Interview with Barrett Tagliarino
Feb. 28, 2009
Questions by Jenn, the Guitar Masterclass forum members, and Paul Gilbert
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General
Do you come from a musical family or background?
There were instruments at my grandparent’s house, and Grandpa Tag played a bit of guitar & mandolin, but in my immediate family I was the only one who got serious about playing anything. For some reason my uncle Lee Hundley (and this is a shout-out to him!) decided to help me out when I started complaining about needing an electric guitar to bend strings on, so he took me downtown to a pawnshop and we bought a little no-name sunburst and a Univox amp. I put in some long hours on that guitar, plinking away unplugged long into the night, trying not to get caught playing when I should have been doing homework or sleeping.
My parents carted me to some early lessons ($3 a week!), and my dad paid for my first serious electric: a Daphne Blue 1966 Fender Mustang. It was very cool and I wish I still had it, but I sold it to pay for the black ‘64 Stratocaster that I still play today.
When did you decide to focus on music as a career, and did that come about naturally, or was it a conscious choice to move from one level to the next? When did you realize that music would be viable and successful for yourself?
It was and STILL is sort of a bad idea financially! I just loved it so much I couldn’t stand to do anything else.
I first rejected a musical career after some limited attempts to make money at it early on, and I kept trying to put the idea out of my mind. After high school I enrolled in biology and chemistry classes at Indiana University with the goal of becoming a dentist. But it turns out I.U. is a hotbed of music and art, so very soon I was playing in a couple of bands and teaching at the local store on the weekends.
It was the same as I’d done at home: staying up all night playing when I should have been studying, except now I was PAYING for the classes I was sleeping through. So I gave in and decided to make music my career. My problem then was that I was unqualified to enroll in the music school there because I couldn’t read, couldn’t sing, and knew no theory. All I had was a rock and blues guitar vocabulary. Luckily there was adult education to help me catch up. I enrolled at Musician’s Institute in 1984, the same year as Paul Gilbert and Jimmy Herring.
Do you have a favorite genre or genres to play or express yourself in?
I’ll get temporarily obsessed by a player or a style of music for a while, but I always go back to the rockin’ Zeppelin when I want to have a good time or need inspiration. Jimmy Page was my first guitar hero, so like my idol I worked on country, blues, and rockabilly. Those kinds of gigs helped me stay in business for years.
Generally music from the late 60s through the 70s inspires me the most. (Not just coincidence it was when I was growing up and learning to play, too.)
The studios were exploring the possibilities of multitrack recording, the guitars, amps, and pedals were cool, and the microphones and boards were all really good analog designs. That spawned some incredible creativity.
I also studied jazz pretty seriously for a while. It is a good foundation for understanding chords, melody, and song structure – all that boring stuff we should never mention in an interview!
Musically, do you feel you have improved in any area or areas within the past month?
Considering that’s about 0.25% of the total time I’ve been playing, you’d think the answer would be “no.” But having PG and Scott Henderson play on my record has inspired me to learn their approaches. I transcribed their parts and learned their licks. From Paul, I’m learning how to play faster without sacrificing feel. I was always so concerned with timing and beat divisions that when I played fast stuff it might come out sounding kind of mechanical. But I have to practice what I preach in front of my students. When they play fast and out of time, it can be disastrous, because they just totally go off the rails and can’t get back in the groove without a complete mental reset.
Of course Paul can just ramp up, rip at an insane speed without worrying about the division, then transition back down and wind up back in the pocket, all in the space of two bars. It’s great. I’m working on that here in the safety of my home.
With Scott Henderson, and his solo is one I’m copping now, there’s an approach to position shifting that’s totally different from the way I play. When I move around the neck at high speeds I keep one finger connected to the fretboard at all times as I go from one position to the next. You can see it on the Dust Commander video. It’s worked well with pentatonic scales, but it is limiting me for the others.
Scott jumps between positions all the time, does it so smoothly you can barely tell it’s happening, and it can be with any kind of scale or lick: pentatonic, altered, diminished, blues, etc.
It always feels like you’re getting worse when you try new stuff but this feeling is part of the learning process. It is at those times that you’re really getting better, not after you’ve learned something and are enjoying it. That is a plateau.
In what areas are you currently working?
Right now I’m preparing to play the songs on Throttle Twister in a trio format so I can go do some clinics this spring. I’ll either play with guys who are teaching at the schools I plan to visit, or play to the backing tracks.
