The famous blues rock virtuoso Joe Bonamassa discussed some aspects of guitar playing that can’t be taught.
To be fair, blues is a genre that’s all about these odd little details that cannot be learned through conventional means. In other words, you can’t learn it in the same way you’d learn Western Classical music. There are all these nuances and little details that no book can teach you about.
While speaking to Premier Guitar recently, as curated by Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett, Bonamassa reflected on the matter of “feel” and whether it’s something that one can learn. When asked about this, the blues maestro replied (transcribed by Killer Guitar Rigs):
“Yeah, there are certain things that can be taught. And there are certain things that are just intrinsically in you — how you feel, where you place the notes, where you put the vibrato — all those little subtleties.”
“When you’re playing, it’s important to listen back to live shows and stuff like that, because when you’re out there, you’re not really conscious of what it’s actually coming across as. So you want to make sure that it speaks as a total riff, because if you rush through it, it’s not going to have the impact that you want, even though live, the adrenaline is flowing.”
“And it seems like it’s not as fast, but sometimes, time compresses on stage, as you know — like a broken string. Oh, my God, the time it takes for you to put down a guitar, pick up another one, start playing again.
That’s an interesting way to put it. And going more into the conversation, Shiflett then said how wild it was for anyone to change the string on a guitar as the show was going on. Bonamassa then commented:
“Yeah, you only have one guitar, or just get through the song without a D string, and everything’s out of tune. Those are the moments that, if you look back on film when that happens to you, you’re like, ‘Wow, it felt like 10 minutes to recover, but it’s literally a blink of an eye.’ And the audience doesn’t even know. They only know when you acknowledge it.”
And that’s certainly an insane amount of pressure on the performer. Funnily enough, as Joe said, the audience may not even notice it.
During the same chat, Bonamassa also reflected on one important thing that Mountain’s Leslie West told him:
“My old friend Leslie West used to say, ‘Divide by two — whatever you’re thinking, try to divide by two — and so play half as much’, and I’ve been chasing that my whole career. I play heavy strings to kind of curtail the propensity of overplaying because I definitely overplay.”
To this day, the world of guitar still seems to be split between the “feel” and “shred” camps. But things aren’t all that simple. For instance, Joe Satriani, who’s one of the greatest musicians in the “shred” category, recently chose a somewhat unusual solo to categorize as “shred” — Neil Young’s lead part in “Cinnamon Girl.”
“Part of the performance has to challenge the norm,” Joe said. “That’s what I think is important. That’s why I remember when hearing Neil Young play the solo for ‘Cinnamon Girl.’ It’s just one note, and then he just keeps playing it. But it’s a shred because of the attitude that he puts into it.”
“And the fact that he probably thought, ‘Oh, you’re probably expecting Carl Perkins, or something that sounds like Jimmy Page or something?’ And he goes, ‘No, I’m just gonna play this one note [laughs] on two strings, and you’re gonna love it.’ You know, and I think that is that embodies the attitude of shred.”
“Certainly not what Charles Caswell was doing [laughs] or Jason Richardson, but I think that if they don’t put that into their shredding, then it’s just a demonstration.”
“And that is kind of a sin of performance because I think the audience knows if you’re just demonstrating what you’ve rehearsed, or are you connecting with them saying, ‘Check this out, I’m going to do something that is going to blow your mind. And yeah, it’s a bit edgy, and maybe I should have done something else, but I’m going to do this instead.'”
“I think that’s really important, and you’ve got to do it well. Neil Young did that one-note solo really well, so players who just fill it up with a lot more notes, it still has to be done well. It’s not the quantity that defines the shred. They’re not understanding the context of the solo.”
Photo: Dmileson (Joe Bonamassa – Radio City Music Hall Jan 2014)
