I started out being quite an eclectic composer, not quite sure where to fit in. I tried my hand a bit at everything, except perhaps music with lyrics.
When I'm writing instrumental music, I try to find musical and non-musical inspirations.
I was a big fan of Jim Hall as well. I liked his comping style, his accompanying. And that he played, generally, four note chords, the top four strings of the guitar.
As a melody instrument player, it's all about getting from one note to the next, and those intervals and how you navigate your way through these vertical structures of chords. You realize that everything's moving forward, and it's all linear.
I love most melodic music - classical, reggae, big band, jazz, blues, country, pop, swing, folk.
I continued studying by myself in the field of jazz with my own technique of improvisation, walking bass lines, rhythms, all kinds of stuff, which I created for myself.
I really had to think and learn about musical intervals.
You can't go up to girls and start talking about minor 7ths and expect to pull. It's not going to work.
I use a lot more chords than most organists and I'm careful to phrase them with the guitar.
We may play in a contemporary rock vein, use standard bebop themes, and many other things besides.
The one area where I'll say that Hendrix is underrated was his ability to use chord melodies. He used different inversions of chords and was able to make a three-piece band sound absolutely huge. From the moment Hendrix and the Experience came on the scene, power trios had their work cut out for them.
My songs are more arrangements than they are songs.
For me, theory has always opened things up to where I can walk into a room and just by hearing something I know exactly where to go on the guitar. I have a better time playing because I have a variety of colors to bring to the table.
Teddy Wilson, I think, said a little while ago that it's much easier to come in and play whatever comes into your mind, without obeying any of the laws of bass line and harmony and so on.
I always say that to compose is to think. Playing is good, it's useful, but it's how your intellect puts the ideas together that will bring hands to write or to play. So, it's really a combination of many things; hearing sounds, hearing layers of counterpoints, of chords.
There are millions and billions of atoms of memory of all kinds of musical themes in me.
