INSTRUMENTAL INQUISITION!
Guitar instrumentals have supplied some of music’s most evocative moments. Jason Sidwell asks top guitarists for their take on this iconic movement. This month: the US jazz-soul guitarist whose new album is rich and grooving.
GT: What is it about guitar instrumentals that appeals to you?
DW: I believe the guitar is the perfect bridge between all of the instruments. It’s a melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic vehicle. Russell Malone describes it as a small orchestra in your hands. It’s a headache to learn to play well, but when played well, there’s nothing like it.
GT: What can an instrumental provide a listener that a vocal song can’t?
DW: An instrumental can reach our subconscious in a way the spoken word cannot. We spend a ton of time dealing with spoken language. I think our subconscious remains just below the surface, and requires an absence of our everyday stimuli to bring it to the surface. Think about film scores. Our eyes are distracted, so film composers are able to get way more experimental than most instrumental performers.
GT: Any tendencies with instrumentals that you aim to embrace or avoid?
DW: With instrumental tunes that I play, I’m looking to tell some kind of story every time. Depending on how the song is written, I’m looking for some kind of conversational aspect of improvisation. The one thing I want to avoid is any kind of cliché or shtick. That’s kind of a pet peeve for me. I spent decades honing my craft, and the last thing I want to bring to the stage is something either corny or contrived.
GT: Is a typical song structure of intro, verse, chorus, middle eight, etc, always relevant for constructing an instrumental?
DW: I wouldn’t say it’s always necessary to have this formula for any song, not just an instrumental. And if we also take world music into account, there are infinite ways to tell a story.
GT: How useful is studying a vocalist's approach for creating guitar melodies?
DW: I believe it’s absolutely necessary to study a vocalist’s approach for any melody. I think singing is how we were able to discover melody. So I encourage all of my guitar students to sing, even when they’re not gifted vocalists.
GT: How do you start writing one; is there a typical approach or inspiration?
DW: I usually try to lock onto some type of theme. The theme can be a melodic idea, a groove, a chord progression, etc. My whole process is theme and variation. I build everything around some kind of theme.
GT: What do you aim for when your performance is centre stage as it is when performing an instrumental?
DW: Mostly I aim to create enough interest so that the listener never checks out. That can be achieved through some type of interaction with the band members or tension and release in the form of the song.
