{"id":445,"date":"2011-02-10T05:42:06","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T10:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=445"},"modified":"2011-02-10T05:42:06","modified_gmt":"2011-02-10T10:42:06","slug":"trey-gunn-have-touch-guitar-will-travel-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/02\/10\/trey-gunn-have-touch-guitar-will-travel-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Trey Gunn: Have Touch Guitar, Will Travel (part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

Bill Kopp:<\/span><\/strong> In my review of Modulator<\/em><\/a> I said, \u201cGunn\u2019s guitar squawks and screams as if it\u2019s being strangled rather than played.\u201d You subsequently tweeted that line. I meant it as a complement and suppose that you took it as such. What sort of goal do you have texturally when playing? I mean, of course it\u2019s different for every song, but is there any sort of general aesthetic guideline you follow?<\/span><\/p>\n

Trey Gunn:<\/strong> No. The most important thing for me is that the musical gesture is disclosed, and that it sounds good. For me, texture is all about whether it sounds good. I have no principles that I can operate on, or even discuss. Because if it sounds good, it sounds good. And when it doesn\u2019t sound good to me, I change it. It\u2019s one of those things where you know right away. It\u2019s a case where you know when you\u2019re working with the people you should be working with. You\u2019re in agreement. When I\u2019m working with someone and something is recorded or played, and we all go, \u201cEww, that doesn\u2019t sound right\u201d \u2013 or if we agree that it does sound right — then I know I\u2019m working with the right people. It\u2019s like a litmus test. If there\u2019s a lot of variation in opinion about how something sounds, hmm\u2026better to find somebody else.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> What percentage of your guitar work that ends up on a recording would you say is improvisationally based? <\/span><\/p>\n

TG:<\/strong> It does depend a lot on the project. But I do work a lot from improvisation. I play and things just sort of fall out, but there\u2019s generally a shaping process. For example on Modulator<\/em>, I would play along with Marco, and I\u2019d find a musical gesture. And it might not line up. So I would go back in and find out what notes should be played to match the rhythm. So improv is kind of a magic doorway for me.<\/p>\n

But to go onstage and just improvise is so dreadfully boring and pretentious, even with the best players. At least 75% of the time. I find it dreadful, the idea of getting together to jam with musicians. It\u2019s something I\u2019d run away from. So I have a very tempered sense of the concept. Even if start with an improvised line, I sit down and construct a strictly developed piece from that idea.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> So while it might spring from improvisation, it ends up structured.<\/span><\/p>\n

TG:<\/strong> Absolutely.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> You employ a wide variety of non-traditional instruments: Warr guitar, touch and fretless guitars, etc.\u00a0 <\/span>Do you find that the standard six-string electric or acoustic guitar is too limiting an instrument for the sound and textures you have in your head? Or do you just like to pick and choose an instrument based on where you\u2019re trying to go musically?<\/span><\/p>\n

TG:<\/strong> They\u2019re different instruments for me. I have an electric guitar, and I have an acoustic guitar. They\u2019re tuned kind of funny, but I have them. And there\u2019s a particular way of playing them, one that\u2019s completely different than with the touch or Warr guitars. So I pick them up when I want that particular instrument. Bt I don\u2019t ever take those out onstage. The Warr guitar is very flexible; it gives me all of the textures I want, all the possibilities I want to take onstage with me. There\u2019s lots of variety for me, and for the audience.<\/p>\n

Certainly, one of my goals is developing ways of playing the Warr and touch guitars. That\u2019s my particular work; I don\u2019t have that kind of work on a regular guitar. That\u2019s somebody else\u2019s work. And the next evolution of the touch is guitar is to be horizontally played. I\u2019ve been working for about a year and a half, kind of building up a body of technique. I\u2019ve been doing lots of experiments related to what that mean, playing with the instrument horizontally in front of me. I\u2019m doing a lot of R&D on that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> Besides that, what sorts of projects are in the hopper or on the horizon for you now?<\/span><\/p>\n

TG:<\/strong> I\u2019m at a little bit of a\u2026I don\u2019t want to use the word \u201clull\u201d because that sounds negative. The Modulator<\/em> project really zapped my capacity. It was a real challenge that called upon my writing and production chops threefold. And I\u2019m still recovering from it!<\/p>\n

I do have some interesting things coming up, which are kind of surprising. I\u2019m not touring that much; I was just playing in Russia the last couple of weeks. I have a project with Percy Howard<\/strong> and Vernon Reid<\/strong>. I\u2019ve worked with both of them before, but Percy\u2019s stepping it up this time by bringing in another guitar player as well. That\u2019s in March 2011.<\/p>\n

Also in March I\u2019m going to Sweden to play a one-off show with a crazy drummer. The reason it\u2019s working is because I\u2019ve been invited to a music exposition with a bunch of young musicians all coming in. So I\u2019ll be teaching there and doing a show. I\u2019ll be coaching<\/em>, really, helping musicians to find where their passion is; in fact it\u2019s really different from teaching. With teaching you sort of have secret information that you\u2019re passing on. With coaching, you\u2019re really just listening to them and helping them. So this Swedish thing is a little bit of an experiment. But they want to have me, and I want to go.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s something else, but I can\u2019t remember. It\u2019s mostly live stuff; I don\u2019t have recording projects lined up soon, although Pat Mastelotto<\/strong> and I will hopefully start a new Tu<\/strong> record this year. Other than all that, I\u2019m sort of retreating into my cave for the winter, and seeing what comes.<\/p>\n

Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on Twitter<\/a>
\nand get notified when new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Bill Kopp: In my review of Modulator I said, \u201cGunn\u2019s guitar squawks and screams as if it\u2019s being strangled rather than played.\u201d You subsequently tweeted that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","cat-41-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}