

Elizabeth Cotten. Lead Belly. Son House. Skip

James. Robert Johnson. Charley Patton.

Making It CountPowerhouse blues guitarist Gary Clark Jr.

reveals his acoustic side

BY KENNY BERKOWITZ

5 MINUTES WITH GARY CLARK JR.

Since winning a Grammy for

his 2012 debut Blak and Blu

(Warner), 31-year-old Texasbluesman Gary Clark Jr. has

opened for the Rolling Stones

and Eric Clapton, sat in with

the Foo Fighters on Austin

City Limits , and won back-to-

back Blues Music Awards for

Best Contemporary Blues Male

Artist. Now, on The Story

of Sonny Boy Slim (Warner),he’s returned with an album

that’s even stronger, showing

a tighter focus on soul

influences like Curtis Mayfield

and Pops Staples, and two

songs—the gospel-tinged

“Church” and the gutbucket

“Shake”—that reaffirm

his roots in acoustic blues.

I hear an echo of Charley Patton in ‘Shake.’

Was that a conscious decision?

There was a Quaker Oats can turned into some

sort of three-string guitar that was hangingaround the studio. I was admiring it, then

miked it up, and “Shake” just happened. I

didn’t even check the tuning.

And the song ‘Church’ seems rather

impromptu. Was it?

I was wandering around the studio with a ’47

Martin 00-18, and the song came to me in a one-

take situation. I sat down in front of the micro-

phone, the guys pushed the record button, and

“Church” came out. It was one of those inspired,

in-the-moment things.

What was the inspiration?

Oh, man, just thinking about being out on the

road and ending up in a hotel room in some

foreign place. Spending a lot of time out on the

road, being gone, being away from family.

Has becoming a father changed

the way you think about guitar?

It definitely has. I went through a whole transi-

tion when I was in the studio, focusing on every

note. You know, trying to lead by example,

pushing myself to be better. If I’m gonna play it,

I’ve got to make it count. AG

Gary Clark Jr.

performs at the

Bridge School

benefit concert

in October.

J A Y

B L A K E S B E R G


17/84

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18 January 2016

FROMTHEMELTINGPOT

Rustic folk artistWoody Pines

steps fromthe streetto the stage

By Jeffrey

PepperRodgers

L to R

Skip Frontz Jr.,

Woody Pines,

Brad Tucker


19/84


or three years in the early 2000s,

Woody Pines spent nearly every day

busking in New Orleans’ French

Quarter with his band at the time, the Kitchen

Syncopators. With Pines playing a cheese

grater, measuring cups, kazoo, fiddle, and other

colorful instrumentation, and Gill Landry

(future member of Old Crow Medicine Show)

on a National guitar, the band knocked out

blues, jug-band, and hillbilly songs—and got an

education in performance. “You learn when you need an upbeat song,

and then you learn actually you can suck in

[audiences] by playing a slow song,” says Pines,

in a conversation before a show in upstate New

York. “You learn to project and play with a little

bit more energy that gets that nice, authentic

sound with strings buzzing on frets—really

trying to get your instrument out there, com-

peting with a garbage truck and a parade that

goes by, the blues band on the other block. You

don’t necessarily need to scream and shout, but

then, a few hollers don’t hurt.”

Pines carried those lessons over to the soloact he launched after the Kitchen Syncopators

disbanded. Now based in Nashville, Pines tours

all over, playing a beat-up National along with

Skip Frontz Jr. on rockabilly-style slapped

upright bass and Brad Tucker on electric lead

guitar. The rollicking sound of that trio is fea-

tured on Woody Pines’ new self-titled album on

the Muddy Roots label; the collection spans Hot

Club-style swing (Irving Berlin’s “My Walking

Stick”), honky-tonk (“New Nashville Boogie”),

folk fingerpicking (the Elizabeth Cotten-esque

“Little Stella Blue”), and blues (“Make It to the

Woods,” from the Mississippi Sheiks, mashed

up with some lyrics from “Keep Your SkilletGood and Greasy”).

A big influence on Pines’ repertoire is North-

west fingerpicker, record collector, and resona-

tor-guitar aficionado Baby Gramps. Pines grew

up in the remote hollows of northern New

Hampshire, but headed west after high school.

He tracked down one of his other heroes, U.

Utah Phillips, but found that the legendary folk

singer, rambler, and rabble-rouser “didn’t really

Fhave interest in hanging out with us dirty

hobos.”

By contrast, Gramps took Pines and his

friends under his wing. “Gramps seemed to stay

up all night and loved showing us how to play

‘Ragtime Millionaire’ or saying, ‘This is how

Riley Puckett did it,’” Pines says.

All along, Pines was not only learning old

songs but writing his own. With the Kitchen

Syncopators, he says, “We were forced to write

upbeat songs that kind of sounded like theseblues juke-joint songs. Back then a lot of the

stuff was slower and wasn’t really designed for

the street.”

Pines wrote several songs on his new solo

album with his old friend Felix Hatfield, who

was also a member of the Kitchen Syncopators

and now lives in Portland, Oregon.

“We get together every once in a while and

lock ourselves in a kitchen and get a bottle of

whiskey and say we have to come up with ten

songs, 20 songs,” Pines says. “He’s really pro-

lific, so he drives me to write.”

