ADAM MOORE
Brief Bio
Adam Moore was born in England in 1980 and has since become an extreme guitarist, composer, singer, songwriter, educator, musical experimenter & producer.
What gets him out of bed?
Adam is driven to create the music he hears in his head, feels in his fingers, smells in his coffee and tastes on his tongue. In so doing he hopes to make your foot tap, your air guitar ring out, brain ache, fingers bleed and maybe push a tiny tear or two from your eye.
If you should feel the need to understand Adam’s influences further then muse upon the following: As far as he knows he has no creative vision, although he does envision a lot of creations. He’s clearly making it up as he goes along. He thinks playing guitar is the best fun you can have with a bit of wood. He knows making new music is the most magical thing around and therefore making new music on guitar must be pretty great.
His financial plan is to break even by the time he dies.
Adam loves to play guitar on stage and works with just about anyone who’ll have him…provided he likes them…and they pay well…and the music’s good…and lunch is provided…
What can he tell you?
Since age fourteen Adam has been teaching in one form or another. His teaching philosophy is this: Attempting to make something for yourself will show you what all those lists of scales and chords are actually for. So let’s learn something and then try and make something with it.
Who told him what he knows?
Adam thinks of himself as a self-taught musician whose has been helped along the way by some excellent teachers.When he was little he was taught by a friend’s older brother who lived down the road, then he moved on to that guy’s mate who could play better and new lots of scales. Between the ages of thirteen and seventeen Adam got on and taught himself, then he went to a couple of classical teachers to fill in some gaps. In his early twenties, Adam attended Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft programme in the USA, UK and Spain. When his hungry little mind was ready for more Adam visited the great jazz guitarist Jasper Smith and then, in 2007, he headed off to Sweden to learn from Swedish metal legend Mattias IA Eklundh.
What do other people think?
“A thoroughly modern sound…treating the guitar fan to some wildly exotic licks.” (guitar9.com)
“Equally adept at riff-laden hard rock and gentle mood levellers, Adam is a writer/guitarist who will certainly appeal to the AOR fans who yearn for something of genuine lasting value.” (Musician Magazine
MARK THOMPSON TALKS WITH ADAM MOORE Adam Moore was born in England in 1980 and has since become an extreme guitarist, composer, singer, songwriter, educator, musical experimenter & producer.
What gets him out of bed?
Adam is driven to create the music he hears in his head, feels in his fingers, smells in his coffee and tastes on his tongue. In so doing he hopes to make your foot tap, your air guitar ring out, brain ache, fingers bleed and maybe push a tiny tear or two from your eye.
If you should feel the need to understand... (read more) So, you have a new album out "Regent" that we are going to review here on shredknowledge, would you like to give us an overview of the album (inc the double CD with backing and plans to gig it) and some insight into a couple of your favourite tracks
Yes, Regent is the guitar album I’ve been working on for a couple of years. I’m really proud of it and it’s the best music I could have made over that period. I really put everything I had into it and spent ages trying to put something together that reflected my personality and how I experience the world, which, without lyrics, is quite a difficult task. Some of the ideas have been kicking about for years in one form or another. The main theme from Purple Circles was written when I was about seventeen and it took me ten years to work out how to structure a song around it. In the end it turned out to be pretty simple, but I tried all sorts of complicated ideas before settling on tune-solo-tune. I’d say finding structures that suit the material is the most delicate task for a composer. You can really misrepresent an idea by playing it too much or in the wrong place or something. Portals was recorded while I was making Curious Liquid in 2004 and Lo’s Orchard was written in 2001. In fact, Lo’s Orchard is probably my favourite piece on the album, it’s just the same phrase four times over with some overdubs. I remember sitting in my student house in Norwich, looking out of the window and writing that. I’m pretty sure it was raining.
I’m currently rehearsing a band to take Regent and some material from my back catalogue on the road. It’s a fantastic band and I think audiences will really go for it. We’ve worked through Fuchsia and The Knot Garden from Regent, The Green Man and Inca from my vocal albums and have some more great stuff to learn. Hopefully we’ll be ready by mid summer. The challenge for me is finding a way to make a four or five piece band playing instrumental rock fusion bankable for all the members as quickly as possible.
As you say, there’s going to be a limited edition double CD version of Regent with the second CD containing just the backing tracks. Initially I made it for a student who had bought an early promo version of the album and just asked if I had backing tracks for it. That made me think I should have backing tracks to practice with and also if I want to do any guitar clinics on my own. So it’s literally the album mixed down again with the lead guitars turned off. That’s just going to be available through www.evesound.com once the rest of the artwork is finalised, hopefully in a month or so.
You still have the odd lesson with jazz master Jasper Smith, why? Would you recommend guitar lessons with a real live tutor?
Well, I haven’t been to see Jasper for a couple of years, but he was the right person to help me out when I needed it. Jasper knows jazz theory inside out and really helped me sort various harmonic things out…and he’s a very nice chap too. I think you need contact with real teachers at various points, as they can show you what you need to know, not what you think you need to know. Also, teachers speed up the learning process by helping you avoid dead ends and putting you on the right path straight away. If I look back at my own learning process there were quite long periods when I was making really slow progress and just ten minutes with the right teacher would have made a huge difference. Experience is a very slow teacher. Ultimately thought, good players are self-taught with the aid of a teacher. You take what a teacher says and take it in your own direction until it becomes yours. Students who think that what their teacher tells them is all there is to know are rather missing the point.
