INTERVIEW: Paul Gilbert

In the world of guitar heroes, Paul Gilbert is the everyman’s shred god. Vai has the alien freak thing down, Satch is the shiny Silver Surfer, and Yngwie is the neoclassical reincarnation of the roadrunner. Gilbert just comes across as a cool guy who loves to rock. With a career spanning classic shred band Racer X, through to Mr Big (admit it, you’ve strummed “To Be With You” on an acoustic guitar around the campfire at least once), covers projects with Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, and a solo career that’s seen him play everything from jangly guitar pop to all-out metal, with a few classical detours along the way, it’s surprising to note that 2006’s, “Get Out Of My Yard,” was his first all-instrumental album. In October of that year, Gilbert took some time out from defending his yard to tell me all about it.
PETER: Why did you wait until now to release an all-instrumental CD, and what inspired you to do it?
GILBERT: When I was a kid, all the coolest guitar players were in big rock bands, playing arenas, and being played on the radio. And all these bands had SINGERS. Eddie Van Halen with David Lee Roth, Jimmy Page with Robert Plant, Randy Rhoads with Ozzy, Alex Lifeson with Geddy Lee, Michael Schenker with Phil Mogg... and even Allan Holdsworth had John Wetton. I loved these guitarists, but I also loved their BANDS. So when flashy guitar playing started to become a niche that was aimed solely at an audience of guitar players, I wanted to stay away from it. From the beginning, my band RACER X had singing and songs. MR. BIG, of course, went even further in that direction. And as a solo artist I surprised everyone and went in a pop/punk direction rather than make the shred album that most people were expecting. But as much as I love rock and pop songs, I AM a guitar player. And after playing for 30 years, my guitar had some things to say. So I thought I would quit complaining about the guitar niche and heartily join in by making the coolest CD of pure guitar music I could dream up.
PETER: Did you stumble across any cool new techniques during the recording of the album?
GILBERT: The first song I recorded was the Haydn symphony. I used my guitar to replicate every instrument in the orchestra. I learned bassoon parts, oboe parts, cello, clarinet, flute, bass, viola, and of course, the main violin parts. The arpeggios and scale sequences in classical music are always a challenge to play on guitar, so I have no choice but to invent some unusual fingerings to make the notes happen. After recording the whole piece, I was definitely warmed up to do the rest of the record!
PETER: What happened to the song titles for the album that you originally posted on your website, that when strung together formed a paragraph about pesky kids in the yard?
GILBERT: Ahh! You saw that! I thought that would really cool at first, but I couldn't remember which song was which, so I went back to my original titles.
PETER: What guitars did you play on the album?
GILBERT: I used an Ibanez PGM300 with a Kahler tremolo on it. I haven't used a whammy in a long time and it was fun to try it again. You can hear that guitar on the solo in "The Curse of Castle Dragon". I also used it on the main parts of the Haydn symphony. I have a custom Ibanez doubleneck that I used for the opening "Get Out of My Yard" solo. One of the necks is strung with just 3 strings, all tuned to "E" in octaves, low, middle, and high. This is really good for playing arpeggios with hammer-ons and pull-offs. I used this tuning with a capo in a bunch of different positions to make the intro happen. I also have some vintage Ibanezes that I really like: a '79 hollowbody Artist, a '77 Deluxe 59'er Les Paul copy, and a '77 SG Custom copy. I bought these all on ebay. They are killer!
PETER: Will there be any new PGM Ibanez models in the near future?
GILBERT: I just got a new prototype with a narrower fingerboard and three gold covered humbuckers. It's really cool! For something to become a production model, I would really have to become my main guitar. And the current PGM301 is still hard to beat.
PETER: How did you get to be so damn good on the guitar? Do you practice a lot these days, or do you not need to any more?
GILBERT: Thank you the compliment. I don't practice ALL the time, but often enough. I definitely had to practice for the Haydn symphony!
PETER: What's the strangest place you've heard one of your songs played?
GILBERT: The first thing I can think of is... a few years ago I was doing a guitar clinic... I think it was in Kansas. A kid who worked at the music store picked me up from the airport, and as soon as we got in his car he turned on his stereo and starting listening to "The Jam". This the last song on my first solo album "King of Clubs". It's a 20 minute long guitar battle where the rhythm section basically never changes, and Bruce Bouillet and I just solo and solo and solo and solo. So, back the story... the song was about 17 minutes into it when he turned it on. That meant he had already made it that far. And then, 3 minutes later, the songs ended... and STARTED AGAIN. He had the thing in "loop" mode. 20 minutes of non-stop soloing was NOT ENOUGH for this kid. He needed it AGAIN. Insane.
PETER: Godzilla is tearing apart the city. You have time to save one guitar before he eats the rest. What guitar will it be?
GILBERT: At the moment, I really love my '79 Artist hollowbody. I haven't played hollowbodies much before but the thing just resonates so beautifully. Even at a low volume I get great feedback and sustain. Plus it's BIG and since I'm very tall it's nice to have a guitar that's more my size. Maybe, armed with this guitar, I could fight off Godzilla and preserve the rest of my guitar collection. I would certainly try.

