| Rate This Article |
|
Current rating: 0 stars by 0 user
|
|
|
|
Gunning for Warr, page 2
by Winston Barclay
For one thing, he rarely used the instrument’s MIDI capability, and has
now abandoned it entirely, preferring to shape the sound through his
physical relationship with the instrument and carefully selected
processing. “I never used MIDI that much,” he says. “ I used it some
with King Crimson and ‘ProjeCKts,’ to make a fake feedback. I would
take a flute sound up an octave and route the regular guitar sound and
this flute sound into my distortion. I could fade up the flute and it
would sound like I was going into overtone feedback. Now I’ve found a
way to get that effect with pitch-transposition plug-ins.”
In fact, as a musician who travels the globe from his Seattle base, he
is always looking to minimize the weight and bulk of his gear. You
won’t find him tending a huge array of pedals and effect
buttons. “I’ve got to put the thing in a case and carry it around the
world,” he says. “I’m always looking for ways to make my gear smaller,
cheaper and more convenient to move around the world. I am almost
entirely away from using amps. I’ve used full-range Euphonic amps – my
bass-side goes up into the guitar register. With Crimson I used SWR
bass cabinets. But pretty much I’m a direct guy, as much as I can be –
I like to trim down the rig so that it’s small enough that I can get on
an airplane and fly anywhere with everything I need.
“I use Native Instruments software on my laptop for the melody side. A
little compression to squeeze the dynamics. I send the guitar side into
the laptop and the bass side into a little Raven Lab bass preamp and
then out to the house. And I carry a couple of fuzzboxes on the bass
side for live performance.”
Over the years, Warr Guitars has built Trey a variety of instruments,
including a streamlined eight-string mono version he used on the King
Crimson “ProjeCKts,” and a nylon-stringed, fretless piezo instrument –
with no magnetics at all – that he has used with King Crimson and on his
new CD.
Although there has been a close collaboration between Trey and Mark in
product development, there is also a sense that he does not receive
special treatment. When you visit the Warr Guitars website, you will
see sections devoted to the various “lines” of instruments – the Artist
Series, the Artisan Series, the Trey Gunn Signature Series, the Phalanx
Series – but Warr Guitars are not off-the-shelf instruments, shipped
from a mass-produced standing inventory. The company is still small
enough – with a staff of four – that each instrument is custom-built to
meet the exact specifications of each musician, just like Trey’s
instruments are made for his.
The choice of woods, electronics, string design, and a variety of other
elements are at the discretion of the individual. Mark not only
collaborates on custom designs, but every customer gets the same
attention to detail and quality under Mark’s direct supervision. “I
make sure every instrument is top-of-the-line,” he says proudly. “We
look through a thousand board feet of wood until we find enough wood
for a single neck. So we don’t just grab a bunch of maple, or whatever
we use. We don’t have to buy that much to get it, but we have to look
through that much. It’s a very time-intensive process.”
The Challenges of Warr
The Warr Guitar is developing in two directions simultaneously: The
design and engineering is progressing at the same time that an
ever-growing community of musicians is exploring and expanding its
playing techniques and stylistic possibilities.
Much of the Warr design and engineering is proprietary, accumulated
through Mark’s many years of designing and building experience, but the
peculiar challenges of producing top-of-the-line, stereo touch
instruments with wide dynamic and pitch ranges are constants. For
example, graphite reinforcement and dual truss rods enable the massive
fingerboard to cope with the tension of so many strings.
“One of the original challenges of these stereo instruments was getting
isolation between the two sides,” Trey explains. “They have separate
outputs and separate pickups, but the strings are very close together
so if the bass side is bleeding into the melody side, the effects on
one side are heard on the other side.” Part of the solution to this
“cross-talk” lies in electronic developments in the pickups, but Mark
also employs high-end audiophile techniques in the engineering of the
instruments’ bodies.
Another challenge is to achieve a consistency of sound in all parts of
the instrument. Output must be somehow balanced for each string. Trey’s
strings range in gauge from 9 – the “light” gauge for the traditional
guitar high “E” string – to 128 for the heaviest bass string. “The
little strings are such a small sound compared to the bass side,” he
points out. “You have incredible dynamic range, but you can’t output it
like that because you need the high strings to sound as loud as the
low strings. That’s quite a challenge, but he figured out how to do it.
“With all traditional instruments, the sound comes from the right hand
– how they use a pick, or the fingers or the thumb. We’ve taken that
element away with touch guitars. There aren’t that many options for
articulating a note. So that’s another obstacle we were working with –
I was always wrestling with a really clear, fat bass sound – so we did
some research and discovered some ways to improve the bass sound while
reducing the mass of the instrument. When you touch the string, it’s
such a light, little touch, and to get a lot of sound out of it, you
need specially wound pickups and you need the mass of the instrument to
respond.”
Trey has a home remedy for another of the challenges – the sonic
sensitivity required for touch instruments has a pernicious side
effect: any inadvertent contact with a string produces a sound, and the
release of a string will tend to sound the open string. Trey carefully
weaves a special fiber just below the nut to mute the open strings,
much as the felt dampers prevent unstruck piano strings from sounding,
and he uses additional muting to isolate particular strings when
recording. “I also have an almost unconscious approach to using my
lower hand, whichever one that is, to mute as much as possible,” he
adds.