I remember you saying you had guitar lessons with Robert Fripp, what techniques and what theory comes to mind when you look back on those lessons and how long were you having tuition with him, also while were on the subject, King Crimson as a band is an influence, what is it about them and what are your recommended listening?
I attended Guitar Craft seminars off and on between 2000 and 2007, in the States, Spain and the UK. Robert lead these in groups of various sizes, so it wasn’t individual tuition per se. Guitar Craft focused, in part, on how you go about being available to the creative impulse. This means knowing how to conduct yourself such that when music presents itself you can respond with as much craft, or technique, as possible and with as little ego and preconception as possible. The actual playing was pretty serious; all the guitars were tuned to New Standard Tuning (CGDAEG), which has some great possibilities and means you can’t play anything you’ve played before. Everything was played with super-precise alternate picking and with great big triangular picks and just about all the music was in funny times. The best thing to listen to is Intergalactic Boogie Express by Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists, the is a beautiful album recorded live in Europe about 1990. Guitar Craft is completed now, it ceased to exist on 25th March this year. As far as King Crimson records go, I’d say you need to hear The Power to Believe, B’Boom, Discipline, Red and In the Court of the Crimson King.
Adam, I noticed the rack of acoustics in your Purple Circles videos, what guitars and gear have you got? Spare no details to the last pedal and recording gadget.
I love acoustic guitars and have periods where I don’t play much electric at all. My first guitar was a Marlin acoustic with a maple neck and I played it to death. It has 13 gauge strings on now and gets used for slide. When I saw David Gilmour playing a Gibson J200 in 1994 I new I had to have one, ideally one with a rosewood body. I listened to Poles Apart from The Division Bell and new that was how I wanted an acoustic guitar to sound. It took me two years and a holiday job with the Inland Venue to get enough cash together before I tracked down the right one from an independent seller in Birmingham. I think that’s my favourite guitar.
My electric guitars are two Washburn Tonewood Mercury guitars that were made in about 1993. I love these, but they’re quite tough to track down now. There’s not much to them, just two humbuckers screwed into a slab of ash or mahogany. I also have two Strats; one’s an early 90s Strat Plus that I’ve had since I was about thirteen and the other was built from parts a few years ago and swirl painted like an old Jem. The Strat Plus has 11s on it at the moment, which I really like as it makes you play very different and slows you down a bit. I’ve also got an Ibanez RG 7 string, but I’m still trying to work out how to do something original with it. I’ll get there in the end. I’m trying to avoid just writing lots of heavy stuff in B minor.
I’ve had the same Marshall 8080 since I was fourteen and its been slowly dying ever since. Its been used for every gig I’ve ever done and probably will for a few years yet. I’ve never changed anything on it; it’s got one preamp value in the overdrive channel that must be shot by now. I’ve had a Pod 2.0 for a few years that I use for recording videos and some of Regent. That’s pretty good. I don’t use much else really. I record everything using Cubase 4 using an SM58 or a Rode NT2. Sometimes I use a Boss MZ2 distortion and a Boss DD5 delay. I also have a Morley Wah and a Digitech Whammy Pedal.
I’ve got to ask about the Mattias "IA" Eklundh’s Freak Guitar Camp. What did you learn from this experience in the middle of the Swedish outback?...if there is such a thing.
IA’s a really great person. He puts so much character into everything he does. When I heard Freak Guitar I was so excited as I’d been playing for fifteen years but had almost no clue how he made any of the sounds he did. You can hear bits of Zappa in there and maybe Django Reinhardt, but other than that he’s a real original. I find that really inspiring as it seems so much harder to attain originality that it does super complex technique, although it should be easier. I’m glad I got to go to a couple of those camps while he’s still outside the superstar league and relatively easy to keep in contact with. I‘ve met some really great people though those camps, played lots of guitar, eaten some wonderful vegetarian food and had a lot of saunas.
Ok, what two guitars would you have if you had a choice of an electric and acoustic endorsement?
If I could get Washburn to make me some more Tonewood guitars I’d be a happy boy. There are a couple of little things I’d change…so if someone from Washburn is reading this give me a call. Not sure about acoustics, I’m not fussy as long as it plays and sounds good. I have a nice Takamine jumbo that I use on stage a lot; it’s almost got a hole in the top from strumming, as it doesn’t have a pick guard. A variation on that might be nice. And, of course, my own Gibson J200 would be cool.
What tuition DVD’s and books would you recommend?
I’ve only seen a few. I really like the Allan Holdsworth one that used to be on REH, but you have to work quite hard to get anything from it, as his style is so unique. John McLaughlin’s DVD with Salvaganesh Gateway to Rhythm is interesting. At the moment I’d be more inclined toward stuff by drummers. I’d really recommend Gavin Harrison’s books and CDs. I’ve gotten more from them in the last few years than a lot of guitar DVDs. Also, I watched John Petrucci’s DVD and that’s really good for technique.
Would you say it’s a good idea to learn to read and write music?
Yes, certainly for the kind of music I want to make. I can read and write music pretty well and its really liberating sometimes to write without a guitar and just a bit of paper instead. Also, once you know notation, some concepts, especially rhythmic ones, become much clearer. I’m working on a lesson called The Broken Brain Game, which is based on subdividing the bar intro progressively smaller and smaller parts. It makes most immediate sense if you can see what’s happening in the score.
