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From:
Tom Mackey
Could you tell us something about
the specific guitars you used on the new songs from KEYS TO ASCENSION?
"'Be the One': two guitars. I
did the backing track with the Steinberger 12-string electric
guitar, then I did the lead guitar on top of that with the 6-string
Steinberger guitar. 'That, That Is' was a bit more complicated;
it starts with the Kohono Spanish guitar and then the Telecaster
played the backing track to the whole song. The Spanish guitar
gets multi-tracked in two-part harmony, and the Telecaster plays
the third part harmony usually, because that was what playing
on the original track. So those two guitars do the pretty part,
then the 'mean' part is the Telecaster for most of the time. The
a few other acoustics appear: the 12-string Martin comes in at
a sort of 'Breakdown' section, and the 175 features all of the
end of the song when the guitar solo starts, by the time you get
to the reprise of the whole song, which comes back rocking again.
In between I don't think there's a lot else, there might be some
bits of 175. So 175, Kohono, Telecaster."
What kind of sounds were you looking
for?
"I was looking for a definite
sort of sound for each track and that's why the Steinbergers all
got used on that track and I suppose that 'That, That Is' is an
opportunity to use any kind of texture that I want, really. It's
really mainly about mixing the textures."
Was your selection of guitars pre-determined
by the musical compositions already in place and/or did you transform/challenge
the music by choosing a particular instrument?
"A bit or each really; I have
ideas about what guitar sounds I hear when I first hear the song
and I go with that, and other times I fumble around on one guitar
and then change the whole thing later; change the sounds here
and there, add sounds, so it's kind of a development really, more
than a concept although what I do is conceptualize by the limitations
I have and the parameters I can reach."
When you returned to the band did
you feel any obligation to sound "Yes-like" or is this
new phase an extension of your recent playing (outside of Yes)?
"Once again a bit of both. I thought
there had to be traditional, identifiable real sounds to Yes,
not so reliant on synthesis but sort of like the sound of guitars,
for instance, and of course Rick playing piano sometimes and bringing
back the real use of the virtuoso style of those sorts of things.
But on the other hand one doesn't want to stay in the same puddle
all the time so 'Be the One' was an opportunity to use late 80s
guitars and add a sort of a bit if different sound.
From:
Yves-Tom Gaudet
My name is Sylvain. I met you in
Quebec city at le Bar D`auteuil two years ago (I was the guy who
got your Martin's strings when every music stores where closed).
Thanks for the good show. As I remember you had problems with you
back. I hope everything is fine now.
"The back problem I had somewhere
or the other in Quebec was a very temporary couple of nights and
was all sorted out with a chiropractor."
Can you give some tricks about guitarist's
health problems like back problems and blisters on your fingers
and other things that guitarists usually have when they're on tour?
"That's really going to come out
in a forthcoming book called 'The Guitarist's Survival Kit' by
Steve Howe. There are a lot of things you can do but it's more
of a total approach then just say, taking a tablet, it's more
about how you hold yourself, how you position yourself, there's
a lot to do with diet and a lot to do with habits. Blisters on
fingers, you should never get those, you just play, you play and
they hard, and when the blisters get blistery then that means
the next thing they do is get hard, so that's not really a problem.
But obviously being on a tour is a bit of a strain so you have
to organize yourself so you have time for everything and you can
do what you're supposed to do without incredible stress, and that's
like preparation, mental preparation. So that's a very big question,
a very interesting question, but covered in the forthcoming shorthand
book on the guide to being a guitarist."
I was wondering if you could do
a Hot Licks guitar video lesson that could be called "Roots"
and show where your kind of playing comes from (a bit like you did
for your acoustic show) like the influence of Jim hall, West Montgomery,
Chet Atkins, and then show how you did apply them on Yes music or
your own with an example like the intro of Siberian Khatru or the
solo on I've seen all good people etc...It would be very educational.
It would be a little "voyage" in the guitar's story through
your eyes. It would be a classic! Merci et aurevoir!
"I'm working to build up the necessary
ingredients for a CD ROM that will cover Yes music, and you'll
be able to see me play stuff, and it will be a little bit more
modern than the Hot Licks casual approach, I think it's going
to be a bit more imaginative, or I hope. It will be orientated
towards Yes parts, Yes licks and stuff like that."
From:
Stéphane Bertrand
After many years looking for the
particular guitar you use in "Your Move" and "Wonderous
Stories", I finally got one in 1993 (Banduria). I'm not sure
about the tuning I set. Do you use the same tuning for both songs
and what is exactly this tuning.
"I call it a Portuguese guitar,
and the tuning I use is two D strings tuned to E, two A strings
tuned to B, two D strings tuned to E again, something like two
.16s for a high B, and then E which will be two .12s, then the
top string is in A flat, which has to be an .008 gauge tuned to
A flat. I do use the same tunings on both songs, both songs are
based around D or E."
Could you tell me more about the
incredible riff you play on the first singing part of "Sound
Chaser".
"That's the kind of riff I like
to write. It's a bit like 'Pennants' really, those kind of boogie
riffs. The thing was it was a collision there of lots of ideas,
an exciting collision of vocal parts and guitar riffs, bass, and
rhythm and all that. So what can I say about it; if you like it,
good."
From:
Ray Colon
Some of your best work was done
on TALES.
"Thank you very much."