Pines’ touring circuit these days—at festivalsand on real stages as opposed to sidewalks—

allows for a different type of songwriting.

“When we started indoors,” he says, “and

even the venues changed from honky-tonks to

[music halls] where they’ll be silent, you can

really take people deeper.”

fter our conversation, Pines and his

trio take the stage at the Nelson

Odeon, a century-old grange hall in

the tiny town of Nelson, New York, and quickly

win over the crowd with high-energy, joyous

grooves, and ripping solos by Tucker. The per-

formers and the audience are clearly having fartoo much fun with this music to think about

what to call it.

“I don’t really pick apart the styles of Ameri-

cana,” Pines says. “I come from the Harry Smith

school, where you’ll put a Cajun tune back-to-

back with a gospel tune, and then a white hill-

billy tune next to a sea shanty. They’re all forms

of American music. It’s still a very new, lively,

fermenting melting pot.” AG

WHAT

WOODY

PINES

PLAYS

When people ask Pines how

old his well-worn National is, he

likes to say “turn of the century,”

by which he means, turn of this

century. It’s a 1998 wood-bodied

National Estralita, amplified with

an external mic and a K&K Pure

Resonator pickup (left) through

an L.R. Baggs Venue DI.

He uses D’Addario phosphor

bronze strings (swapping in

an Ernie Ball nickel G string that

he says lasts longer), a Shubb

capo, and the heaviest Dunlop

fingerpicks he can find (two

fingers and a thumb). He

switches between Mississippi

John Hurt-style fingerpicking

and using the thumbpick

like a flatpick.

A


20/84

20 January 2016

HARDWORK

Christopher Paul Stelling shows his fierce chops on ‘Labor Against Waste’


21/84


J E N N S W E E N E Y

hen he was 24, Christopher Paul Stell-

ing lived in Asheville, North Carolina,

in a friend’s closet, spending his nights

creating guitar instrumentals with looping

pedals. But one day, he recalls, “I just decided,

this is not my direction, and I took all of my

pedals to a pawnshop to get rid of them.” At the

shop, a guitar caught his eye: a 1964 Gibson C-1

nylon-string with a $200 price tag. After an hour

of playing it, he resolved to go home with the

guitar rather than the much-needed cash.

“My plan to pay rent that month was foiled,”

Stelling says, “but my fate was sealed.”In the ten years since then, the C-1 has been

the 33-year-old Stelling’s constant companion,

as he’s forged a singular style that blends folk-

and blues-rooted songwriting with agile finger-

style guitar. (Think blues guitarist Kelly Joe

Phelps with a classical guitar, and you’re in the

ballpark.)

Last summer, Stelling took a big step into the

spotlight: He released his third album, Labor

Against Waste, on the Anti- label; taped a Tiny

Desk Concert for NPR Music; and made his debut

at the Newport Folk Festival—a dramatic set that

ended with a standing ovation and an onstageproposal to his girlfriend, singer Julia Christgau.

A few weeks after Newport, in the midst of

a breakneck tour that had taken Stelling to nine

countries since the beginning of the year, he

stops by my home studio in upstate New York,

accompanied by Christgau, for an interview

and performance that was webcast live on

Concert Window.

In jeans and a black t-shirt, with a tangle of

bracelets on his right wrist, he opened his case

and pulled out his guitar.

The C-1 is quite a sight. It has a hole

scraped through the top by his hard-driving

right hand, and an array of other cracks,gouges, and carved decorations, including

“CPS” in block letters above the fingerboard.

Held together—barely, it seems—with applica-

tions of superglue, tape, and wood screws, Stel-

ling’s Gibson has become the most memorably

battered guitar since Willie Nelson’s Trigger.

“My story as a songwriter and as a per-

former and the guitar’s story are synonymous,”

Stelling says, warming up with speedy classical-

style arpeggios up the neck.

In conversation, he comes across much like

his music—soft-spoken, serious, and deeply

thoughtful, with a sometimes startling intensity.

By Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

W


22/84

22 January 2016

EXPLORING FINGERSTYLE

Stelling grew up in Florida, drawn early on tothe stripped-down sounds of folk. He remem-

bers listening to collections of ’60s songs as a

teenager and was particularly taken with Dave

Van Ronk’s Folksinger and the way the gruff-

voiced guitarist roamed over the landscape of

American roots music. “One second he sounds

like Winnie the Pooh,” Stelling says with a

smile, “and in another he sounds like a fire

truck.”

Stelling discovered he had an aptitude for

fingerstyle guitar, and eventually a fellow

player recommended he check out the Takoma

and Windham Hill guitar scenes. That led to an

immersion into the music of such pioneering

acoustic-guitar instrumentalists as John Fahey,Robbie Basho, Leo Kottke, and Alex de Grassi. A

pivotal point came in 2006, when Stelling

attended de Grassi’s guitar camp in Northern

California. De Grassi asked Stelling if he ever

sang or wrote songs. “I wanted to be an instru-

mental guitar player, but there’s been so much

done with it and they’re all so good,” Stelling

says. “I got the vibe that he saw a path for me.”

