CG-MayJun16-ISSUU

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