The crossroads lorne lofsky’s harmonics

5 min read

This month John Wheatcroft looks at the incredible natural and false harmonic techniques of this Canadian jazz virtuoso, with help from British guitarist Nigel Price.

VIDEO

Lorne Lofsky is a phenomenal jazz guitarist with a glittering career spanning over 40 years. Highlights include working with legends such as Oscar Peterson, Chet Baker and Ray Brown, and for many years Lorne had a successful quartet with another amazing Canadian guitar virtuoso, the great Ed Bickert. An in-demand educator, Lofsky has also enjoyed an equally successful parallel career teaching at various respected institutions, hosting masterclasses across the globe and in recent years moving into online teaching and mentoring. Along with an extensive resume as a live performer, Lorne has an equally impressive portfolio of recordings as sideman, collaborator and solo artist. It’s our great pleasure to feature his video interview, alongside another incredible jazz guitarist and long-time friend of GT, Nigel Price. This coincides with a run of live dates in the UK for this pair of exquisite exponents - visit Nigel’s website for more details.

TECHNIQUE FOCUS

Consider your options

When approaching any physical challenge on guitar, it’s a good idea to consider your options from a technique perspective. As you can see from the video footage, Lorne articulates these natural and artificial harmonic ideas beautifully with a combination of thumb-pick and fingers, with nails on the picking hand. This is also the same approach adopted by the great Lenny Breau. One big advantage to this option is that you now have every finger available. If you’re usually a plectrum based player, then this might be a considerable adjustment to your regular technique, so you could choose to go the ‘hybrid’ picking route, adopting a combination of pick and fingers, although the first finger of the picking hand is now tied up with holding the pick along with the thumb. Of course, you could ditch the pick altogether and use just fingers and thumb, although volume and clarity might now be an issue, especially with the bass notes. As always, experimentation is the key when trying new techniques. Consider how each new technical concept, approach or idea fits in with all the other things you already use when you play in your own personal style and in keeping with any musical scenario in which you might find yourself, such as a solo, duo or ensemble

In this first video (a second is in the next issue), Nigel quizzes Lorne on his use of both natural and artificial harmonics, inspired by the legendary Lenny Breau. As Lorne states, “Lenny Breau got it from Chet Atkins and then took it to the other end of the universe. I guess maybe I’ve added a couple of other things.” Needless to say, he certainly has and over the course of this video Lorne showcases a huge variety of natural and artificial h

This article is from...

Guitar Techniques Magazine

20 September 2023

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