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A glimpse into the world of guitar wizard and erotic cake maker, Guthrie Govan
Guthrie Govan leapt into the guitar worlds consciousness after winning Guitarist magazines Guitarist Of The Year competition in the early 1990s. Since that time, he has been a popular contributor to Guitar Techniques, a teacher par excellence at some of the countrys top guitar colleges, a member of prog-rock band Asia, leader of his own band and one of the globes most respected players. In 2006 he released his long-awaited solo album Erotic Cakes to enormous acclaim worldwide. So what exactly makes this guitar giant tick?
 
You teach as well as play do you ever find that the teacher in you gets in the way of the player by being too analytical about what youre doing?
 
Not really. Im an entirely self-taught player, so I try to incorporate some of the way I learned into the way I teach people and the bulk of my pedagogic ranting seems to be based on understanding the sound of what youre playing. I reckon having the ability to sing a Mixolydian b6 mode from memory is at least as useful as just being able to regurgitate lots of fingerings for it, parrot-fashion, all across the neck. For me, one of the most important things is just to listen to each note as you play it and evaluate whether it actually sounds any good: you can nurture that mentality without getting overly theoretical. Think about the way we talk: people can happily string together long, complex sentences without worrying about whether a verb needs to be subjunctive or conditional! That knowledge must be embedded in us at a pretty deep level, but we dont need to access it consciously to make it work for us. I like to think that music can be made in the same way. Having said all that, theres nothing wrong with having the ability to be analytical from time to time; if I ever encounter a problem with what Im trying to play, its reassuring to know that my inner teacher is there to help.
 
What would be the ideal gig for you?
 
Well, Ive done the type of gig that pays well and the type of gig where Im free to play whatever I like all night. I suppose my ideal would be that rare thing, a combination of the two!
 
What was the most surprising response to your album Erotic Cakes that you received?
 
Ive had some startlingly encouraging feedback from some of my favourite living guitar players which was nice. Even more surprising, though, was a video on YouTube where some marimba player from Berklee was playing a note-for-note rendition of Wonderful Slippery Thing as part of his end-of-term recital. It cheered me up to think that someone who doesnt even play guitar could find something of interest in the album, and I thought it was pretty amazing that he invested all that time into learning one of the tracks so meticulously it felt a bit like being inducted into the Real Book for 15 minutes!
 
Are there any plans for a follow-up?
 
Oh, yes. Id like to write and record the whole of the next album in one uninterrupted period of time, in the quest for musical continuity so Im constantly scanning my diary in the hope of finding an appropriate window of time somewhere, amongst all my teaching/gigging/transcribing commitments. Im determined to get it done this year, whatever else happens
 
Do you still come across things you find technically challenging? If so, how do you deal with them?
 
Some of the hardest stuff Ive had to play recently has actually been for a sample replay company. Its an interesting form of work: picture a scenario in which some dance producers have come up with a track based on a four bar loop from some old funk record. They cant release the track in its current form for fear of getting sued so theyre looking for a replay which can be slotted into their mix in place of the original sample loop
"On a superficial level this probably doesnt sound too taxing very seldom does this line of work call for any sweeping or tapping chops but the challenge is to get exactly the same tone (using different gear, inevitably!) and then match every last nuance of timing and dynamics as heard on the original. The replay has to be a perfect facsimile even if that means painful stuff like deliberately playing a note slightly sharp and late, to match whats on the record because theres usually no way of guessing exactly what it was that the dance producers liked about that loop. Sometimes its something that only becomes apparent once theyve time-stretched the thing and run it through some severe filtering
That kind of thing certainly requires a certain kind of technique, but I suppose for a lot of guitar players the T-word triggers an assumption that for something to present a technical challenge, it has to involve executing an awkward series of notes as fast and as accurately as possible. In that sense, I guess music that wasnt written for guitar tends to generate the most difficulties but of course theres usually a way to play pretty much anything if you have enough willpower. Think of Steve Vai tackling Frank Zappas impossible guitar parts I know theres an element of humour in that description, but to all intents and purposes those parts really were impossible until Frank finally found someone who was fearless and diligent enough to do all the necessary homework!
Aside from the obvious keep playing it slowly until it ceases to be difficult solution, the other approach I find helpful is to be aware of various different fingering options. Having dabbled in various approaches, I can normally sense when a certain group of notes might lend itself particularly well to tapping, hybrid picking or whatever.
 