Though Stelling started off playing steel-

string, he has found that a nylon-string guitar

has a lot of advantages for his style. “Nylon

strings are very comfortable, and I think you

get a lot more dynamics out of them. You can

WHAT CHRISTOPHER PAULSTELLINGPLAYS

Christopher Paul Stelling plays

a 1964 Gibson C-1. In his early

20s, he worked for a luthier in

Boulder, Colorado. It was an

experience that encouraged

Stelling to make a number of

unorthodox repairs to his guitar

while on tour, such as using tiny

screws to secure a loose brace

and sealing raw areas of the

top with a coat of superglue.

Stelling amplifies the C-1

with an L.R. Baggs iBeam Active

Pickup for classical guitar and a

Baggs Para Acoustic DI box. At

the time of the interview, he’d just

started using a Shure wireless

guitar pedal, which doubles as a

tuner and allows him to roam into

the audience during a show.

The guitarist uses Savarez

Red Card strings and a Shubb

capo. Following advice from

Alex de Grassi, Stelling has

acrylic nails on three fingers and

his thumb; he has them applied

once a month at a nail salon.

At larger shows, Stelling uses

a boot board he made with a

piece of plywood, lifted up on

one side by a wooden dowel,

and a contact mic in the corner.

The signal goes into an EQ

pedal that cuts all but the bass

frequencies to get a kick-drum

thump in the house PA.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL STELLING

really pop them,” he says, giving the high

E string a quick free stroke with his acrylic fin-gernail, “and there’s a natural compression that

happens. Especially for going into different

tunings, they are much more durable. I always

found with steel strings, it’s not really the

playing that breaks the strings; it’s the changing

of the tunings.”

Stelling has become more restrained in his

use of tunings over the years. “They’re a slip-

pery slope, because you can get kind of lost in

them, and you can’t really find your way out,”

he says, tuning to open E for the song “Warm

Enemy.” “But using them in conjunction with

standard tuning is fine.” In addition to “Warm

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24 January 2016

CHRISTOPHER PAUL STELLING

Enemy,” two other songs on Labor Against

Waste are in alternate tunings: “Castle” is also

in open E (E B E G B E), and “Dear Beast” is in

open –E minor (E B E G B E).

Open tunings were crucial for Stelling in

developing his picking hand. With help from deGrassi, Stelling learned to play polyrhythms

while mainta ining a steady alternating bass.

“I feel like open tunings taught me how to fin-

gerpick, because I could stop worrying about

my left hand and just focus,” he says. “There

was a long time when I would just tune to an

open chord, capo it up, and sit on the couch

and maybe watch a movie or stare out the

window and let the fingers roll and find their

place.” While Stelling’s guitar style has clear roots

in folk-blues fingerpicking, he also draws from

the vocabulary of Spanish guitar, with touches

of flamenco-style rasgueado strumming,

classical tremolo, and the like. His use of these

demanding techniques suggests some kind of

formal study, but Stelling says he picked them

up mostly by woodshedding.

“If I had a method, it would be to help teach

people how to find their own method, becauseeverybody has their own unique rhythm,” he

says. “It has to do with the way your brain

neurons fire and the way your heart beats. I

just think making that time available to sit and

find it is key. It’s what worked for me.”

BUILDING SONGS

Seated in my home studio in front of a photo

gallery of maverick musicians—Tom Waits, Ani

DiFranco, Utah Phillips, Chris Whitley—Stelling

kicks off his online set with “Warm Enemy” and

describes writing it. Like many of his songs, this

one began as a guitar improvisation that hecaptured on a portable recorder. While driving,

he listened back to his improv and took note of

some ideas he liked, and later he recorded

another take. Again behind the wheel, he

started singing along with the second improv,

gradually finding a melody and some words.

The result is a song with a guitar part that

could stand on its own as an instrumental, with

a vocal overlaid—sometimes in unison with the

guitar melody, sometimes in counterpoint.

“I rely on my guitar playing as the vehicle,”

Stelling says. “Some people rely on their lyrics

as the vehicle, and some people rely on their

voice. For me, because I’m interested in thelyrics and I’m interested in the guitar, the actual

quality of the voice is less interesting. Some of

my favorite singers have some of the most

unorthodox or untrained voices—everybody

from Ethel Merman to Tom Waits. It’s all about

the delivery.”

When it comes to finding lyrics, Stelling

uses a journal and free writing to help generate

ideas. “Free writing is great,” he says. “The key

to writing is just always write more than you

need, because it’s way easier to edit it down

than it is to add after the fact.”

As Stell ing’s songwriting and guitar craftevolve, he finds himself looking to the past for

inspiration—following the trail of influence back

to artists like the early blues guitarist Geeshie

Wiley, whose eerie 1930 recording “Last Kind

Words Blues” he obsessed over for years. “I’m not

very interested in what’s going on now,” Stell-

ing says. “Maybe I will be in 20 years—I’ll be

looking at what’s happening in 2015. But with

every passing generation there’s so much

history that I feel like is required listening,

required reading.