Also, it’s the most universal way of communicating ideas between players on different instruments, at least players of western instruments. If you have a line that you want a vibes player to take then TAB wouldn’t be much use to them. Also, if you’ve got a sax part then knowing how to transpose it into their key can save a lot of time and make you popular with sax players.
I must confess to being a pretty crappy sight-reader, however. That’s a different skill to being able to read music. I sight-read about as well as a 10-year-old flautist who’s been playing for a year or so! You have to be sight-reading every day to get good at it and it just doesn’t come up that much in my world. I played in West Side Story for a week at the Theatre Royal in Norwich a couple of years ago and had to do some serious reading for that. I wasn’t a patch on the rest of the orchestral players, but I was good enough to get by and I wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of memorising it.
You shouldn’t be afraid of the dots though.
What are some good practicing tips you can share with us regarding both technique and theory?
I’d say try not to get too hung up on practicing a specific riff or pattern all the time. It turns you into a one-trick-pony very quickly. You should always be looking for permutations and variations on whatever it is you’re doing. Having a solid knowledge of theory can really help you work out what else you can do with a given scale, pattern or phrase. So if you have a scale, make sure you learn it up and down, alternate picking starting on up and down strokes, in thirds, fourths, fifths, octaves, in groups of three, four, five and so forth. Also, I always try to find a use for a piece theory or a new technique by getting it into a song otherwise I just can’t keep it in my head and fingers. Lastly, I’d say keep in mind that all these skills are there to help you serve the musical impulse. If you have a broad and flexible technique and good knowledge of theory you can be ready when the ideas are happening. At least that’s what I’m thinking when I’m practicing.
What were the first three solos you learned note for note?
Um, I’m not totally sure but In the Meadow by All About Eve would likely have been one, Underneath Your Pillow by It Bites and something by Tom Petty, maybe Won’t Back Down.
Name your five favourite guitarists and why.
David Gilmour, Robert Fripp, Richard Thompson, Steve Vai and Francis Dunnery because they all move me. They add something to my existence. I’d have had IA and Allan Holdsworth if you’d given me more than five. However, I’m equally moved by Imogen Heap, David Sylvian, John Coltrane, Brian Eno, Howard Shore or Takashi Yoshimatsu. Actually the most beautiful songs I’ve heard recently are by the comedian Tim Minchin. White Wine in the Sun had me in tears when I first heard it.
If you could play another instrument what would it be?
Piano maybe. I play a bit of drums now and I have an Irish Low D whistle I love trying to play. I wish I could play melodies like a sax player, write harmonies like a pianist and construct rhythms like a drummer.
For someone who spent so much time studying jazz I would have thought fusion would have been your main genre? Instrumental rock guitar is definitely a favoured genre in your composing and recordings I’ve heard, I’ve got your Uppingham Down fusion heads, but that still had the rock vibe, do you listen to a lot of it? Could you categorise yourself into a genre?
Well, most of the knowledge I want comes from books with Jazz in the title, but I’m not a Jazz musician and I don’t really listen to many of the big name fusion players. I find it a bit soulless. If pushed I’d say I was a rock player, as it’s the broadest and most inclusive category.
I’ve now released four albums; two are instrumental and two are vocal albums with hardly any guitar solos at all. After I made Curious Liquid I vowed never to make a guitar album again as, at that point, I decided it was all rather daft. I’ve got a more balanced approach now and just do whatever I want. I can appreciate why other people might want to categorise music, but when I’m writing and playing its meaningless to do so. These labels are only helpful when I’m trying to sell something as it helps people find your CD in the shop.
You've worked with lots of musicians from young to old, are there any that stand out and why?
That’s quite a tough one. You really don’t have to go very far to find great musicians; they’re everywhere. I think if you read too much music press you start to think that they only live in London or L.A. I suppose being a music teacher I get to meet a lot of players at the beginning of their career and there’s no one skill or approach that makes a good one, but the musicians who have moved me most are the ones who appear to have some sort of natural connection to music and aren’t hung up on fashion, cynicism, social status or what gear they’re using, they just write and play. That can be anything from singer songwriters to orchestral cellists to metal drummers to programmers to whatever. I’m humbled when I meet musicians who have their priorities right, but it happens all the time.
Remember Edward from our time at college, he had relative pitch which made it easy to work songs out, have you met or taught anyone that had perfect pitch? What can we do to train our musical ear?
Yeah, I’ve taught a couple of people with actual perfect pitch. I’m talking about the real ones who can tell you what pitch you get when you tap a radiator or a teacup. It’s a strange phenomenon really, as you’d need to be taught at least the names of notes before you’d know you had it. Which makes me think there must be lots of people out there who have it and don’t know it. Either way, you’ve either got or you haven’t. Anyone who isn’t born with it but works for it can achieve something called Acquired Pitch. When Steve Vai used to talk about going to bed with headphones on that’s what he was aiming for, although I’m not really sure what he was listening to.
Relative pitch is much easier to achieve and most musicians can do it provided they spend time focused on the sounds they’re making. For example, if you play a C and try to imagine what the C an octave up sounds like- that’s relative pitch. You’re pitching notes you’re not playing by taking one you are playing as a reference. It helps if you can sing the other note. Once you can do the octave try the fifth, so play a C and imagine or sing the G above it. Eventually you can imagine any note against the one you’re playing. That’s got to be helpful.