Name the piece of kit that changed your life and tell us why
 
Probably the 500MHz Apple iBook I bought during my first tour with Asia. I seemed happy enough in the old days, before I had a computer, but fast-forward to the present and I really cant imagine having any kind of musical life without one! Quite aside from the obvious stuff like being able to produce decent looking charts in Sibelius, record an album in Logic or do a whole gig running an amp simulator on a laptop, theres huge potential in being able to send audio files via the net. It still amazes me to think that Ive actually done session work for people Ive never met!
 
Could you run us through your current live set-up?
 
Okay let the geekiness commence I have different set-ups for different gigs; though theres normally a Cornford amp and a Suhr guitar involved.
For Asia/GPS shows, Id generally use a mahogany Suhr Standard with a H/S/H pickup configuration, running into a Cornford stack with as few effects as possible maybe a wah, a volume pedal and a chorus on the floor, with some form of delay in the FX loop for those U2 dotted eighth note moments. I know its traditional in that kind of rock music to have a fairly processed tone, but Ive found that its usually wisest to keep the tone fairly dry and uncluttered, so that the people in the back row have some hope of hearing what youre playing particularly in the more acoustically challenged venues! The keep-it-simple approach also helps at festival gigs and such, where soundchecks are rudimentary at best
If Im playing with The Young Punx, I use a Suhr Classic (read: Strat-type guitar) into a MacBook Pro running Guitar Rig 3. Im not a huge fan of amp modelling, but its the only way to make that kind of gig happen, given the huge amount of patch and level changes I get through. Additionally, the bass/keys/V-Drums are all running straight into the PA, hence nobody else in the band makes any backline noise whatsoever onstage!
For my own stuff, Id have to insist on using a real amp; it just sounds and feels better, which hopefully makes me play better. My all-round favourite Cornford would have to be the MK50Mk2, but Ive been using the Roadhouse 50 head and a 1×12 cab ever since Dave Kilminster borrowed my MK for the last Roger Waters tour
At an Erotic Cakes gig, Id normally bring a few extra pedals, just for fun. My current pedalboard starts with an Axess BS-2 buffer, leading into a Guyatone envelope filter, a Zendrive, an Xotic AC booster, a Moonphaser, a JAC compressor (which only really gets turned on for slide moments), a Pigtronix Mothership (Im still trying to figure out how it works, but its certainly entertaining!), a Silvermachine wah and an Ernie Ball volume pedal. Hence the BS-2.
In the loop of the amp, theres usually an Analogman chorus, and the current delay of choice is the Eventide TimeFactor the previous T-Rex Replica did its one thing incredibly well, but the Eventide is far more flexible, and the timing of its tap tempo function seems somehow more precise
"I recently banished a couple of my favourite pedals from the board: the Whammy Pedal may well be a thing of joy when its turned on, but I realised that its an appalling tonesucker when its in bypass mode. My MoogerFooger ring modulator/expression pedal combo made the best R2-D2 noises imaginable, but it was just taking up too much floorspace. (I really do miss that ring mod, though now that I come to mention it, I may have to reinstate the thing over the coming weeks.)
Guitar wise, Ive mostly been using my new Suhr signature model, which has a pau ferro fingerboard, maple top and mahogany everything else. Just for the really curious it has three Suhr pickups (H/S/H) and a blower switch which bypasses all the circuitry and sends the output of the bridge humbucker straight to the jack socket. (I often try to get clean sounds by backing the guitars volume knob until I find the sweet spot; once youve found said sweet spot, it seems a shame to lose it by messing around with the volume pot, so Ill generally use the blower switch as a kind of onboard channel changer, if you will)
The trem is a floating, non-locking Gotoh model, and its been fitted with a Tremol-No unit (which nearly made it into that last answer about the life-changing piece of gear; now I have the luxury of being switch to drop-D tuning in an instant, which saves me from having to take another guitar on the plane!).
I should also mention that I recently took posession of a Vigier Surfreter and Im currently trying to learn how to play it properly. My main tactic is to take it along to fusion gigs and just assume that I can play fretless this gung-ho (and possibly stupid) attitude normally kicks in after the second pint or so. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt but Im slowly figuring it all out.
 
Finally, have you a favourite YouTube clip of you playing among the zillion or so there are out there?
 
I dont know if its my favourite, but this Rotosound promo clip is not without its charms, I guess