“There’s a lot to take in. We’re blessed and

overwhelmed with that.” AG

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26/84

26 January 2016

RAMBLIN’

MAN

ByKenny

Berkowitz

‘Once’

creator

Glen

Hansard

returns

to his

busking

style

on his

second solo

effort


27/84


28/84

28 January 2016

or Hansard, happiness has come in a

cluster. He’s also happy to be celebrat-

ing 25 years with the Frames, whose

new album includes a song that didn’t seem

right for Didn’t He Ramble, though it’s hard for

him to describe the difference between GlenHansard with the band and Glen Hansard

without the band. He’s at peace with his role in

The Commitments, thrilled to have reunited

with his mates for the film’s 20th-anniversary

celebrations, and pleased he’s still touring with

part of the horn section.

He misses “the Horse,” the battered Takamine

NP15 he’d played for years, and he’s angry that

when he plays it now, all he hears is the sound of

glue and varnish stabilizing the body. He’s

replaced it with four newer NP15s, including one

that’s almost as battered as the Horse was in its

prime, about five years ago. Hansard says he’snot getting much better as a guitarist, but he

doesn’t seem to mind; as rough as it can be some-

times, he has all the technique he needs to

deliver his songs in his best busking style.

“I never really wanted to be good at guitar

playing,” Hansard confesses. “I love being a gui-

tarist, of course I do, but I often felt that if I

ever got too caught up in what my fingers were

doing, then something in my soul would be

restricted. So I don’t want to know how to do

the fancy chords, because then I’m going to go

onstage and concentrate on the fancy chords,

and not on what is going on inside me.

“It would be great if I could do both, likeMark Knopfler, play amazingly and sing amaz-

ingly and mean it and own it. But, for me, the

instrument has one job, and that job is to

present the song. After that, if I happen to pull

a fancy riff, or do something good on the guitar,

then great. But the job of the guitar is to say the

song and nothing else.”

And what about the song he started this

morning?

“Well, if I’m diligent and I stay with it, it’ll

become a song that I’ll play at these upcoming

gigs,” Hansard says. “If I play it at these gigs, it’ll

become a song on my next record—well, maybe.There are songs you write when you’re just

about to release a record, that were too late to

make the last record and too early to make the

next one. They tend to go through the cracks,

but I’d like to think this song has something.

We’ll see. It’ll either start running around my

head and haunting me or I’ll just forget it. But if

the song is good enough, it’ll haunt you.

“At the end of the day, what should dictate

whether a song is worth singing or not is whether

you can mean it,” he adds. “Can you own this?

Can you sing this? Can you sing this with the

right intention? If you can, then it’s right!” AG

GLEN HANSARD

Feight, and an ending, then I’d be impressed,

because I would have written a song in under

an hour. But all I have now is a bit of a shape, a

sketch, and that’s frequently where the song is

at its best, before all the changes and move-

ments and rethinks and rewrites. Because it’s atits most free in that moment; its most unteth-

ered, its most undefined.”

Didn’t He Ramble ’s first video, the Dylan-

esque “Winning Streak,” started as “You Are My

Friend,” which became “May Your Losing

Streak Find an End.” After a few more itera-

tions, Hansard transformed the piece into the

more affirming “May Your Winning Streak

Never End.” The soulful “Her Mercy,” which

features the Commitments’ horn section, was

one of the easiest songs he’s written, coming in

a flash after reading a biography of Leonard

Cohen, the song’s unnamed subject. The folk-trad “McCormack’s Wall” came on the morning

after a night of carousing at the birthplace of

tenor John McCormack and the grave of Irish

Republican rebel Wolfe Tone.

The album’s opening cut, “Grace Beneath

the Pines,” arrived while Hansard was waiting

at a baggage claim in New Zealand. “This line

was just going around my head: ‘There’ll be no

more running around for me, no more backing

down,’” he says. “And oftentimes, that’s when

music comes to you, when you’re at your least

conscious, when you’re doing something really

banal, like waiting for your bag to come out. In

my head, I was enjoying the fact that it soundedlike a prayer. It sounded like something old. It

felt natural and easy. But when I took out my

guitar, because my knowledge of the instru-

ment is so limited, I applied these really bog

standards, average chords for this ethereal

melody, and I ended up going, ‘God, this is a

dreadful song.’”

Then Hansard decided it wasn’t a dreadful

song, just a dreadful guitar part. He was

touring at the time, so he tried a punched-up

version of the song with horns, which he sings

into the telephone, punctuating the rhythm

wi th shou ts of, “Buh! Buh! Buh!” But toHansard, it felt like a pose, and no matter how

many different arrangements he tried, it

sounded dishonest until he reached the final

sessions, which has him singing over a droning

C chord, the barest piano accompaniment, and

a couple of muted horns at the end as he

chants, “I’ll get through this, I’ll get through

this, I’ll get through this, I’ll get through this.”

It’s the kind of performance only Hansard can

deliver, filled with hope and despair, strength

and vulnerability, and after all this time and all

those different attempts, he’s happy with the

final version.

WHATGLENHANSARDPLAYS

GUITARS

“The Horse [Hansard’s old Taka-

mine NP15] is out to pasture. I

haven’t used it for a while. It

stopped sounding good because

I beat it too hard. Like any tool,

like any person, it just got old.