For guitarists, I’d say try improvising very slowly in a given scale and sing it as you play it. If you can start to get some of it right it means your actually improvising musically rather than feeling your way around a pattern or shape. If you get good at that try putting in notes outside the scale, like blue notes and chromatic things and singing that too. After that try singing the harmony to what you’re playing on guitar, so play a scale and sing a third up or something…
Do you have any composition tricks? I remember you talking about using pictures and other means of stimulus for writing.
I think when you write the most important thing is to avoid being merely proficient. That is, churning out music that works technically but lacks soul or an underlying idea. I could write songs all day that ‘work’ but that wouldn’t necessarily make them musical. This is where technique and music theory can’ t help you, having good ideas has got nothing to do with how many scales you know or what type of Flange pedal you’ve got.
When we talked about the Guitar Craft approach part of what I said was to do with noticing when an idea appears, but sometimes you have to engineer the conditions for good ideas by upsetting things- like mess up the tuning on your guitar, or don’t play for a week, or only use one finger on each hand. That’s the trick to composing if there is such a thing: Tricking yourself into not being merely proficient. Using images, or smells and other non-musical stimuli to get you started is another good system. Nothing works all the time, though.
Once you manage to get a good idea together then music theory and technique can help you flesh it out and turn it into a piece of music.
You are a fan of Zappa, what influence has Frank Zappa had on your music? I remember you did the guitar parts for some Zappa songs and in the solo you used your right hand behind your left, was it a muting technique or barring to pull off open strings?
I think that was a damping thing? Not really sure. Yes, Zappa is significant for me. There are so many Zappa albums it takes a real fan a lifetime to get to know them all properly. I just think he wrote some wonderful music. Let’s Move to Cleveland, Watermelon in Easter Hay, We Are Not Alone, Strictly Genteel, The Black Page, they’re all just so special…
I asked you if you were a churchgoer when we were at college, this was because you were such a nice guy, you had such an interesting and positive outlook and I enjoyed all your lessons greatly. I know now you’re not a church attendee or believe in a creator, but what is your philosophy on behaviour towards your fellow man.
Try to be kind, try to treat people equally, try to empathise, try to be honest. You’ll probably fail most of the time but try anyway.
I guess this has to be asked, I’m not a great musician and a late starter in playing music in fact this is great in a way as I remember listening to Joe Satriani before I ever touched a guitar, this gives me an insight to being a listener before I started to take music apart to play it. What was I like at college?
Hmmm, well, you’d got as far as playing those Joe Satriani songs by then. I think the best thing I can say is that you certainly were paying attention. There can be no higher praise.
What’s the best gig you ever attended?
Pink Floyd at Earls Court, October 19th 1994.
What advice would you give budding shredders in a few sentences?
Try not to get too hung up on what anyone else is doing, find a voice and make music. How do you express the shear fucking wonderfulness of the cherry blossom outside my window in a blazing shred solo? Answers on a postcard please.
Abstract one word answer game:
Computers - necessary
Meat - meaty
Strings - stringy
Picks - picky
Shredknowledge.com - great
Wedding bells - Swaffham
Blood - iron
Hospitals - understaffed
Animals - everywhere
Pink Floyd - England
Drummers - heart
Piano - head
Apocalypse - cake
Matrix - genius
Summer - overdue
Satch - coasting
Pickups - magnetic
Blisters - cookery
Cider - vomit
Fretbuzz - vomit
Jeff Beck - master
Nazi - Mosad
Fretless - blob
Ebow - elbow
Ibanez - 1992
Borat - mankini
Ebony – Lemon Oil
Posture - freedom
Bullets – unhelpful
Is the harmonic major and its modes worth study? If there were 1 mode that is worth learning from HMAJ, like Phrygian Dominant in harmonic minor, what would it be?
Well, I played about with Harmonic Major and only come up with a few things. I think it’s certainly worthy of study along the way somewhere but it doesn’t seem to want to yield up anything very useful. I don’t know if it has a more useable mode in it or not. Phrygian Dominant has two functions, one as a tonality in itself and also as part of a ii-V-i progression in Harmonic Minor. As Harmonic Major hasn’t really found its way into a workable harmonic system so its modes haven’t been explored in quite the same way. I’m sure there’s something in there somewhere though…1,2,3,4,5,b6,7,8…hmmm…
Is there any electric guitar virtuoso technique's that are a wall to climb and you're working on getting down into your playing? Plus, is there any theory or scale/chord system you’re also trying to make part of your improvising or composing vocabulary?
I’m trying to get my legato playing to go into more interesting territory. I’ve been working on lots of ‘wrong notes’ systems, like sidestepping, chromatic stuff and using geometric patterns to create scales, so diagonal lines and triangles and things. They don’t work harmonically, but they start to develop their own kind of logic. It’s just one step away from playing absolutely anything.
Also, I’ve been trying to get my fingers used to some more unusual patterns and phrases and also trying some four-notes-per-string ideas. I’m starting to get somewhere now, I’m finding that provided you’re heading for somewhere coherent or structurally significant you can bend the melody line all over the place.
But the most interesting areas I’ve been into recently are to do with rhythm. I’ve got lots of new material knocking around at the moment and quite a few of the ideas are built up from little rhythmic things, like I’m working on a tune that’s based on a four bar loop of 15/16 - 21/16 - 15/16 - 23/16. I’m really starting to get there with it now and don’t have to think quite so hard to play musically over the top of it.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this interview with such enthusiasm and I do look forward to reviewing your CD "Regent" in the near future.
Thanks very much.