I had a rack with a switching system and a drawerful of pedals and rackmount effects, but I took it apart during the recording so I could use the pedals one at a time. On this CD I also used some pedals that I wasn’t using before, so now’s a good time to totally rethink the whole rig. I’m trying to make it easier to carry!
Composition
How important is note choice to you? Are you exceptionally picky about your note choice?
It’s critically important. There’s almost always one note that feels better than all the others in a particular spot. Some of the choice is based on theory, but after a certain point you have to rely on your ear, and it helps if your ear is trained to make the distinction.
When you are designing an album, how do you decide which songs go in what order?
It can be like coming up with a setlist for a gig. Put a rocker up front that is catchy and easy to follow. Slam right into another one that may be a little more involved. The third song should still be high-energy, but a different feel like a shuffle or funk groove. Then you can give the audience a break, bringing it down with a slow tune, and start building up again. You can learn this by experimenting with set lists and watching the crowd response. After a while you get a feel for what will go over.
How do you come up with the titles for some of the songs?
In the transcription book for Throttle Twister there are little blurbs about the equipment used on each song, and if the title is of interest, I tell what it means or how I came up with it. I have a general idea about the song as I’m writing it, and I will make that the rough working title until I find the real one. I make the working title bad on purpose so I know it will change when the song is fully developed.
For example, “Throttle Twister” was just called “Satch-Purple” at first because I wanted a Satriani-style melody over a 70’s rock groove like “Highway Star” or “Space Truckin’.” At the end of the project, while the songs were being mixed down, I spent about a month coming up with all the titles and the idea for the design. I think the right title can do lots of important things, like set up an expectation for what you’re about to hear, put you in the right mood to hear it, and paint a little mental picture that helps you remember the song if you like it. With no lyrics, they’re all you really get to say in an instrumental, at least on the verbal side.
Could you talk a little bit about your songwriting process?
I often transcribe other music on the same day as I write. It keeps my standard up to a professional level and it is very inspiring. I don’t want to sit there looking at a blank page trying to pull inspiration out of thin air. If there are no new ideas in my mind, it’s better to be doing something productive with my time that WILL result in some new ideas.
Often I’d just imagine what it would sound like if one of my guitar heroes got to play with a different band. What if Stevie Ray Vaughan had the chance to play with Led Zeppelin for a tour, like he did with Bowie? The result of that was “Devil’s House Party.” It starts off like an uptempo version of “How Many More Times” with a melody like Stevie’s “Scuttle Buttin’,” then hits really hard in the bridge like “Whole Lotta Love” or “Out on the Tiles.” It was really fun to write.
When that idea worked out to my liking, I kept it up. It’s a good way to work if you already have a lot of influences under your belt. What if ZZ Top did a record with Eric Johnson? I’d buy it! So I set out to write a song that reflected that.
The funny thing is, people who know me hear these songs and they say, “Uh-uh. It sounds just like YOU, man. Now can you show me how to do that string-skipping thing in there?”
Theory & Technique
Can you talk a little about the harmonic minor mode’s characteristics, and when you would use this? What about the melodic minor modes? Is there a right way to “think” about modes?
You can hear almost exclusive use of the Phrygian Dominant mode of Harmonic Minor on “Welcome Your Overlords” in one of its most obvious applications: just play G harmonic minor over a static D5 harmony, resolving your phrases to the pitch D.
Learning about the modes is the sort of topic I’d write about in a book after hours of careful consideration. They are not hard, but there are several ways to get modes wrong, and you need some prerequisites beforehand. Every student I taught them to (and that’d be hundreds of students) has required a full hour of explanation and interactive demonstration to start, a week of hands-on practice, and at least one more hour follow-up lesson to get the applications down for the major modes only. The melodic minor modes will also take you at least that much work, if you have the desire. We’d have to make this interview quite a bit longer, and ideally anyone trying to apply it would need to be quizzed to make sure he or she is doing it right.
Of the various techniques, pick any – legato, two handed stuff, what are you the most comfortable with? Your favorite examples of these techniques are found (where) on Throttle Twister?
I don’t think about it much anymore, but people single out for comment my use of the pick and fingers at the same time to play rhythm parts and melodies on top of chords like on “In the Fine Texas Tradition.”
I noticed I used more legato lines than usual on this CD. “Wrecked on the Sirens’ Rocks” has a lot of that. With the Jackson Soloist I was playing and the Dumble amp I was playing through, it just sounded best to lay off the picking and let the amp do the work.