That’s where the Horse is right

now: It just sounds spent. And I

feel really sad about it, but that’s

just the way it is. So I got

another Takamine [NP15] that’s

beginning to look almost exactly

the same as the Horse, and it

sounds great. To me, Takamine

is the best guitar, because when

I hit it hard, it doesn’t choke. I

don’t know quite what it does do,but it doesn’t choke. It’s a work-

horse, a working guitar, and I’ve

really gotten used to it.”

STRINGS

“Lately, I’ve been using the Elixir

Nanowebs, which last about five

times longer than the strings I

used to use. The way my hands

sweat, the old strings used to go

completely dead after half a gig.”

PICKS

Jim Dunlop orange tortex

plectrums, .60mm

EFFECTS

1994 Sovtek “Green Russian”

Big Muff, Line 6 DL4—Green

(for looping only)

DI

Radial JDI-passive

CAPO

Shubb C1 original brass finish


29/84

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30/84

30 January 2016

MADETOORDER

Custom-built guitars canprovide a personal touchat (almost) any budget

By AdamPerlmutter


31/84


n the summer of 2012, Brooklyn-

based guitarist Ben Wood, a Gypsy

jazz aficionado, made a pilgrimage to

the Django Reinhardt Jazz Festival in Samois-

sur-Seine, France. Wandering the tents popu-

lated by instrument makers displaying theirlatest creations, Wood happened upon the

finest guitar he’d ever encountered, both soni-

cally and aesthetically. It was a Manouche-style

guitar built by the luthier Vladimir Muzic.

Wood decided to commission one for himself. “I

wasn’t even in the market for a new guitar,” he

says. “But I ordered one on the spot.”

When Wood returned to the tent in 2013, he

discovered that Muzic not only had built him a

doppelgänger, but the luthier also reserved the

original guitar. After spending a weekend visit-

ing and revisiting the tent, playing both instru-

ments and agonizing over which guitar to takehome, Wood settled on the older one. Two

years later, the instrument remains Wood’s

workhorse, inspiring him in ways that a produc-

tion guitar never could. “I can play better

because of the guitar. Everything is so clear—I

can really push it, dynamically and otherwise,

and it allows for complex chords that haven’t

been available to me on lesser guitars,” says

Wood, who now lives in St. Louis, Missouri,

where he plays in the ensemble Franglais.

Wood is among a growing number of guitar-

ists who have found handmade instruments that

meet their specialized needs. In the late 1960s

and ’70s, when luthiers like Michael Gurian andWilliam Cumpiano set up shop, there were few

artisan alternatives to factory-made steel-string

acoustics. But today, thanks to informational

resources widely available on the Internet, thou-

sands of independent luthiers around the world

make superfine guitars in every style imaginable.

They can provide everything from customized

combinations of tonewoods to bass-bout bevels to

decorative inlays.

EXPLORING THE POSSIBILITIES

Most guitarists are happy with stock instru-

ments, but many choose to seek custom-madeguitars. Paul Heumiller, who owns the boutique

shop Dream Guitars in Weaverville, North Caro-

lina, says the latter typically fit into two camps.

“Some experienced players know exactly

what they need and have not been able to find

it in an existing instrument,” Heumiller says.

“This could be [a set of] physical dimensions to

custom-fit a player’s hands or body, a custom

voicing to suit your particular music, or a com-

bination of the two. Other players just want

something unique—it’s great fun for them to be

able to choose their own woods and design ele-

ments for a highly personalized guitar.”

Whatever your reasons for wanting a cus-

tom-made guitar, there’s no shortage of enticing

photographs and demonstrations of fresh offer-

ings on luthiers’ websites, in online shops, or on

discussion boards. But to really get a sense of

what instrument type, size, tonewood combina-tion, or individual luthier are right for you, it’s

best to audition guitars in person. An excellent

way to do that is to visit a shop like North Caro-

lina’s Dream Guitars or Mighty Fine Guitars, in

Lafayette, California, both always stocked with

nice representations of artisan-made instruments

and expert staffers. “Someone who has extensive

experience with a wide variety of luthiers, who

has heard all the wood combinations and com-

pared many guitars to one another can definitely

help guide you,” Heumiller says.

Another great way to learn about custom

options and luthiers is to visit a guitar showsuch as the Woodstock Invitational Luthiers

Showcase, held each October in Upstate New

York, or the Memphis Acoustic Guitar Festival,

launched last June. At either show you’ll find

hundreds of independent guitar makers exhibit-

ing flattops, archtops, and everything in

between. You can get a good sense of a luthier’s

work and even start a conversation about a

custom order, with the added benefit of the

guitar maker getting the opportunity to assess

your playing style to determine what specifica-

tions would be best for you.

Harvey Leach, a Northern California luthier

known for his detailed inlay work and forinventing the Voyage Air travel guitar, says

getting to know his customers is hugely helpful.

“Whenever possible I like to see and hear a cus-

tomer play one of my guitars,” Leach says.

“Because then there is a basis for [knowing]

exactly what things like ‘loud’ and ‘balanced’

and ‘rich’ really mean [to individual guitarists].