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Adams Website http://www.evesound.com
Adams Myspace Page http://www.myspace.com/evesoundadammoore
Get the Cd "Regent" http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/adammoore4
Adam Moore was born in England in 1980 and has since become an extreme guitarist, composer, singer, songwriter, educator, musical experimenter & producer.
What gets him out of bed?
Adam is driven to create the music he hears in his head, feels in his fingers, smells in his coffee and tastes on his tongue. In so doing he hopes to make your foot tap, your air guitar ring out, brain ache, fingers bleed and maybe push a tiny tear or two from your eye.
If you should feel the need to understand Adam’s influences further then muse upon the following: As far as he knows he has no creative vision, although he does envision a lot of creations. He’s clearly making it up as he goes along. He thinks playing guitar is the best fun you can have with a bit of wood. He knows making new music is the most magical thing around and therefore making new music on guitar must be pretty great.
His financial plan is to break even by the time he dies.
Adam loves to play guitar on stage and works with just about anyone who’ll have him…provided he likes them…and they pay well…and the music’s good…and lunch is provided…
What can he tell you?
Since age fourteen Adam has been teaching in one form or another. His teaching philosophy is this: Attempting to make something for yourself will show you what all those lists of scales and chords are actually for. So let’s learn something and then try and make something with it.
Who told him what he knows?
Adam thinks of himself as a self-taught musician whose has been helped along the way by some excellent teachers.When he was little he was taught by a friend’s older brother who lived down the road, then he moved on to that guy’s mate who could play better and new lots of scales. Between the ages of thirteen and seventeen Adam got on and taught himself, then he went to a couple of classical teachers to fill in some gaps. In his early twenties, Adam attended Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft programme in the USA, UK and Spain. When his hungry little mind was ready for more Adam visited the great jazz guitarist Jasper Smith and then, in 2007, he headed off to Sweden to learn from Swedish metal legend Mattias IA Eklundh.
What do other people think?
“A thoroughly modern sound…treating the guitar fan to some wildly exotic licks.” (guitar9.com)
“Equally adept at riff-laden hard rock and gentle mood levellers, Adam is a writer/guitarist who will certainly appeal to the AOR fans who yearn for something of genuine lasting value.” (Musician Magazine
MARK THOMPSON TALKS WITH ADAM MOORE Adam Moore was born in England in 1980 and has since become an extreme guitarist, composer, singer, songwriter, educator, musical experimenter & producer.
What gets him out of bed?
Adam is driven to create the music he hears in his head, feels in his fingers, smells in his coffee and tastes on his tongue. In so doing he hopes to make your foot tap, your air guitar ring out, brain ache, fingers bleed and maybe push a tiny tear or two from your eye.
If you should feel the need to understand... (read more) So, you have a new album out "Regent" that we are going to review here on shredknowledge, would you like to give us an overview of the album (inc the double CD with backing and plans to gig it) and some insight into a couple of your favourite tracks
Yes, Regent is the guitar album I’ve been working on for a couple of years. I’m really proud of it and it’s the best music I could have made over that period. I really put everything I had into it and spent ages trying to put something together that reflected my personality and how I experience the world, which, without lyrics, is quite a difficult task. Some of the ideas have been kicking about for years in one form or another. The main theme from Purple Circles was written when I was about seventeen and it took me ten years to work out how to structure a song around it. In the end it turned out to be pretty simple, but I tried all sorts of complicated ideas before settling on tune-solo-tune. I’d say finding structures that suit the material is the most delicate task for a composer. You can really misrepresent an idea by playing it too much or in the wrong place or something. Portals was recorded while I was making Curious Liquid in 2004 and Lo’s Orchard was written in 2001. In fact, Lo’s Orchard is probably my favourite piece on the album, it’s just the same phrase four times over with some overdubs. I remember sitting in my student house in Norwich, looking out of the window and writing that. I’m pretty sure it was raining.
I’m currently rehearsing a band to take Regent and some material from my back catalogue on the road. It’s a fantastic band and I think audiences will really go for it. We’ve worked through Fuchsia and The Knot Garden from Regent, The Green Man and Inca from my vocal albums and have some more great stuff to learn. Hopefully we’ll be ready by mid summer. The challenge for me is finding a way to make a four or five piece band playing instrumental rock fusion bankable for all the members as quickly as possible.
As you say, there’s going to be a limited edition double CD version of Regent with the second CD containing just the backing tracks. Initially I made it for a student who had bought an early promo version of the album and just asked if I had backing tracks for it. That made me think I should have backing tracks to practice with and also if I want to do any guitar clinics on my own. So it’s literally the album mixed down again with the lead guitars turned off. That’s just going to be available through www.evesound.com once the rest of the artwork is finalised, hopefully in a month or so.
You still have the odd lesson with jazz master Jasper Smith, why? Would you recommend guitar lessons with a real live tutor?
Well, I haven’t been to see Jasper for a couple of years, but he was the right person to help me out when I needed it. Jasper knows jazz theory inside out and really helped me sort various harmonic things out…and he’s a very nice chap too. I think you need contact with real teachers at various points, as they can show you what you need to know, not what you think you need to know. Also, teachers speed up the learning process by helping you avoid dead ends and putting you on the right path straight away. If I look back at my own learning process there were quite long periods when I was making really slow progress and just ten minutes with the right teacher would have made a huge difference. Experience is a very slow teacher. Ultimately thought, good players are self-taught with the aid of a teacher. You take what a teacher says and take it in your own direction until it becomes yours. Students who think that what their teacher tells them is all there is to know are rather missing the point.
