I was surfing around Pierre Bensusan's website last month, when I noticed he was touring Australia in April (for the first time). Sandwiched between appearances at a couple of major folk festivals on opposite coasts was one night in Adelaide, at a small, 200 seat (converted church) venue about 15 minutes "down the hill" from my house. It was obviously meant to be...

Before I start raving about Pierre, let me just say that I never used to care about "solo guitarists" before I became a Stick player. Even Hedges failed to make an impact on my listening habits. But something happened a few years ago...All of a sudden I started "hearing" what some of these guys were doing. Notes became complex arrangements with bass lines, chords and melody (how I could have grown up in a house with a classical piano teacher and not noticed this earlier is beyond me).

Anyway, back to Bensusan. He is an amazing player, and he's the kind of musician I like. You can just listen and enjoy. Or you can analyze and watch, but you don't have to. This is a really crucial point for me: You can be completely ignorant of the skill required and still enjoy the music. But for the musicians out there; Pierre will give you the "fix" you crave, great technique, a range of styles and time signatures and death defying levels of improvisation, which come off successfully more often than not. As Pierre put it, "the great zing about improvising is that you can't forget anyzing...". The man is also an entertainer, navigating a lack of "Queen's English" with the skill of a stand up comic who's gotten off the plane in the wrong country.

Having just read Greg's discussion on the "tone" of the Stick, I might have been more conscious than usual of the sound tonight. The (steel string) acoustic guitar as an amplified/miked solo instrument poses some interesting problems. There is a certain level of treble and "click" required in order to present the true sound of the instrument. It's a very fine line between "just right" and "too much", as is the case with the use of reverb. In the end, a good enough player in a good venue will overcome any problems with the sound, as was the case tonight. There were no tone controls or effects anywhere near the guitar, just a mic and someone playing the hell out of it.

Overall a very inspiring evening, and now I really can't wait to get my hands on the Alto Stick.

Cheers,
Andy

Hi Andy,

Enjoyed your Bensusan post. I've probably told this story before, but I discovered him by accident, also a kind of "meant to be" moment- I was living in an apartment in 2004 right down the street from a small college (suburban Boston, MA area but well outside the city), and saw an ad for a "guitar night". So I went, thinking it might be a pleasant "community" diversion at a local venue. Little did I realize what a world class performance I was in for featuring international heavyweights like Bensusan.

This certainly was an important moment in my growing interest in solo music, something that for a long time didn't think I cared all that much about. The big catalyst for me getting a Grand Stick was ironically the purchase of a used Larrivee Parlor guitar in 2003, which really made me appreciate the organic, intimate quality of an instrument that suits itself to solo performance.

By "limiting" myself to one instrument and seeing how much I can explore in that domain, in part inspired by guitarists like Bensusan, I feel it has actually made me far more creative and productive a musician than when I had racks of gear and lots of software available to me for music creation.

It was after a residential seminar at Pierre's that I decided to get a Stick...it was a great experience. I got all these big ideas about extended range and arranging pieces across 'two sets' of strings...never quite turned out that way, mind

Pierre is the man, that is all.