I find a lot of times customers will say some-

thing like, ‘I have a mahogany-and-spruce

guitar and I want something fuller and richer.’ I

get that, but it can be hard to find out what

kind of spruce they have or how the guitar was

braced or what kind of finish it has. If it’s myguitar I know exactly what I did to get where

their observations are coming from.”

HANDMADE OPTIONS AT ALL PRICES

Many factors go into pricing custom-built

guitars, including the luthier’s level of experi-

ence, overhead, demand for the instruments,

and costs of the materials (which can be pricey

in the case of precious tonewoods like Brazilian

rosewood). “Custom guitars from builders with

adequate experience start at about $3,000, with

some of the top makers selling guitars for

$20,000 to $50,000,” Heumiller says.

I

Inside job: Montreal’s Indian Hill


32/84

32 January 2016

At the higher end of the price spectrum are

luthiers like William “Grit” Laskin, who will

design a guitar complete with your personalnarrative inlaid across the fretboard in a photo-

realistic way. Then there’s John Monteleone,

who makes ultra-luxurious archtops.

On the other end are handmade guitars that

fall in about same price range as good produc-

tion-model instruments. Todd Cambio, the

Madison, Wisconsin-based luthier behind Fraulini

Guitars, makes modern reproductions of early

20th-century guitars, with period-correct materi-

als like hide-glue and varnish finishes, starting at

$3,300. In Montreal, Mike Kennedy of Indian Hill

Guitars builds elegant steel-string, nylon-string,

and tenor guitars starting at $5,000.

CUSTOM MAKERS

Stevie Coyle, owner

of Mighty Fine Guitars,

which specializes

in handmade instruments

“I build about five or six guitars per year,”

says Kennedy, a protégé of the Canadian luthier

Sergei de Jonge. “I customize each instrumentto suit an individual player by adjusting the top

thickness and deflection, and tuning based on

the desired string gauge and the tension those

strings are going to impart. The real tricky part

comes with wood selection and voicing the top.

I’m not a huge believer in ‘this wood sounds

like that,’ but there are certainly some broad

generalizations that seem to be valid, particu-

larly with the top wood.”

At a time when many high-quality, factory-

made guitars are available at modest prices,

numbers like $5,000, let alone $50,000, some

customers are wary of. But it’s not exactly fair

to compare an instrument made on an assembly

line to one crafted by hand, from start to finish,

by a single artisan. And compared to orchestralconcert-level stringed instruments, luthier-

made guitars are relatively affordable. “Even

the most expensive guitars are very cheap com-

pared to custom-built violins, violas, and cellos,

which commonly go for $100,000 to $300,000,”

Heumiller says.

FROM TRADITIONAL TO RADICAL

The typical luthier works with a handful of

basic designs, offering many options and varia-

tions in terms of wood selection and detailing.

For instance, in his Oakland, California work-

shop, Ervin Somogyi makes six main types of


33/84


a Model E for a client who desires a 426 tuning,

his variation on the 432Hz tuning, which some

people find to be more restful. I used a different

scale length, moved the soundhole dramati-

cally, and built it with a 12-fret neck. I believe

he will be pleased,” she says.Leach has accommodated similarly uncon-

ventional requests, and in one case, it led to the

development of his patented line of travel

guitars. “Interestingly enough,” he says, “the

inspiration for Voyage Air came from a custom-

er’s request for a guitar with a removable neck.

I built him the guitar and that got me

thinking.”

Even if you’ve got a wacky design in mind,

it’s possible you’ll find a luthier who can realize

your instrument. This was certainly the case

with the strange four-ne cked instrument,

dubbed Pikasso, that the Canadian luthierLinda Manzer made for the jazz guitarist Pat

Metheny in 1984. (It was the first instrument to

feature the Manzer wedge, in which the body is

thinner on the bass side, in the interest of

player comfort.)

“I love a challenge. It’s an adventure for

both of us,” Manzer says. “After a client tells me

their overall concept, I ask a lot of questions

and try to get a total sense of the design in my

head. Then I put on my engineer’s hat and try

to figure out if it can even be made; it has to be

sturdy enough to withstand string tension but

playable and ergonomic. Once I determine it’s

possible, I start to design the guitar. That’s where it gets tricky and fun, balancing stability

with sensitivity.”

FROM CONVERSATION

TO COMPLETED INSTRU MENT

The process for commissioning a custom guitar

usually starts with a deposit and a dialogue

between luthier and musician—a conversation

in which the builder gathers the data needed to

build and fine-tune the instrument, discussing

different constructional aspects and tonewood

options and, in many cases, sending photo-

graphs of wood sets for a client to choose.The discussion can be terse or protracted.

“One of the interesting things about custom-

guitar orders is that the process of exchanging

all the information required to build a guitar can

sometimes be more time-consuming than actu-

ally building the guitar!” Leach says. “I had one

customer with whom I exchanged over 60

e-mails and several phone calls—probably over

two weeks’ worth. On the other hand, I once had

a client buy a very expensive guitar and our total

correspondence was only three emails.”

The highly anticipated wait for the arrival of

a custom guitar can be as little as several months

Over 50 handmade

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solid or slotted headstock. But his decorative

work, in which he more often carves wood

rather than uses shell inlays to create elaborate

motifs and pictorial representations, makes

each instrument unique.

