Hi Steve, after to listening to KEYS TO ASCENSION I realized that your guitar parts, although truly excellent are so clean sounding. I sometimes wonder if you miss the warmth of analog recording. Do you think the vibration of the guitar strings along with the analog recording makes for a warmer sound? The ES175 sounds more subdued than usual and not as warm.....just some thoughts.....take care.

"Something sounds like what it sounds like. If we analyze a record in the way that we analyze CD we'd get nowhere, a record sounds like a heap of junk going round, swirling, changing speed, crackling in the needle, scratches, dust, God almighty, we've progressed so far! Now what we have is silence behind the music. Warmth is something that has to come from the way you play and I've heard some great music on CD like Roland Kirk and there's no lacking in warmth, so I don't think it's the system that's at fault. It did have a tendency like in the days of Asia and GTR to wind off a lot of funky bass that I like in the music and there's a tendency for the whole thing to become rather stereotyped in the bass end, but that was because bass players were replaced, they weren't there, it's a bit like the overheads in the drums weren't there, so you couldn't hear them, you couldn't EQ it so it was there. So it was quite conditioned but also people complained on classical music that it's not as warm and all that, well, it's either that or a whole lot of noise. I don't think the 175 was recorded in a more subdued way, the processed sound I used at the beginning of 'That, That Is' is a very strange sound, so I had every chance for that guitar sound to come through but it was the combination I wanted.

"I know when you're standing in the studio and you've got a whole bunch of mixes on analog and you've got a whole bunch of mixes on digital which one are you going to use? Digital. So analog's become a sort of safety backup which is not what it was intended to. But it's just such a tiresome question, tiresome in the sense in that it's been argued ever since CDs came out, and I don't really want to say much more about it because you got to either take or leave CDs. That goes for the other end; in a way what's the point of recording in analog if it's going to go on a CD? One could argue the other way around you see, so it's quite arguable, that what's the point of going to all the trouble recording it on analog, thinking that somehow that in itself is enough when in fact it's going to a digital medium anyway? I wax and wane on it; sometimes, yeah, I once played somebody in my studio the tape of THE YES ALBUM and they couldn't believe it was the thing they'd been listening to on a record, it had a much more hi-fi sound about it. So I regret records destroying the tape sound; the records, in my book, wrecked the sound that we made in the studio. So along comes CD, and I'm in seventh heaven, there's no hiss anymore, I can multitrack guitars with out all that schroosh going on, so I like digital. I miss a little softness, a little mellowness, but you can get the better dynamics. When you play quietly in digital there's no increase of noise."

From: Andrew Bulgin

You're obviously a very melodic player, which is one of the things I've always liked. Much of your career has been devoted to playing in bands with keyboard players. Do you think having all that harmonic foundation had a big effect on what you chose to play on a given song? I'm primarily a guitarist, but I've just acquired a rather cool polyphonic synthesizer with sequencer, and I can program lovely chord patterns with drum beats, and it has totally changed the way I approach my guitar playing. I don't have to play so many chords, because the keyboard provides the accompaniment. I can be much more melodic in my approach. Do you prefer playing with keyboardists live?

"I like playing on my own, that's a nice thing. I like playing with another person. I like playing in a band, I like playing with orchestra. I've got to have everything, if you did one thing it would be boring. So I like to stretch my limitations by playing with other people in other environments. I had a rock 'n' roll foundation, I could never understand anything about harmony though I tried to read books about it, I got jazz things about harmony and I just kind of went, 'I don't get this, I don't get this one little bit but I'm going to keep playing. So I have found my harmonic thing through experience."

From: Geoff Banks

Could you tell me if the Scharpach SKD you used on NOT NECESSARILY ACOUSTIC is a freely available guitar or one you had built specially for you. If it is commercially available, where would I start looking to buy one. Keep up the good work. PS. Bought HOMEBREW yesterday in Mexico City, and it's great.

"Anyone can order a Scharpach SKD and you can also order it with the same system I'm using."

From: Hanspeter Hess

I heard that Steve has worked with the Band Dream Theater. I'd like to know what they did together and when they did it. Is something of it released?

"I got a call from their label and they said, 'Why don't you come along and play with Dream Theatre, they want to play a Yes tune and you seem to be the guy around. Could you get Rick?' And I tried Rick but Rick couldn't do it, so next thing I'm rehearsing with them for two nights for an hour each night and then the third night they were playing at Ronnie Scott's for the video, in-house recording and all this kind of stuff going on. They played a whole lot of tunes, none of which that were written by Dream Theatre, and we played parts of 'Machine Messiah'. I think it actually was about ten minutes long. I think they're going to release the video as their tribute to all the people who affected them, whether it comes out or when I don't know."

From: Martin Witheford

After a few months of fruitless searching for a playable and collectable Lap Steel I was happily astounded to find a Gibson BR9 identical to yours in my local music store!! You don't quote a serial No. in your book and mine has no number so I presume they simply weren't issued with one. Is there any way to narrow down the year it was made? As far as I can see, mine is IDENTICAL to yours, the yellow colour is a bit paler, otherwise the same right down to the dodgy 50's TV knob controls. It has a GREAT tone!!

"Yes, the BR9's sound all right. Look in a book about Gibson guitars and serial numbers."

Also, you mention the possibility of marrying a Gretsch and a Gibson together in your book, and I wondered if you had heard the rumour that the huge black guitar with the Project-O-Sonic type switches that ROY ORBISON used to play was in fact a Gretsch Project-O-Sonic with a Gibson Super 400 neck!! A 'Gibetsch' if ever there was one!!

"I did notice that Roy Orbison had a guitar with a Gretsch guitar with a Gibson neck. I also thought that was pretty weird."

From: Johan Hammar

I was wondering how you got into the "rag-time" sort of approach you use in many of your pieces like "Clap" and "Ram". I find this style of guitar playing very fascinating as it tends to get me in a good mood when listening to it or playing it myself.

"I first heard that kind of guitar playing by Big Bill Broonzy and then Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, Scottie Moore, all those guys were playing picking guitars. I do it by holding a plectrum and picking with my second finger, and it's one or the nicest ways to play a guitar, it's really good fun. I was playing it just an hour ago."

From: Francois LeBrun

Hello Steve, at last I can have some kind of contact with you. First of all I want to thank you for having thrilled me since June 1971 when I first heard your guitar on "Yours is no Disgrace". Yes music has been since a very important thing in my life, and your guitars are one big third of it.

I have been wondering for years (and even decades now!) how you play those very fast licks; the ones I have in mind are those clear and fast guitar parts in the introduction of "Yours is no Disgrace", those fast scales in "Turn of the Century" (behind the "Was the sign" part), and the introduction of "The Order of the Universe" on ABWH; specially on this one, did you use some kind of sampling to record the very first guitar lick and have it repeated again and again during the (nearly 3 minutes) introduction? are all these played using the pick or in finger style arpeggios?

"All the things you mention there are played using a pick, and they're all just little sort of trademark styles of running around the guitar for little bits that I do. I think they're all slightly different."

In "The Steve Howe Guitar Collection" book, you mention the tuning you use on your Portuguese 12 string but I did not understand it because you mention the top string to be A flat below the guitar, what is the top string, what does that mean?

"There must be a mistake, [the book says] the top string should be A flat above the guitar, not below on the guitar. That's what the top string would be."

Generally, what gauge do you use on your twelve strings (acoustics, electrics, Portuguese)?

"I use gages 11 to 47, somewhere around that ballpark so it's kind of soft at the top and reasonably strong at the bottom."