That “unconscious” muting technique is representative of the
playing-technique challenges that confront musicians as they take up
any touch instrument. “Your finger technique requires you to do
something that is not applicable on any other instrument,” Trey says.
“On a keyboard, you move left to right across in front of you, which we
have, too, but also we have forward and backwards. You need to be able
to move and articulate each finger very specifically, and you have to
hit the string in the right spot. You want to hit the string right
behind the fret. When I say it, it’s hard to believe we can actually do
it, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds.
“You are using your fingers in a completely different way. I wish I
could say it’s easy, but it’s not. You’ve got to have energy behind it
to get the sound, but you have to use the right use of energy of the
fingers. Even though it’s light, it’s got to be the right force. And
that force determines the quality of the sound.”
Once a musician has come to grips with the physical challenges of the
touch technique, they find that the Warr Guitar is remarkably
versatile. Randy Strom is an example of a musician who uses the range
of the instrument to play like a jazz pianist – or, in guitar terms, to
play bass and melodic lines simultaneously. Other artists have used the
instrument to play everything from Indian ragas to the avant-metal of Behold the Arctopus».
The Future of Touch Style
At this point musicians have developed at least 26 documented tunings
for the Warr Guitar, using both crossed and uncrossed string
deployments. Some tunings expand the range of the instrument, while
others may make playing patterns more symmetrical; some are more
reminiscent of traditional guitar tunings, while others take the
instrument into entirely new territory. Some artists are even
experimenting beyond stereo, using three sets of strings on one neck,
processed through three separate channels.
Trey Gunn on CD and DVD
Trey has had a successful recording career with a number of his own groups, as well as lending his talents to others. Here's a quick guide to Trey's recordings.
|
Trey Gunn productions/co-productions
One Thousand Years
The Third Star
Raw Power
The Repercussions Of Angelic Behavior, w/Bill Rieflin/Robert Fripp
The Joy Of Molybdenum
Live Encounter (ECD)
Road Journals (CD-ROM)
Untune The Sky (+DVD)
TU w/Pat Mastelotto
8 Armed Monkey, KTU, 2005 (Rockadillo)
The Arrow, Quodia, CD + DVD
With David Sylvian/Robert Fripp
The First Day
Darshana
Damage
With King Crimson (selected discography)
VROOOM
THRAK
B'Boom
THRaKaTTaK
Deja VROOOM (DVD
The ProjeKCts
The Deception of the Thrush
The ConstruKction of Light
Level Five
The Power To Believe
Eyes Wide Open (DVD)
With Others
Dream - U. Srinivas & Michael Brook
The Woman's Boat - Toni Child's
Charade
Zooma - John Paul Jones
Birth Of A Giant - Bill Rieflin
Matt Chamberlain - Matt Chamberlain
The Farlanders
Elysium for the Brave - Azam Ali
V is for Vagina - Puscifer
Some of these recordings are available on Treys online store.
|
|
“I believe that we are just at the beginning of touch styles becoming
something much bigger than they have been,” Mark says. “You can evolve
on the instrument and change your styles and techniques, and even sound
very different, but yet they are all legitimate. My concept was always
to be as versatile as possible, but it’s the players that have taken it
to the places it has gone. We have so many different tunings and
variations of the instrument that we’ve become very custom. There are
tunings that don’t even make sense to me, but they’re making wonderful
music.”
Although Trey is the Warr Guitar’s most prominent artist, his approach
to the instrument is decidedly idiosyncratic. “You build your own genre
as you go,” he says. “I kind of treat it more as an African instrument
or a big marimba or mbira – or as a single instrument that just has
that incredible range. I’m not interested in being the bass player and
the soloist at the same time. It’s hard enough doing one thing at once
– I don’t need to be doing two things at once. I’d rather be creating
new music instead of spending all the time that’s necessary to be able
to be good at that thing. What those players do is quite amazing, but
it’s just not what I’m interested in doing.”
So what is the next step in the Warr Guitar evolution? About five years
ago, while Trey was still with King Crimson, he began returning to the
Warr Guitar’s roots – playing with the instrument horizontal on a stand
– and that approach has deepened with his new projects. “Not only is it
easier on the wrists, but the kind of dynamic you can get, with the
wrists in a straight line from the arms and letting gravity help with
the fingers, and ability to shape a musical phrase – it doesn’t even
compare,” he says. “In the guitar position the stress on the hands
keeps it from happening.
“The dynamics just expand. It’s terrifying, actually. It’s like going
back to kindergarten. Oh my god, I’m thinking, I don’t even have the
technique to deal with this kind of dynamic range. I’ve been
researching keyboard technique and I’ve discovered some interesting
things. So we are in the process of completely destroying the
instrument again.”
At the same time that the upper limits of design and engineering are
being expanded – with the corresponding prices – Warr Guitars is also
working on simpler, less-expensive instruments to make the touch-guitar
experience accessible to young musicians with more limited means.
And, although Mark is playing his cards close to the vest, he promises
that there are other exciting new developments that are about to
emerge. Stay tuned.
For more information:
Trey Gunn
Warr Guitars
Commentary
Link to this Article
Want to link to this article? Just copy and paste the text below into your website.
|