Pierre Bensusan onstage with his
trusty 32-year-old Lowden “Old Lady”
acoustic at the Bornemouth Folk Club
in Bornemouth, England, September
22, 2009. Photo by Paul Savine |
A lot of great guitarists have made use
of the DADGAD tuning—in which
the open strings sound a Dsus4 chord—to
break the constraints of concert tuning.
That’s because it’s versatile and adaptable to
Celtic tunes, raga, and Appalachian styles,
among others. British folk pioneer Davy
Graham used it extensively in the early
’60s, and in his wake great rock players
like Jimmy Page and Trey Anastasio have
dabbled in it, too. But few instrumentalists
have made so much from it as fingerstyle
legend Pierre Bensusan. For nearly four
decades now, Bensusan has used the tuning
to play his highly personal blend of Celtic,
Middle Eastern, jazz, and Brazilian strains.
The 53-year-old Bensusan was born
in Oran, Algeria, and reared in Paris—an
upbringing that would eventually lend a
cosmopolitan sense to his music. Like many
young musicians, he got caught up in the folk
revival of the 1960s, strumming and singing
songs in the mold of Woody Guthrie and
Bob Dylan, before developing his trademark
fingerstyle approach.
Bensusan was only 17 when he signed
his first recording contract. A year later, his
first album,
Près de Paris (1975), won the
Grand Prix du Disque at the Montreux Jazz
Festival in Switzerland. Since then, Bensusan
has released a handful of carefully conceived
albums filled with compositions of orchestral-like
complexity and stunning stylistic variety.
Bensusan also wrote
The Guitar Book to illuminate
the concepts behind those records.
With his warm baritone voice and trademark
scatting, Bensusan is also an accomplished
singer. Unlike previous releases, his
latest album,
Vividly, is split evenly between
instrumentals and pieces with vocals. But
the recording has plenty to offer the guitar
aficionado, including cluster chord voicings,
unusual chord progressions, shimmering harp-style
harmonics, and dense counterpoint.
We recently spoke with Bensusan about his
influences, his short-lived foray into electronic
effects, and more.
What were your formative musical
experiences like?
I was 11 years old when I first got a guitar
and mostly strummed it, accompanying
myself singing French tunes and American
folk songs. Then, when I heard the music of
players like Bert Jansch and John Renbourn,
that really gave me a kick in the pants and
stimulated me to learn how to fingerpick and
play solo, in a contrapuntal style.
How’d you get into using DADGAD tuning,
and what was it about it that moved
you so deeply?
Bensusan cradles a 23-string harp guitar built
by Dave Evans. Photo by Doatea Bensusan |
Early on, I discovered a lot of alternate tunings
by just randomly playing around with my tuning
pegs. After a while, I come to the conclusion
that I had to stick to one tuning and learn
the fretboard in it. I chose DADGAD for its
versatility and have been using it exclusively
since 1978. [
Ed.: In a rare deviation, Bensusan
uses standard on his composition “Altiplanos.”]
DADGAD is a flattering tuning, which means
that you can remain at the surface of it and
have an exciting time for a little while. But
if you just play a lot of open-string voicings
and don’t really investigate the tuning’s full
potential, then you are going to sound just
like everyone else. So I went about studying
DADGAD carefully, playing around with
many different scale and chord patterns, many
different ideas and styles. After doing this a
while, I was able to freely express myself in the
tuning. Then DADGAD became invisible: I
was playing the tuning—it wasn’t playing me.
Tell us a little about the Lowden that has
long been your main guitar.
In 1978, when I was touring Northern
Ireland, I met a friend of George Lowden.
Several months later, I saw a Lowden guitar
in a shop in Paris, and I immediately
fell in love with both the sound and look
of the instrument. So I called the luthier
immediately and asked him to make me a
guitar with mahogany back and sides and
a cedar top. I’ve played that guitar, which I
call “Old Lady” [
Ed.: It is officially known as
the model S22], for almost 33 years now and
have used it on all of my records. I also have
another Lowden, my “New Lady,” which is
about three years old and is my signature
model. It has a spruce top and rosewood
body, giving it a different sound than my
original Lowden. It’s very responsive, has a
lot of headroom, and is very clear and bright.
What’s amazing about the newer guitar is it
can be so fast and effortless that you really
have to pay attention to what you play so
things don’t get out of control. It forces me
to approach things carefully, which is good.
In what way do you feel like the new guitar can
contribute to things getting “out of control”?
If you aim right, that instrument gives you a
3-D rendition, close to perfection, but if you
don’t pay attention, you can get overwhelmed
by the strength of projection. I am grateful
that I have to pay that attention to how I
touch it, which is the way it should be, and
can only help me to become a better player.
How would you describe your compositional
process?
I let my imagination play its role and then allow
the guitar to take over. At the beginning, a new
piece is just an idea that I have. Over several
weeks or several months or several years, I’ll
start to incorporate my fingers without ever losing
sight of the original concept. Technique can
distort an idea, and I’m vigilant about watching
out for that. In a way, composing has strengthened
my instrumental technique—figuring out
how to accurately express something on the guitar
has greatly improved my knowledge of the
fretboard and my touch on the instrument.