I remember you saying you had guitar lessons with Robert Fripp, what techniques and what theory comes to mind when you look back on those lessons and how long were you having tuition with him, also while were on the subject, King Crimson as a band is an influence, what is it about them and what are your recommended listening?
I attended Guitar Craft seminars off and on between 2000 and 2007, in the States, Spain and the UK. Robert lead these in groups of various sizes, so it wasn’t individual tuition per se. Guitar Craft focused, in part, on how you go about being available to the creative impulse. This means knowing how to conduct yourself such that when music presents itself you can respond with as much craft, or technique, as possible and with as little ego and preconception as possible. The actual playing was pretty serious; all the guitars were tuned to New Standard Tuning (CGDAEG), which has some great possibilities and means you can’t play anything you’ve played before. Everything was played with super-precise alternate picking and with great big triangular picks and just about all the music was in funny times. The best thing to listen to is Intergalactic Boogie Express by Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists, the is a beautiful album recorded live in Europe about 1990. Guitar Craft is completed now, it ceased to exist on 25th March this year. As far as King Crimson records go, I’d say you need to hear The Power to Believe, B’Boom, Discipline, Red and In the Court of the Crimson King.
Adam, I noticed the rack of acoustics in your Purple Circles videos, what guitars and gear have you got? Spare no details to the last pedal and recording gadget.
I love acoustic guitars and have periods where I don’t play much electric at all. My first guitar was a Marlin acoustic with a maple neck and I played it to death. It has 13 gauge strings on now and gets used for slide. When I saw David Gilmour playing a Gibson J200 in 1994 I new I had to have one, ideally one with a rosewood body. I listened to Poles Apart from The Division Bell and new that was how I wanted an acoustic guitar to sound. It took me two years and a holiday job with the Inland Venue to get enough cash together before I tracked down the right one from an independent seller in Birmingham. I think that’s my favourite guitar.
My electric guitars are two Washburn Tonewood Mercury guitars that were made in about 1993. I love these, but they’re quite tough to track down now. There’s not much to them, just two humbuckers screwed into a slab of ash or mahogany. I also have two Strats; one’s an early 90s Strat Plus that I’ve had since I was about thirteen and the other was built from parts a few years ago and swirl painted like an old Jem. The Strat Plus has 11s on it at the moment, which I really like as it makes you play very different and slows you down a bit. I’ve also got an Ibanez RG 7 string, but I’m still trying to work out how to do something original with it. I’ll get there in the end. I’m trying to avoid just writing lots of heavy stuff in B minor.
I’ve had the same Marshall 8080 since I was fourteen and its been slowly dying ever since. Its been used for every gig I’ve ever done and probably will for a few years yet. I’ve never changed anything on it; it’s got one preamp value in the overdrive channel that must be shot by now. I’ve had a Pod 2.0 for a few years that I use for recording videos and some of Regent. That’s pretty good. I don’t use much else really. I record everything using Cubase 4 using an SM58 or a Rode NT2. Sometimes I use a Boss MZ2 distortion and a Boss DD5 delay. I also have a Morley Wah and a Digitech Whammy Pedal.
I’ve got to ask about the Mattias "IA" Eklundh’s Freak Guitar Camp. What did you learn from this experience in the middle of the Swedish outback?...if there is such a thing.
IA’s a really great person. He puts so much character into everything he does. When I heard Freak Guitar I was so excited as I’d been playing for fifteen years but had almost no clue how he made any of the sounds he did. You can hear bits of Zappa in there and maybe Django Reinhardt, but other than that he’s a real original. I find that really inspiring as it seems so much harder to attain originality that it does super complex technique, although it should be easier. I’m glad I got to go to a couple of those camps while he’s still outside the superstar league and relatively easy to keep in contact with. I‘ve met some really great people though those camps, played lots of guitar, eaten some wonderful vegetarian food and had a lot of saunas.
Ok, what two guitars would you have if you had a choice of an electric and acoustic endorsement?
If I could get Washburn to make me some more Tonewood guitars I’d be a happy boy. There are a couple of little things I’d change…so if someone from Washburn is reading this give me a call. Not sure about acoustics, I’m not fussy as long as it plays and sounds good. I have a nice Takamine jumbo that I use on stage a lot; it’s almost got a hole in the top from strumming, as it doesn’t have a pick guard. A variation on that might be nice. And, of course, my own Gibson J200 would be cool.
What tuition DVD’s and books would you recommend?
I’ve only seen a few. I really like the Allan Holdsworth one that used to be on REH, but you have to work quite hard to get anything from it, as his style is so unique. John McLaughlin’s DVD with Salvaganesh Gateway to Rhythm is interesting. At the moment I’d be more inclined toward stuff by drummers. I’d really recommend Gavin Harrison’s books and CDs. I’ve gotten more from them in the last few years than a lot of guitar DVDs. Also, I watched John Petrucci’s DVD and that’s really good for technique.
Would you say it’s a good idea to learn to read and write music?
Yes, certainly for the kind of music I want to make. I can read and write music pretty well and its really liberating sometimes to write without a guitar and just a bit of paper instead. Also, once you know notation, some concepts, especially rhythmic ones, become much clearer. I’m working on a lesson called The Broken Brain Game, which is based on subdividing the bar intro progressively smaller and smaller parts. It makes most immediate sense if you can see what’s happening in the score.