Is there some sort of rule, in guitar instrumental music, that the guitarist must play at least 8 measures as fast as they possibly can?
There’s an element of sport in this style of guitar playing, which is fun. If you take it to your limit once or twice per album, I think it is cool. But if the shredding is used as a substitute for coming up with a melodic idea, I personally don’t care for it.
If you’ve already established a melody, the speedy stuff can help take the song somewhere. You might need that, because there are no vocals to move things along. You don’t want to have a different melody for each verse, but you can add to the one you have, so more notes creep in. Then when the solo comes up, hey, you already know what the guitar sounded like playing the melody, so you need even more changes of texture, and one of them involves speed.
Speaking of theory and transcription, what does rubato mean?
“Rubato” is Italian for “robbed.” Precisely it means that you may add time to a note value by stealing from another one. When you play rubato you can slow down and speed up wherever it will make the music more dramatic, but take approximately the same amount of time to play a piece as if you followed the written tempo.
In practice, it means you can play freely and take as much time as necessary. Uh-oh! This is MORE boring music stuff!
Regarding Throttle Twister
How long did it take you to write the material for Throttle Twister?
All the songs were new except “In the Fine Texas Tradition.” I set aside three months to write all the songs, and kept to a strict schedule.
Are there any parts of the album you felt were serious challenges to either compose, or execute? Did you move out of your comfort zone when you were composing or recording the album?
Yes. Besides wanting this CD to have better tones and a higher, more expensive production value, I wanted a whole CD of songs that were all basically the same style and that fit together to make one satisfying listening experience.
Throttle Twister is straight hard rock with a blues influence here and there. There is no jazz, no country, no Latin, and not a lot of difficult chord changes.
There are no crazy odd meters, and I don’t turn the beat around like I did on Moe’s Art. One song on Moe’s Art modulates from 7/4 to a 5/4 waltz, then to 15/8 grouped into 2-2-2-3-3-3, with a measure of 13/8 at the end of the phrase. It’s very cool, but it probably does go over most non-musicians’ heads.
When I made that CD I was doing all kinds of experimentation, and if you are into that, Moe’s Art is a bonanza.
But I did not want to do that this time. I wanted to hit right in the gut. To do that I had to get in a mindset that the album was going to sound more like a jam on some rocking songs than a doctoral recital of Stravinsky on guitar.
So I forced myself to work fast: set up a groove, write a form, write chord progressions, write a melody, come up with riffs to set them up, get the solo ideas ready, and get a song ready to record every two weeks. That way when I started writing the next tune, it sounded like it belonged on the same album with the others. If you take a long time to write an album (like I did with Moe’s Art), it is harder to make all the songs hang together so they sound like they really belong on the same CD. Even so there were several songs I decided to leave off of Throttle Twister because they were too different from the others.
How did you arrive at the decision to get Scott Henderson and Paul Gilbert involved?
I had gotten to know Paul because a mutual friend recommended he see me for lessons. One of the things Paul wanted to learn about was a 13sus4 chord that was on some Jeff Beck and Chaka Khan CDs he brought over. Paul was interested in how this chord was used compositionally and what you might play over it, things like that. There’s no 3rd in it so you can use it more than one way.
When I asked Paul if he’d like to play on a track for me, he said yes, and somewhat jokingly requested that he get to play over as many 13sus4 chords as possible. I knew it wasn’t really a requirement, but I found a place to stick a whole series of them in a song, “Den of Vipers,” and it sounded pretty cool. I let him hear all the tunes as I was writing, and he wanted either “Den of Vipers,” or “Healer,” because it also had some interesting chord changes.
“Den of Vipers” was one of the songs I decided not to include on this CD. Right now I’m planning to make it a bonus track for people who buy the CD and want to hear more. It’s mixed, but not mastered yet. Paul wound up with “Healer” and really tore it up. Great job.
I knew Scott because we taught at the same place for years, have a lot of friends in common, and I’ve gone to see him play many times. I had him in mind while I was writing “Devil’s House Party,” though as with Paul I would have been happy to let him pick any tune he wanted. Scott’s a great blues player, but besides all his Hendrixy vocabulary he can incorporate jazz ideas without losing the vibe. I intentionally wrote a blues progression that hangs out on the V chord (Bb7 in the key of Eb) for a long time, eight measures, because I wanted to hear him do this diminished stuff that he’s been freaking everybody out with for years. He did not disappoint!