Some luthiers are open to realizing clients’

visions—subtle or radical—even if they depart

from the makers’ ordinary templates. Recently,

Kathy Wingert, a luthier based in Southern

California, was working on an instrument

tweaked to match her customer’s nonstandard

intonational preferences. “On my bench now is


34/84

34 January 2016

or as long as a few years. Some luthiers keep

clients apprised of their instruments’ progress

through emails and photos of build progress,

while others prefer to work without the distrac-

tions that these updates create. Players who’ve

done their homework, like Ben Wood or Al Pette- way, the Grammy-winning fingerstylist, tend to

fall in love with their luthier-built guitars.But

there are exceptions. Guitarists sometimes get

fixed ideas about what their completed guitar

will sound and feel like, and experience disap-

pointment when the finished creation doesn’t

conform exactly to their vision. “It’s important to

have some degree of flexible expectations when

ordering a luthier-made guitar,” says Erich

Solomon, an archtop maker in New Hampshire.

“After all, instrument making is an organic

process, and of course even two identical hand-

made instruments made from all the same woods won’t sound and perform exactly alike.”

Not all luthiers have failsafe systems when it

comes to documenting orders, so it’s not a bad

idea to make sure to get all of the specifications

for your custom guitar in writing. That way you

can avoid any unwanted surprises when the

instrument is completed. “I once ordered a

custom guitar and specified the wood for the,

top, back, and sides, as well as the basic body

size and shape. When the guitar was almost

finished, the builder called to tell me and

described the guitar. The body size and shape

were correct, but the wood for the back and

sides was wrong, as was the wood for the fin-gerboard,” says Petteway, adding that he ended

up bonding closely with the botched guitar.

Luckily, most builders will provide a refund

to a dissatisfied customer, so long as the guitar

can be sold to someone else. Leach, for

instance, once built a figured mahogany and

bear-claw Sitka spruce guitar for a customer

who ended up finding these woods too fancy

and asked for something simpler—a guitar

made of the plainest mahogany and streaky

Adirondack spruce, along with an inlay of his

name. The customer rejected this second guitar

as being too homely for the price he paid. “Long story short, I ended up taking the

guitar back and refunded his money minus the

cost of replacing the inlay work,” Leach says. “I

then resold both guitars to new customers and

they are both convinced they have the best

guitar I’ve ever built. I always say, no guitar is for

everybody but every guitar is for somebody.”

Then there are the magical custom guitars

that everybody seems to like. “At every gig, I

invariably get asked about my guitar,” says Ben

Wood. “And any musician who picks it up

usually says what a great-sounding guitar it

is—and that it plays like butter.” AG

CUSTOM MAKERS

THE CUSTOM-SHOP OPTION

Custom-made guitars aren’t just

in the domain of individual build-

ers. Within their factories, some

of the major guitar companies

have custom shops in which

small teams of luthiers make

built-to-order variations on their

standard designs.

Martin was the first major

manufacturer to start a custom

shop, formally opened in 1979

with the order of an employee

guitar—essentially a D-41

with a D-45 neck, gold Schaller

tuners, aging top toner, and

a Barcus Berry under-saddle

pickup. “It was Martin’s first offi-

cial custom guitar—a detail for

which I am most proud,” writesthe guitar’s owner, Martin’s Dick

Boak, in his autobiography, Dot

to Dot: The Creative, Comical,

and Covert Adventures of Dick

Boak . “Many more guitars

followed through the Martin

Custom Shop. Each was an

attempt to stretch the boundar-

ies of what a guitar could

or should be. The process of

conceptualizing instruments on

paper and commissioning the

experts to do the work set thestage for what would become

my real value and contribution

to Martin”—and, by extension,

the rest of the guitar industry.

Martin’s Custom Shop cur-

rently employs craftsmen and

craftswomen who build guitars

using the same processes as

Martin employees of the 1930s

and ’40s. The guitars are priced

from $1,999 list and incorporate

options and materials from every

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Bottom

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THE BASICS

After a few steps you will find yourself wanting

desperately to resume a normal pace or tempo.

And there’s the key: You, by nature of being

human, walk in perfect time, each step

perfectly matched to the next. You are walking

the downbeat to any rhythm you choose; if you

count in groups of four as you step, you are

now a walking example of four-four time. Payattention to what it feels like so you can call it

up in your mind and body when playing. Now

count in groups of three and note the differ-

ence in feel from four.

IT’S ALL MIXED UP

With the downbeat in place it’s time to add a

different rhythm over it with your rhythm

hand. You can either tap on the side of your leg

or use something portable like a set of keys for

this work. Either tap or shake the keys in your

hand twice for each step you take, making sure

each tap is equal to its partner. You are now

R hythm is inherent in every facet of day-to-

day life, though you may not be conscious

of it. Take a minute and pay attention to the

sounds and movement around you—the hum

of an air conditioner, the whir of a lawnmower.

Bring that same attention to your own body

and place a hand over your heart so you can

feel it beat. You are, in fact, a living andbreathing metronome, something important to

remember when finding and keeping the

downbeat becomes a struggle.

