I feel the steel-string guitar world is extremely immature and young in comparison. In the steel-string world, there are a lot of people who play guitar, but don’t necessarily play music. They aren’t always concerned with what sounds right musically.

About the steel-string vs. nylon-string guitar tradition, from this interview with Pierre Bensusan:

http://www.musicplayer.com/article/pierre-bensusan/Sep-05/13508

Does anyone else find this comment even slightly relevant to a discussion of the Chapman Stick? Any thoughts?

BTW, to listen to Pierre's music, go to http://www.pierrebensusan.com/.

Cheers,
Andy

I think this quote absolutely applies to the tapping world but I also think it applies to many other instruments as well. My mom was a classical pianist and I remember she once made a remark when I was very young that I had to ask her to explain. I'd brought home a recording of a woman playing a Ravel solo piano piece. Turns out that once upon a time, my grandmother had actually known this woman and my mom commented that this particular woman was "more of a technician than a musician." Like I said ... I was very young and needed an explanation. I never forgot it though and have always tried taking it to heart.

I think one of the reasons it's so prevalent in the guitar world is because the guitar is the king instrument in rock/pop and this is a genre of music that by and large does NOT reward musicianship and puts just about every other criteria above musicianship.

In the tapping world, there is a definite propensity to sit back on the uniqueness and the visual aspect of the instrument. That tends to work for a short time but after a while, your audience has seen it and the novelty is gone. My philosophy has always been that you should be able to walk into a room with a CD of your music and play it for a control group with no explanation (even if that control group is just yourself). If you can't sell it based on that, then you've failed.

I wish he would elaborate on who or what he means. I'm not sure exactly which world of steel stringers he speaking of. I love what he said earlier in the interview about the singing/ear connection with an instrument - he's exactly right.


Brett

Great comments guys!

Glenn's last paragraph should probably be required reading for all of us who are selling our music.

Brett, thanks for mentioning the section about Bensusan getting his students to sing their improvisations.
Even though I'm a whistler rather than singer, I couldn't agree more!

I guess it's always difficult for an artist to be critical about particular players/styles without it being interpreted the wrong way. Personally, I think the solo acoustic genre seems over-saturated with "Hedges-style" playing in recent times, as a quick look around YouTube might demonstrate. Maybe that's why someone like Andy McKee is trying to distance himself a bit from that style these days..?

Cheers,
Andy

Well, Pierre is no stranger to that!



Agreed. Although Andy has been gigging with Michael Manring...but who wouldn't?

I think Pierre's main message is to NOT let the guitar (or any instrument) obscure the original musical idea, i.e. don't be played by your instrument...hence, the voice-driven approach to composition. Imho, the Stick is less prone to this than a guitar (especially a guitar in DADGAD tuning!).

That genre doesn't get any better than Pierre's music (and I am a big fan of MH). I'd recommend 'Intuite' then 'Altiplanos' if anyone was interested in checking him out...then go backwards from there.

Funny, when I read Pierre's comment at first I thought "well Michael Hedges and Andy McKee aren't bad!" But I'm not knowledgeable enough of the acoustic guitar scene to know if that style is oversaturated or not. Even with the enormous examples of talent and technique out there, my favorite acoustic guitar player is still Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull.

I agree in general that there is a certain phase of "playing an instrument"... in the sense that it's an external object, and you depend a lot on other music and musicians as a frame of reference. One can perform things on it but maybe isn't able to truly "think" musically or originally with it.

But beyond that there are those few for whom their instrument seems to become an extension of themselves, who seem to have a complete creative freedom with it. Watching musicians like this, it seems as effortless as walking or talking. It's as if musical thoughts in the brain are being expressed directly through the instrument. There's still a large degree of influence from other music shaping these musical thoughts, but it's on a deeper level. These are the kind of people who seem to push an instrument to a new level. But I don't know if any of this is related to the basic idea Pierre was trying to communicate, I'm just yapping and trying to kill time waiting for some source code to compile.

My first exposure to Pierre's music was a nice surprise... I was living in Massachusetts a few years ago in an apartment right next to Merrimack College, and saw some ad for an 'international guitar night". I didn't recognize the names... I was just figuring it was some low key concert featuring some local talent. So I wander down the street a bit to check it out, and I was blown away by the group of guitar players that performed. Pierre was one of them, when I went online afterwards I realized what a major figure he is in the guitar world.

BTW I second the recommendation to check out Pierre's music. I just picked up 'Intuite' and 'Altiplanos' from Emusic and they are quite fascinating.

It's funny. I distinctly remember a conversation I had with Emmett once while I was visiting the LA area. I had put plans for what was essentially going to be my first official shrink-wrapped CD on hold so I could learn to play Stick and add it to my arsenal of instruments. I commented that after all that time learning Stick and building up a solo repertoire, I started recording and the resulting music was very similar to what I was doing prior to learning the Stick. Emmett's immediate reaction was "that's good." I asked why and he said "it means you're being driven by a musical vision and not your choice of instrument."

My choice of direction was still a little bit in flux at that point but Emmett's comments pretty much solidified things for me after that.

Throughout my bass playing days, I dabbled with various instruments but never found anything that I felt would really allow me to express my musical ideas. So in a sense, getting the Stick was also a "continuation" for me, as well as helping me realise what I wanted to do.

Cheers,
Andy

I had the chance to see Pierre last summer in a weird little bar/cafe/Mexican restaurant
in the Santa Cruz mountains called Don Quixote’s.

We even meet him after the show. He is really a nice guy. Very gracious. I had seen him play a few times before when he was
pretty deeply into looping; this time no loops and I had one of those epiphanies that changes your musical life. Watching him play you forget about technique or tuning
or instrument completely because he is playing from a deeper place than that. There
was a story being told and you could feel the thing unfolding.

So the insight was that even though the technique is part of it, the tuning, scales, chords all that stuff, the critical thing is the song. Make songs!
And that instrumental songs can be some of the most beautiful things in the universe.