Scott has been really studying Jeff Beck’s sound lately, and you can hear it on this recording. The tone is huge. His Suhr strat is plugged into a Maxon VOP-9 pedal, then into his Suhr-modded Marshall plexi head. (It was so amazing I had to order the same pedal. Now if I just rob a bank I can go get the same amp too.) He reamped his solo into a (real, tape) Echoplex and gave me both files to mix into the recording. Because he recorded at his house, I asked him to leave spaces in between his licks so I could “trade” with him when I got back to the studio.
Having both these great players on the CD helped me keep a keen edge on my own playing. You don’t want to slack off after one of these guys steps up!
I’ve been sort of hiding out, teaching at MI for years, so not many people outside my little circle know about me. With these guys on the CD, I’m definitely getting a few more YouTube and iTunes hits.
I noticed a long “break” between the release of Moe’s Art and Throttle Twister. What were you busy with during the break?
During that period I wrote several instructional books: Chord Tone Soloing, Guitar Reading Workbook, Guitar Fretboard Workbook, and Music Theory, among others. I also worked as an editor for about 50 projects for the Hal Leonard Corporation. I studied a lot of music very closely, making sure that everything about the books/CDs was as strong as possible: that the written examples matched the CD exactly, good prose in the explanations with no room for misperception or gaps left for the reader to figure out, and of course accurate music notation. Some examples of these books: Lynyrd Skynyrd Signature Licks, Jimi Hendrix Signature Licks, The Essential Albert King, Eric Johnson Signature Licks, Best of Surf Guitar, Tenor Masters, Pedal Steel Guitar Method.
Along with a few hundred shows, doing session work for other bands and corporate clients, and teaching for the last 20 years, I think the rigorous mentality of chopping other people’s work to bits and reassembling it helped prepare me to make a better CD when I finally decided it was time to make another one.
The Live Setting
Do you think the statement “playing it live is the proving ground” has merit? (i.e. if it cannot be played onstage, it is inferior.)
I don’t worry about it. A recording can use the studio’s equipment to its fullest potential. Without it, we’d have no “Dark Side of the Moon” or “Sgt. Pepper’s.”
Live, the best gigs happen when the players are interacting with each other instead of just concentrating on their parts. I am not disappointed by hearing something a little different from the album, if it means that the players are really playing what they hear in their heads and are free to bounce off each other.
What are your favorite aspects of playing live shows?
Getting to hear my songs made into reality by good musicians, and seeing the audience enjoy it. Hearing my amp do its thing in a big room along with a nice sounding drum set, bass rig and PA system.
… Conversely, what are your least favorite aspects of playing out?
Dragging the amp, the drum set, the bass rig, and the PA system back where it came from!
Your bio said that you have played some shows in different countries. Which have been the most memorable concerts? Do you have a favorite locale?
That would have to be playing in Italy, though I had lots of fun in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, playing clubs, sitting in with bands, and going to open jams. One of the perks of my job as a GIT instructor is meeting lots of foreign students, many of whom were happy to have me visit after they graduated and went back home. Everybody I contacted was so nice. I don’t want to put down America, but in Europe even the club owners were happy to meet me and paid well. That doesn’t happen over here so much. In Pescara, Italy, GIT grads Gianfranco and Guiseppe Continenza did all the work of hiring a rhythm section, setting up a rehearsal, booking the gig with all its details, and inviting hundreds of people. And the food was unbelieveable—homemade wine, homemade olive oil—where do I stop?
Sessions
When you are doing a session, what is the client generally looking for? By that I mean – someone who can sight read, someone who can “get it right” on two takes or less, or someone who can improvise to a basic idea?
Reading ability comes in handy. It also helps if you can write out parts for the other musicians. Sometimes a producer or composer won’t have time to do that. He’ll just book a session with an idea in his head, and I’ll come in and write the parts down for him while he’s doing something else. The “nail it in one take” thing is nice, but not as important as it used to be with tape. Now you can go for feel by really digging in and then punch over one wrong note with sample-accurate precision.
One real deal breaker is whether you can play in time with a click or a sequenced part. If the engineer has to move your stuff around to get it to line up with the click or drum track, that’s time wasted. A little correction here and there is ok, but there are plenty of other guys in the book who can play with the click.
Do you have to attend business meetings / idea planning sessions before you do a major session (like for Miller)?