Before you decide to throw in the rhythmic

towel or stomp the metronome into bits, take a

moment to put down the guitar and pick up a

pair of sneakers. Finding your natural sense of

groove is as easy and accessible as going for a

stroll.

WALK THE LINE

It is impossible to walk consistently out of time.

Try it and see how long you can keep it up.

Walking in Rhythm3 ways to lock in solid time

BYOCTOBER

CRIFASI

tapping eighth-notes in sync with the down-

beat of your feet. Don’t overthink this. Just walk and see if you can keep the two going

simultaneously. Using your rhythm hand

provides the same physical motion of strum-

ming, which will provide a direct physical

recall of the experience when you’re actually

playing the guitar. Go ahead and start trying

out other rhythms like triplets or 16th notes.

If your hand falls out of time with your

steps, stop tapping and just walk until you feel

ready to try it again. If actual counting throws

you out of sync, forget about the numbers and

think of it as the strum pattern “down-up,

down-up, down-up, down-up.”

If mobility is an issue, the same work can bedone with just the hands tapping your legs. The

fretting hand keeps the down beat or quarter

note and the rhythm hand taps eighth notes,

and so on.

SAY IT TO PLAY IT

Talking rhythm is an excellent tool as well,

especially if paired with the physical activity of

walking or clapping. If counting out loud is a

challenge, turn the rhythm you need into

words, names, or phrases that share the same

feel. For example, the words “peanut butter”

provide the equivalent of “one-and two-and” ortwo beats of eighth notes. Say it twice and you

have a full measure in four-four time. Add the

words “I like” to it and you have “one, two,

three-and four-and.” You can also use strum or

finger-picking patterns (“down, down, down-

up, down-up”).

The nice thing about these techniques is

that you can use them anywhere and incorpo-

rate them into just about any activity. Get cre-

ative. The point is to get connected to the

rhythm you already have. By getting rhythm

physically into your entire body, it will eventu-

ally find its way onto your guitar. AG

PLAY38Weekly Workout

Learning from

a jazz giantays

44Acoustic Classic

A Texas bluesclassic—unplugged

54Acoustic Classic

Tom Waits’ode to the road


38/84

http://embed.wistia.com/deliveries/5c1edf4e18204077871ade87deae3fd8be9d9589/file.mp4


39/84


BEGINNERS’

TIPLearn to play a couple

of Monk’s easier,

blues-based tunes—

“Misterioso” and “Blue

Monk,” for example.

1

BEGINNERS’

TIPGet to know Monk’s

signature tune

“Round Midnight”

by listening to

as many different

recordings

as you can find.

2

sauce, you may use these tangy sounds as gen-

erously or as sparingly as you like.

Ano ther idiosyncratic aspec t of Monk’ s

music was his approach to motivic develop-

ment. He could develop any small musical idea

could be developed into a much bigger, bolder

statement. This is apparent in his improvisa-

tions and in many of his compositions. Since

motivic development is a great musical tool—

regardless of style or era—that’s where this

Monk-inspired Weekly Workout course begins.

Then write your own 12-bar blues—in any

key—using just one motif throughout.

WEEK TWO

Another signature sound in much of Monk’s

music is the whole-tone scale—a six-note scale

constructed symmetrically, using consecutive

whole steps (as shown in Ex. 2a, which starts

on the note B). Monk frequently peppered his

compositions and improvisations with whole-

tone flourishes as well as chord clusters built

from the scale. Play the scale here ascending

and descending a few times, doing your best to

get some momentum going in both directions.

Monk could—and often did—play through

WEEK ONE

Play Ex. 1, a 12-bar blues based on Monk’s

composition “Misterioso.” One interesting

quirk here (as in Monk’s original) is that the

melody played over the I chord (bars 1, 3, 4, 7,

8, and 11) contains the note G . This note

implies an Amaj7 chord, whereas dominant

chords are by far the most typical chords used

in blues. This unusual quality is one of the

things that makes “Misterioso” sound like no

other blues tune in the jazz canon. Notice how the simple motif—a sixth inter-

val, stair-stepping up and back—is used over

and over through the entire piece. Some other

composers may have been tempted to use more

variety when writing a tune such as this, but

Monk apparently found something compelling

about tenacious repetition. Think about this

when composing your own music. Instead of

forcing something new into every measure, see

how much music you can make out of one

simple idea. Your twofold assignment this

week: Practice Ex. 1 until you can play it

smoothly at the prescribed tempo (80 bpm).

fragments of this scale quite briskly. Ex. 2b–d

illustrates some of the Monk-esque chordal

sounds that can be created from the whole-

tone scale in this key.

Because of the symmetrical nature of the

whole-tone scale, chords built from it can be

harder to name than the chords you find in con-

ventional major-scale harmony. For instance, Ex.

2b might be considered a C7 with an augmented

5, or A(add9) with an augmented 5, or something

else altogether. Ex. 2c and 2d are equally mercu-

rial. Generally speaking, assume that the lowest

pitch is the root when naming these chords, but

don’t overthink such sonorities. A little bit of

mystery is fine in the whole-tone universe.

http://www.g7th.com/happyguitar


40/84

40 January 2016

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WEEK 2

WEEKLY WORKOUT

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