The thing I find frustrating about rock music is, how different can you make an acoustic drum kit sound, an electric guitar and vocals?
It's hilarious, because my guitar has what's known as a tremolo bar or a whammy bar. And the whammy bar is probably the most alien thing on my guitar that could possibly relate to a classical guitar.
Studying music involves a lot of mathematics and a lot of exercises of memory. Or you've got to be able to be like somebody, to play like somebody, to play Mozart's music the way he played it and how he intended it. You've got to make it perfect, and that's not what I want to do. Although it is beautiful.
Conducting, I tried it once off the cuff, and quickly realized there were subtle aspects that I was missing. There is a lot more to it that I was able to grasp simply by watching conductors.
Chopin was a master of melody, harmony and voice leading - the art of smoothly moving from chord to chord.
It's really hard for me to sing and play bass.
I write the songs first and in most cases teach myself the technique second.
I'm a freak, everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will, my jazz teacher, set up everything completely flat, and then you'd tilt your snare drum away from you, so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.
I started playing harp about fourteen years ago.
I'm not a 'guitarist.' I'm trying to be a bassist.
It's so legato it's difficult to splice. Sibelius was famous for that.
I had an edge in 'Andhadhun' because, being a musician, I knew how to play a guitar, so it was not difficult for me to learn a musical instrument.
I don't have a very disciplined approach to practicing or anything, but I do tend to have a guitar around most of the time, which I strum on most of the day.
I've just simply used what I've used because of the great, great expressive potential of it.
My music is simple stuff. Anybody can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents.
My first two records are so simply constructed. The reason isn't because I wanted to make simple music. It's because I don't really have the chops.
I practice more than ever ... mostly scales and arpeggios ... and anything I can't do.
I didn't start off as a bass player, and Guns was the first band I really, like, 'Oh, I'm gonna be a bass player. This is what I'm gonna do.' And I really dove into it head first.
We've always had a very strong focus on the instrumentation, and our approach to our individual instruments.
Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.
And I had not much of a voice. I didn't play that great guitar either.
The only sliding I did was on the kind of instrument that you put on your lap; no Spanish electrics.
Lots of times I'll play lead and rhythm together.
It's always funny to me when people use the phrase 'Best guitar player in the world'. There are too many variables such as technique, uniqueness, emotional investment in the notes, etc. But If I had to pick one, it would be Tommy Emmanuel. Watching him perform can be a study in artistic and virtuosic human achievement.
I love to learn, and I started doing a lot of studying of Spanish-style music and really started getting into it and how it is just a completely different form of guitar playing. It is just like if you started speaking in a different language like Japanese or something. It is something that you have to study and work at a lot.
