CG-MayJun16-ISSUU
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care, just play that song I really like”. Which is<br />
way cool, but for us musicians, and especially<br />
us guitar players, these details determine so<br />
much in our life… and they determine how we<br />
deliver the goods to our fans. So why wouldn’t<br />
we be obsessed with them and want to talk<br />
about them? And why wouldn’t we need a safe<br />
place to exchange all the information about it,<br />
where we leave no stone unturned, and no one<br />
can ever feel embarrassed to ask any technical<br />
question? Nor would any G4 star feel put out to<br />
be asked or to reveal such a thing cause that’s<br />
exactly what we’re there for? We’re there to<br />
reveal everything and the students are there to<br />
ask everything as well. These are the things that<br />
make the G4 Experience so uniquely different.<br />
In a way, explaining it gives you the reason I did<br />
it. Once you say it out loud, you go of course,<br />
why wouldn’t we all want a place like that?<br />
<strong>CG</strong> Does the G4 Experience fulfill a need in you<br />
to teach?<br />
JS If you go back twenty five years, thirty years,<br />
being interviewed by a guitar magazine meant<br />
fielding very serious questions about music and<br />
non gear-related technique. Today, you never<br />
get that question about the unusual harmonic<br />
movement in a chord progression - never.<br />
This leaves a bit of a disconnect between the<br />
person who’s doing it and the students who<br />
want to figure out how to do it like me - or in<br />
this case Guthrie Govan, Alex Skolnick, Eric<br />
Johnson or Steve Vai. But these questions<br />
don’t get answered by the press anymore, and<br />
that exchange for me I miss–I miss that a lot.<br />
It’s slightly cathartic in a good way to finally<br />
get back into an environment where people<br />
are asking me the heavy, important questions<br />
about melodic structure, harmonic movement<br />
and how it is applied on the instrument and<br />
what kind of gear I use to get it done… without<br />
framing it in a commercial way. Which is kind<br />
of like the way the press often does things<br />
now, because the celebrity has become the<br />
important thing, not actually the essence of the<br />
music.<br />
<strong>CG</strong> Why do you prefer to call the I and vi-<br />
Modes Major and<br />
Minor vs. Ionian<br />
and Aeolian?<br />
JS I was taught<br />
in school that<br />
those names were<br />
postulated by a<br />
Swiss theorist<br />
hundreds of<br />
years ago. When<br />
I made sure that I never<br />
applied some of those<br />
weaknesses I accrued<br />
during periods of being a<br />
well-behaved professional<br />
musician, which is to get<br />
in line with everybody else<br />
and do what is expected.<br />
they were created and used<br />
originally, they weren’t referred<br />
to by those names, so those<br />
names were made up at some<br />
point. When you say Ionian to<br />
a guitar player, nine times out<br />
of ten they’re like, “What?” If<br />
you’re saying, “Major scale”<br />
they go, “Oh yeah, I know<br />
that”. So it’s just a question of<br />
convenience to use the term<br />
you know is going to be a<br />
direct hit.<br />
<strong>CG</strong> Not of This Earth is kind of a<br />
quintessential statement about<br />
pitch axis and interpretation of<br />
the chords harmonically. Was<br />
that a pivotal composition for<br />
you in terms of being able to<br />
express the theory that you’d been studying<br />
and teaching for so many years, and being able<br />
to apply it in a way that was tangible musically?<br />
JS Absolutely, it starts off bam-bam-bam,<br />
it says it right there in the first three chords.<br />
The main shocking message from the chord<br />
progression hits you right at the top with<br />
nobody else in there. The arrangement is also<br />
very stark because I felt that there is so much<br />
music that is very often weak and cloaked in<br />
ridiculous amounts of arrangement. Something<br />
happens when you strip away the idea that<br />
you’re seeking commercial acceptance, and<br />
you say to yourself, “What would I do, if I was<br />
somebody else who wasn’t looking for that hit<br />
song, how would I go about writing something?”<br />
This thought process was important after I<br />
started writing the body<br />
of music that became<br />
that album. I made sure<br />
that I never applied some<br />
of those weaknesses I<br />
accrued during periods<br />
of being a well-behaved<br />
professional musician,<br />
which is to get in line<br />
with everybody else and<br />
do what is expected.<br />
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22 May June 2016<br />
CollectibleGuitar.com