Also, it’s the most universal way of communicating ideas between players on different instruments, at least players of western instruments. If you have a line that you want a vibes player to take then TAB wouldn’t be much use to them. Also, if you’ve got a sax part then knowing how to transpose it into their key can save a lot of time and make you popular with sax players.
I must confess to being a pretty crappy sight-reader, however. That’s a different skill to being able to read music. I sight-read about as well as a 10-year-old flautist who’s been playing for a year or so! You have to be sight-reading every day to get good at it and it just doesn’t come up that much in my world. I played in West Side Story for a week at the Theatre Royal in Norwich a couple of years ago and had to do some serious reading for that. I wasn’t a patch on the rest of the orchestral players, but I was good enough to get by and I wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of memorising it.
You shouldn’t be afraid of the dots though.
What are some good practicing tips you can share with us regarding both technique and theory?
I’d say try not to get too hung up on practicing a specific riff or pattern all the time. It turns you into a one-trick-pony very quickly. You should always be looking for permutations and variations on whatever it is you’re doing. Having a solid knowledge of theory can really help you work out what else you can do with a given scale, pattern or phrase. So if you have a scale, make sure you learn it up and down, alternate picking starting on up and down strokes, in thirds, fourths, fifths, octaves, in groups of three, four, five and so forth. Also, I always try to find a use for a piece theory or a new technique by getting it into a song otherwise I just can’t keep it in my head and fingers. Lastly, I’d say keep in mind that all these skills are there to help you serve the musical impulse. If you have a broad and flexible technique and good knowledge of theory you can be ready when the ideas are happening. At least that’s what I’m thinking when I’m practicing.
What were the first three solos you learned note for note?
Um, I’m not totally sure but In the Meadow by All About Eve would likely have been one, Underneath Your Pillow by It Bites and something by Tom Petty, maybe Won’t Back Down.
Name your five favourite guitarists and why.
David Gilmour, Robert Fripp, Richard Thompson, Steve Vai and Francis Dunnery because they all move me. They add something to my existence. I’d have had IA and Allan Holdsworth if you’d given me more than five. However, I’m equally moved by Imogen Heap, David Sylvian, John Coltrane, Brian Eno, Howard Shore or Takashi Yoshimatsu. Actually the most beautiful songs I’ve heard recently are by the comedian Tim Minchin. White Wine in the Sun had me in tears when I first heard it.
If you could play another instrument what would it be?
Piano maybe. I play a bit of drums now and I have an Irish Low D whistle I love trying to play. I wish I could play melodies like a sax player, write harmonies like a pianist and construct rhythms like a drummer.
For someone who spent so much time studying jazz I would have thought fusion would have been your main genre? Instrumental rock guitar is definitely a favoured genre in your composing and recordings I’ve heard, I’ve got your Uppingham Down fusion heads, but that still had the rock vibe, do you listen to a lot of it? Could you categorise yourself into a genre?
Well, most of the knowledge I want comes from books with Jazz in the title, but I’m not a Jazz musician and I don’t really listen to many of the big name fusion players. I find it a bit soulless. If pushed I’d say I was a rock player, as it’s the broadest and most inclusive category.
I’ve now released four albums; two are instrumental and two are vocal albums with hardly any guitar solos at all. After I made Curious Liquid I vowed never to make a guitar album again as, at that point, I decided it was all rather daft. I’ve got a more balanced approach now and just do whatever I want. I can appreciate why other people might want to categorise music, but when I’m writing and playing its meaningless to do so. These labels are only helpful when I’m trying to sell something as it helps people find your CD in the shop.
You've worked with lots of musicians from young to old, are there any that stand out and why?
That’s quite a tough one. You really don’t have to go very far to find great musicians; they’re everywhere. I think if you read too much music press you start to think that they only live in London or L.A. I suppose being a music teacher I get to meet a lot of players at the beginning of their career and there’s no one skill or approach that makes a good one, but the musicians who have moved me most are the ones who appear to have some sort of natural connection to music and aren’t hung up on fashion, cynicism, social status or what gear they’re using, they just write and play. That can be anything from singer songwriters to orchestral cellists to metal drummers to programmers to whatever. I’m humbled when I meet musicians who have their priorities right, but it happens all the time.
Remember Edward from our time at college, he had relative pitch which made it easy to work songs out, have you met or taught anyone that had perfect pitch? What can we do to train our musical ear?
Yeah, I’ve taught a couple of people with actual perfect pitch. I’m talking about the real ones who can tell you what pitch you get when you tap a radiator or a teacup. It’s a strange phenomenon really, as you’d need to be taught at least the names of notes before you’d know you had it. Which makes me think there must be lots of people out there who have it and don’t know it. Either way, you’ve either got or you haven’t. Anyone who isn’t born with it but works for it can achieve something called Acquired Pitch. When Steve Vai used to talk about going to bed with headphones on that’s what he was aiming for, although I’m not really sure what he was listening to.
Relative pitch is much easier to achieve and most musicians can do it provided they spend time focused on the sounds they’re making. For example, if you play a C and try to imagine what the C an octave up sounds like- that’s relative pitch. You’re pitching notes you’re not playing by taking one you are playing as a reference. It helps if you can sing the other note. Once you can do the octave try the fifth, so play a C and imagine or sing the G above it. Eventually you can imagine any note against the one you’re playing. That’s got to be helpful.