GET OUT OF MY YARD is on Mascot Records
Click here to buy 'Get Out of My Yard' on CD.
Click here to buy the 'Get Out of My Yard' instructional DVD.
Click here to buy 'Silence Followed by a Deafening Roar' on CD.
Click here to buy the 'Silence Followed by a Deafening Roar Guitar Instructional DVD & Shred Annex.'

GEAR: All hail the Ibanez Soundtank DL5 Digital Delay!

I just dug out my old Ibanez Soundtank DL5 digital delay pedal. These came out some time in the 90s, and I remember a Guitar World review referring to them as "fat little potato bugs." The advertising campaign showed the pedals kitted out with tank tracks, charging over a hill, while such hardasses as Ministry's Mike Scaccia posed in full military regalia. Because nothing says 'trained for lethal combat' like plugging into a little plastic potato.

Anyway, my DL5 was a birthday present when I was about 15, which would mean that as of this past July I've had it for, gulp, half my life. Yipes. The pedal wasn't working any more (after it gave up the ghost I gave it to my baby son to bash around - knobs and footswitches aplenty for tiny hands and feet to learn coordination). I've been on a bit of a pedal spree lately - buying new ones, firing up old ones - so I took it apart to look for any loose solder joints to see what I could to do make it live again. I couldn't find anything, but I gave it a general clean-out, and now it miraculously works fine, though the switch requires a good hearty stomp to activate.

Now that I've played about a million delay units, I appreciate this one a lot more. It doesn't sound as warm as my MXR Carbon Copy, but it's a little soft around the edges compared to a Boss digital delay. The repeats sound slightly smoothed over, and when used with a good power supply it's very quiet. When used with a bad one, it sounds like the background noise on the Death Star.

Delay time is only 400ms, but that can be doubled with a simple mod if you care to get tweaky. Construction feels a little flimsy, and battery life is remarkably low, but despite these little niggles, I still really like it, and I've made a permanent place for it on my pedal board. I might put it in a true bypass loop just in case the switch gives me any further trouble, but as it is, it's a fun little pedal with great slap-back sounds. It's also really good for that Van Halen 'Cathedral' trick, where you hammer on notes while working the guitar's volume knob, and let the delay fill in notes in between the ones you're playing.

I've found a few helpful links to getting the most out of the DL5.

Here’s the schematic at
Experimentalists Anonymous.

Meanwhile at the fantastic DiscoFreq site there's a great article containing the mods for doubling the delay time, increasing the feedback level for near-infinite repeats, and fixing the intermittent switch.

FEATURE: Going Solo

Performing as a solo acoustic act can represent either an artistic breakthrough or the kiss of death. It’s undeniably difficult to stand up in front of a crowd with only an acoustic guitar to shield you from the glare of public opinion, able to hear every little comment or conversation from the audience. While some artists are right at home in this environment, others could be forgiven for scurrying for the hills. While it’s easy to slip into the trap of just strumming some chords and warbling along, there are some tricks you can use to make your solo acoustic performance more distinctive, sonically varied, and unique. Let’s look at a few of them.

The first thing to think about is what to play. Are you taking songs that were originally written on electric guitar, with thrashing power chords? Songs like this don’t tend to translate well into solo acoustic performance because the awesome power of a blazing 100 watt amp is such a big part of the sound, and playing the same part on an acoustic guitar can change a riff from “CHUGGA-CHUGGA-CHUG” to “dinka-dinka-dink.” Clever use of open strings and arpeggiation (breaking up a chord into one note at a time) can take an otherwise heavy riff and recast it with moody atmosphere that will service the song much more musically if you take a riff that’s not meant for an acoustic or clean sound and just play it verbatim.

Take, for example, the main riff of that good old standard, Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” For the song’s intro, Metallica took the same riff and moved it around a little, with some open strings and sustained notes, instead of just playing a clean toned version of the ultra distorted main version.

Another pitfall to avoid is the vigorous thrashing of chords, unless the song really needs it for dramatic emphasis. With the limited tonal palate of an acoustic guitar compared to a fully augmented rock band, dynamic control becomes one of your most important tools. One quite intuitive and great sounding technique is to break up a chord by strumming pairs of notes, or strumming only the bass note on the first beat of the bar, and all the remaining notes on subsequent beats. This opens up the arrangement a lot more and allows the audience to mentally fill in what the song might sound like with a full band. The idea is to treat the guitar as six individual voices in a choir – you can have them all sing the same melody in the same octave for dramatic emphasis, but an entire concert’s worth of that same sound can be a little bit of an onslaught. Breaking up a chord into groups of notes allows each section of the chord to breathe, and creates a more supportive bed for vocals.