All those sessions were contracted by an ad agency, who subcontracted the composer, who subcontracted me, so, no, I never met the actual client. A composer would just call me in. There could be any amount of direction from “none at all, help us out here” to “make an exact replica of ‘Aqualung’ and change the lyrics to ‘Cheese is running down his chin’ for this demo so we can see if we like it enough to try to get Jethro Tull to agree to it.”
In general what do you enjoy about session work?
There is a creative aspect to it that’s fun, and when it’s over, it’s no longer your problem. You just go on to the next one.
Do you have dress rehearsals/demo submissions in an informal sort of setting before you head to the studio?
It is rather informal for most of the sessions I do. I work with client composers that I know, and they generally hire guys they know and like or get me to find players for them. They have their own studios here in LA. The rehearsals happen on the spot, and the engineer will usually record everything in case the rehearsal is the best take or contains something of value.
Do you generally have to utilize a business agent to get connected for session work, or is it a sort of “reputation precedes you” situation where you are approached, or you can approach someone, for session work?
You just have to know somebody who needs the work done and thinks you can do it. At first I tried making press kits with demos, promo shots, and bios, joining referral services, and contacting booking agencies, but none of it had much relevance to the real world. You can’t tell if a musician is going to deliver on the spot from any of those things. And it works both ways. Generally I will turn down a job offer from a stranger unless we have a common acquaintance that recommends them.
If you want to work, you have to get out and meet other musicians, especially ones who don’t play the same instrument as you. Meet as many drummers, vocalists, and recording engineers as you can; they will get you work as a guitar player if they like you.
How much of your own style is generally “allowed to shine” with regards to sessions?
You concentrate on what they’re trying to achieve. I’ll play the corniest, lamest licks ever if they are called for. Actually I’ve had to rein in the producers now and then. Sometimes a guy will get all worked up and want you to play a bunch of crazy stuff for no good reason.
Tone
Is that a genuine Dumble Overdrive? How many years did it take you to procure such a rarity? What compelled you to play “rock” on it?
Yes, it is a Dumble OS head on the album, but it’s not my own. It sounds great, especially when you crank it so loud it’s about to shake the house down.
My friend Billy Burke collects and maintains old amps like these in his studio, along with great vintage mics and preamps, and I wanted to record there. We chose the Dumble because it just smoked all the other lead guitar amps in the studio, once we got it all fixed up.
The problem with older amps like the Dumble (and others that I actually do own) is that they only sound right with tubes that are really hard to find these days. This one could not be biased to work with any power tubes we had available until we got Marc VanGool at Bay 7 Studio to tweak it out.
That amp spoiled me. I am going to have to find something comparable to play through now. Not sure what it’ll be.
If there’s one song I have to pick out, for the entire album, which seems to be a glorious foray into varied tones, it’s Delta Queen.
Thanks. I like “Delta Queen.” The dark rhythm guitar sound at the beginning was inspired by the Joe Satriani song, “It’s So Good.” But it’s also influenced by lots of 70s bands, like ZZ Top, Doobie Brothers, and Little Feat. The melody uses a suspension that I got from a bluegrass tune. My writing style depends heavily on research.
You probably mentioned this in your Tablature/Notation book for Throttle Twister, but if I wanted to play the super-cool, buzzy low end part for that song, what equipment would I need, on what settings?
My producer/engineer Billy Burke did the sound design at the beginning, and he radically sculpted the distorted rhythm guitar part so it fit with the distorted lead line. The whole song is full of his cool production ideas.
The rhythm part was played on a Guild M-75 (similar to a Les Paul) plugged into a J.T. Pedals Valveboy. The part was double-tracked to make it beefier, first using a Matchless DC30 amp, then a 1959 Fender Bassman.
That’s how it was done for this recording, but generally speaking I’d use a neck humbucker, maybe turn the tone knob down a bit, into a tube driver pedal of some kind, then crank up an amp that gets that low wattage saggy grind. That’s a situation where a 100-watt Marshall might be too powerful.
The part itself needs very careful execution. The verse part is a 16th-note funk shuffle groove, but the tone is so distorted you can’t scratch the strings in between chords. There are only two or three strings ringing at a time there. The open-string damping is tough because the chords have to ring as you slide around. For the chorus it opens up into power chords with the fifths and roots doubled an octave higher. Really big chords but also tricky string damping.
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Links:
Barrett’s official myspace page
Enjoy!
Great Artist, Great Music and Great interview.
Comment by mjk0123 — March 2, 2009 @ 10:55 am