For guitarists, I’d say try improvising very slowly in a given scale and sing it as you play it. If you can start to get some of it right it means your actually improvising musically rather than feeling your way around a pattern or shape. If you get good at that try putting in notes outside the scale, like blue notes and chromatic things and singing that too. After that try singing the harmony to what you’re playing on guitar, so play a scale and sing a third up or something…
Do you have any composition tricks? I remember you talking about using pictures and other means of stimulus for writing.
I think when you write the most important thing is to avoid being merely proficient. That is, churning out music that works technically but lacks soul or an underlying idea. I could write songs all day that ‘work’ but that wouldn’t necessarily make them musical. This is where technique and music theory can’ t help you, having good ideas has got nothing to do with how many scales you know or what type of Flange pedal you’ve got.
When we talked about the Guitar Craft approach part of what I said was to do with noticing when an idea appears, but sometimes you have to engineer the conditions for good ideas by upsetting things- like mess up the tuning on your guitar, or don’t play for a week, or only use one finger on each hand. That’s the trick to composing if there is such a thing: Tricking yourself into not being merely proficient. Using images, or smells and other non-musical stimuli to get you started is another good system. Nothing works all the time, though.
Once you manage to get a good idea together then music theory and technique can help you flesh it out and turn it into a piece of music.
You are a fan of Zappa, what influence has Frank Zappa had on your music? I remember you did the guitar parts for some Zappa songs and in the solo you used your right hand behind your left, was it a muting technique or barring to pull off open strings?
I think that was a damping thing? Not really sure. Yes, Zappa is significant for me. There are so many Zappa albums it takes a real fan a lifetime to get to know them all properly. I just think he wrote some wonderful music. Let’s Move to Cleveland, Watermelon in Easter Hay, We Are Not Alone, Strictly Genteel, The Black Page, they’re all just so special…
I asked you if you were a churchgoer when we were at college, this was because you were such a nice guy, you had such an interesting and positive outlook and I enjoyed all your lessons greatly. I know now you’re not a church attendee or believe in a creator, but what is your philosophy on behaviour towards your fellow man.
Try to be kind, try to treat people equally, try to empathise, try to be honest. You’ll probably fail most of the time but try anyway.
I guess this has to be asked, I’m not a great musician and a late starter in playing music in fact this is great in a way as I remember listening to Joe Satriani before I ever touched a guitar, this gives me an insight to being a listener before I started to take music apart to play it. What was I like at college?
Hmmm, well, you’d got as far as playing those Joe Satriani songs by then. I think the best thing I can say is that you certainly were paying attention. There can be no higher praise.
What’s the best gig you ever attended?
Pink Floyd at Earls Court, October 19th 1994.
What advice would you give budding shredders in a few sentences?
Try not to get too hung up on what anyone else is doing, find a voice and make music. How do you express the shear fucking wonderfulness of the cherry blossom outside my window in a blazing shred solo? Answers on a postcard please.
Abstract one word answer game:
Computers - necessary
Meat - meaty
Strings - stringy
Picks - picky
Shredknowledge.com - great
Wedding bells - Swaffham
Blood - iron
Hospitals - understaffed
Animals - everywhere
Pink Floyd - England
Drummers - heart
Piano - head
Apocalypse - cake
Matrix - genius
Summer - overdue
Satch - coasting
Pickups - magnetic
Blisters - cookery
Cider - vomit
Fretbuzz - vomit
Jeff Beck - master
Nazi - Mosad
Fretless - blob
Ebow - elbow
Ibanez - 1992
Borat - mankini
Ebony – Lemon Oil
Posture - freedom
Bullets – unhelpful
Is the harmonic major and its modes worth study? If there were 1 mode that is worth learning from HMAJ, like Phrygian Dominant in harmonic minor, what would it be?
Well, I played about with Harmonic Major and only come up with a few things. I think it’s certainly worthy of study along the way somewhere but it doesn’t seem to want to yield up anything very useful. I don’t know if it has a more useable mode in it or not. Phrygian Dominant has two functions, one as a tonality in itself and also as part of a ii-V-i progression in Harmonic Minor. As Harmonic Major hasn’t really found its way into a workable harmonic system so its modes haven’t been explored in quite the same way. I’m sure there’s something in there somewhere though…1,2,3,4,5,b6,7,8…hmmm…
Is there any electric guitar virtuoso technique's that are a wall to climb and you're working on getting down into your playing? Plus, is there any theory or scale/chord system you’re also trying to make part of your improvising or composing vocabulary?
I’m trying to get my legato playing to go into more interesting territory. I’ve been working on lots of ‘wrong notes’ systems, like sidestepping, chromatic stuff and using geometric patterns to create scales, so diagonal lines and triangles and things. They don’t work harmonically, but they start to develop their own kind of logic. It’s just one step away from playing absolutely anything.
Also, I’ve been trying to get my fingers used to some more unusual patterns and phrases and also trying some four-notes-per-string ideas. I’m starting to get somewhere now, I’m finding that provided you’re heading for somewhere coherent or structurally significant you can bend the melody line all over the place.
But the most interesting areas I’ve been into recently are to do with rhythm. I’ve got lots of new material knocking around at the moment and quite a few of the ideas are built up from little rhythmic things, like I’m working on a tune that’s based on a four bar loop of 15/16 - 21/16 - 15/16 - 23/16. I’m really starting to get there with it now and don’t have to think quite so hard to play musically over the top of it.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this interview with such enthusiasm and I do look forward to reviewing your CD "Regent" in the near future.
Thanks very much.
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