Next, there’s guitar tone. Despite some great technical advances (like the D Tar Mama Bear acoustic preamp, Takamine’s CoolTube valve-driven onboard acoustic guitar preamp system, and various other analog and digital modelling technologies), a lot of players still just plug the guitar into the mixing desk and treat the audience to the unpleasant quackiness of piezo pickups. The problem with the pickups built into most acoustic guitars is that they transfer only the direct vibration of the string, but what we, the listeners, know as a true acoustic guitar sound also includes the effect of the sound reverberating inside the guitar body before leaping out of the sound hole. If you don’t have a dedicated acoustic processor, a little bit of this mysterious aural voodoo can be added with reverb and delay pedals. Dial the reverb to a ‘small room’ setting, set the effect mix to a ratio of about 75% dry signal and 25% reverb, then feed the reverb pedal into a delay set for a very quick single repeat of around 40-60 milliseconds, again mixed down relatively low, and with the treble of the repeat reduced, if your delay has a tone shaping feature. What you want to do is mimic the sound of a guitar string echoing only within the space of the guitar body, not an entire room. Then if you want to add traditional delay or reverb sounds, and have an extra available pedal or processor, the resulting echo or reverb will sound more like it’s being applied to a real acoustic guitar, instead of just repeating the trebly, hollow piezo sound.

Finally, the best acoustic performers I’ve seen make it feel like you’re sitting in their living room. They do this by being relaxed and displaying lots of personality and confidence, especially during between-song banter. The worst ones I’ve seen make you feel like you’re intruding on their private time, by mumbling or generally ignoring the audience (probably out of nerves, but still, this makes for a terrible entertainment experience).

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F.A.Q

1. Who are you?

I’m Peter Hodgson. I started playing guitar when I was about 8 years old, and I studied Professional Writing at the University of Canberra, while simultaneously undertaking a course in Freelance Journalism from the Australian College of Journalism. I’ve written for publications including BMA, Curio, Underdog Online, Beat, InPress, Rip It Up, Revolver, Drum Media, Urbane, The Brag, and probably a bunch more I’ve since forgotten about. These days I contribute reviews, interviews and a guitar lesson column to Mixdown Magazine, and I’m also a reviews contributor to Australian Guitar, and I do the occasional article for Australian Musician Magazine. Some of the articles on I Heart Guitar were written for Mixdown but have been expanded upon or otherwise tweaked for blogging purposes. Any views, comments, etc expressed herein are my own unless otherwise indicated, and do not represent the views of Mixdown, Australian Guitar, Australian Musician, or any other publication I work for or have worked for in the past.

2. Where can we hear you play?

http://www.myspace.com/peterhodgson and http://www.youtube.com/iheartguitarblog

3. Do you make any money from this site?

A little bit, a couple of bucks here and there from Google Adsense ads and affiliate commissions. I also have site sponsors from time to time (hi Italia Leather Straps!). But I still have to work full time. I'd love to do the blog for a living some day. CLICK HERE if you're interested in advertising on the site.

4. Can you interview me/review my CD?

Sure. Email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com and tell me about your band and any relevant releases/gigs etc. It helps if you have a commercially available recording, even if you’re only selling it through your own website, but I’ll occasionally highlight guitarists I find on Myspace, YouTube, etc who might not have a CD available. If this is you, get in touch.

5. Who's mentioned I Heart Guitar?

Premier Guitar
Tech - What Is Twitter? (May 2009) - Perhaps the most interesting reads, however, are the many guitar bloggers on Twitter. Bloggers like I Heart Guitar’s Peter Hodgson and Guitar Noize’s Jon Bloomer both post regularly, from what they’re listing to at the moment to guitar news and everything in between.

Twitter Map (July 2009)

Guitar Edge
Article on I Heart Guitar - This guitar blog maintained by Peter Hodgson is a rapidly growing site, thanks in large part to his prolific yet engaging Twitter presence. Updated daily with industry news, press releases, new gear announcements, and occasional interviews, it’s readily apparent that Hodgson truly does “heart guitar.”

While most of the posts are press releases for new gear, Hodgson is as current on it as anyone out there, even beating a few more established “corporate” guitar sites to the punch on many of them. He’s also secured some pretty big names for interviews, including recent chats with Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis (June 29) and Chickenfoot’s Joe Satriani (June 16).

Jemsite Blog
We Heart Hodgson (July 2009) - Some great news came my way the other day. Peter Hodgson, the hip guitarist who writes the I Heart Guitar blog, is being featured on DiMarzio Inc., maker of some of the best guitar pickups in the world. They're using clips of his guitar playing on their website to showcase their John Petrucci (Dream Theater) signature pickups, the Crunch Lab 7 and LiquFire 7.

Gear-Vault
Top Guitars Blogs - iheartguitar is making waves not only online, but in print. This blog is pure professionalism. His content is very well written and the writer (Peter) flows with knowledge, and his website’s name [iheartguitar] is the perfect name for Peter, because he truly does love guitars. Read his blog and you’ll quickly see how passionate he really is. Keep up the good work Peter!

DiMarzio.com