What specific compression and distortion
units did you use on the recordings for the 6 strings?
"Most of the compression and limiters
in the studio and would have be Urei; in those days there wasn't
anything else other than Uries, they were American and Advision
Studios had them and Barry Morgan Studios, so it was really about
the kind of sound you were trying to compress so when I was using
an L5 I used a rock n' roll compression on it, it gave an interesting
sound. "
How did you configure your sitar
controls (the 6 buttons on the sitar)?
"I had the drone strings off unless
I was going to play them and I usually have a bit less of the
back pickup than the front pickup."
From: Scott
K. McGregor
I would like to ask Steve first
how was he approached to appear on the Animal Logic project a while
back and secondly what it was like to work with the likes of Stanley
Clarke.
"I was asked by Miles Copeland
to do two days session work for Animal Logic. Stuart [Copeland]
was there all the time and Stuart popped in a few times and I
did play on considerable amounts of the album, I was really only
planning to play on two tracks but I played on five, I think,
but I still haven't gotten a copy of the album, I don't know why!"
I would also be interested to know
if he is a fan of Return to Forever, a fusion band that Stanley
Clarke once played with.
"Well, I'm a fan of Stanley Clark,
but fusion...John McLaughlin, yeah, but everyone else, no. I think
it was because really I was a jazz purist, I was into Barney Kessel
and Wes Montgomery, and I liked that era of guitarist, and I like
guitarists who always sound like they've got a little bit of Charlie
Christian in them, otherwise I don't like them, so by the time
you get a chorused guitar with no identity and a whole lot of
jamming, no, to me, it didn't reach me. That was the age where
the guitar had to be chorused and I never did like single line
chorused guitars very much. But musically also I found that the
beating of rock and jazz together was only done well by Gil Evans,
or Miles Davis, or certain other people who pulled it off. It's
not an easy thing to do."
From:
Paul Stroud
For the 12 string guitar of "Turn
of the Century" (GFTO version) were the top E and B strings
in pairs, or did you remove one from each pair (making it effectively
a 10 string guitar)? I can not detect any 'double notes' on these
strings, or any dissonant ringing associated with a 12 string, even
when you give it some welly at the end of the song. I, myself, can
pick out single strings lower down (eg. just before "I'm sure
we know..."), but am too ham fisted to do this on the top two
pairs."
"The only time I play a 12-string
on 'Turn of the Century' is at the end and it's just normal tuning.
The main guitar is a 6-string guitar and the 12 string is only
played at the end for the solo, the end cadenza."
From:
Misha & Dave
How did you get the solo sound on
the "She Gives Me Love" section of "Quartet"
on ABWH? It has this weird 'popping' kind of sound that I
like.
"That sound is a Stratocaster
into a Roland GP8 on setting #16. It wasn't vamping, it was a
very compressed sound."
From: Mike
Garrett
How long does it usually take you
to decide on a particular guitar and sound for a piece of music?
"Deciding on what guitar I play
is based guitar on it,' I usually do stuck I playon an instinct
about whether I suddenly think, 'I'll play this anything on it
think about and then change it later."that, and if I'm
Is it accurate to say that you have
a purist attitude toward mixing? I noticed that a lot of your solo
records differ significantly from things like Asia and Union in
that they are not so awash in reverb. With that in mind I wondered
what you thought of the extremely bass-heavy mix of KEY'S TO
ASCENSION's new studio tracks. The kick drum packs a mighty
punch on that CD!
"I like a natural sound, I suppose
like Ken Scott, or Gary Langham, I mean the group sounds like
a group, so in that way, yeah, I'm a sort of purist. [The bass]
basically was a return for Yes to having the bass up because what
Chris played was so worth hearing, we had it up loud. That was
the way we got the sound in the 70s, we had the bass as a musical
instrument, not a just a pad doing the root. So it was a return
to that but I don't know whether the bass drum was unnecessarily
heavy, it might have been because it was mixed by an American,
and in England we are a bit more reserved."
Back in the early days of Yes, video
always seemed to show you guys playing and recording together in
one take. Did you indeed do this or did you go back and re-record
guitars. How many guitar tracks did you tend to use?
"Very often it was three people
out there at once, usually me, Chris, and Bill or Alan, rarely
it was Rick and Jon, and if I was sitting out because I didn't
have a part or Rick put a more important part then he would play
and I wouldn't which was fun. I keep a mixture of always trying
to keep original guitars somewhere in the track doing something
and other times I would completely would change. Like DRAMA, I
changed every guitar on the whole album is overdubbed just because
I was going for far more distinction in the sounds and maybe I
wasn't so happy with the basic guitar. I don't think 'Tempus Fugit',
some of that, is original guitar."
My understanding is you only had
16 or 24 tracks for those early albums. "Yesstories" seems
to indicate Chris almost always re-recorded his bass as overdubs
after the fact. Now, with modern recording technology, do you tend
to use more tracks or do more recording separately from the group
(Yes or otherwise)? If so, do you play with them to get scratch
tracks down?
"If you get it right it doesn't
matter whether you've got three tracks or 108, loosely when you
overdub you might fix things. You might try to overdub a whole
new bass on something but there again you might say at the end
of the day it's not as good as the live one so I would just insert
little bits to fix those bits you didn't like, so you do it every
single which-way, there's no pattern, there's no strategy, it's
just that you do what you have to do and then you sort it out
later if needs be."
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