Dhani Harrison's previous experience scoring films and TV series—especially the 2016 film Seattle Road—inspired him to take a more sonically adventurous, cinematic course in sculpting his debut solo album.
Dhani Harrison has recorded with Bob Dylan and Wu-Tang Clan, and is in the trio Fistful of Mercy with Ben Harper. He has created multiple film and TV scores. He's produced live concert albums and accompanying documentary DVDs—most notably 2016's George Fest: A Night to Celebrate the Music of George Harrison. He shared the stage with Prince (and Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne, and Steve Winwood) during one of the Purple One's most iconic guitar performances: the 2004 tribute to his dad at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also graduated from the prestigious Brown University with a degree in industrial design. And he's even been deeply involved with video game design for the popular Rock Band franchise. But right now, Harrison is focusing on the release of his long-awaited solo debut, In Parallel, an album that connects his musical history with his wide-eyed anticipation of his musical future.
From the day he was born, Harrison has been surrounded by a world of exceptional music. The house he was raised in was a bastion for iconic songwriting and songwriters, and through his father's work and extremely close relationships with such legendary artists as Petty and Lynne, Harrison received a stellar education in timeless musical craftsmanship.
“My dad turned our whole house into a studio. So, it's like you start as a tea boy, then you become a tape-op, then you become an engineer, and then you become the composer or the artist, I guess," Harrison explains nonchalantly.
Today, like his father before him, Harrison is the insatiable composer. He has written and recorded albums with his bands Thenewno2 and Fistful of Mercy. He and Grammy-winning musician Paul Hicks, a regular collaborator, have scored 2013's Beautiful Creatures and the TV series The Divide, as well as the 2016 Ryan David film, Seattle Road. Scoring Seattle Road turned out to be a serendipitous experience. “The director really just let us go to town on that one," says Harrison. “I wanted to take that further, so the sound of this record is quite similar to the sound of the stuff that I did on Seattle Road."
In Parallel paints film-like scenes while wrapping them in an accessible frame inspired by the great songs Harrison grew up around. As soon as the opening track, “Never Know," hits your ears, the similarities to a breathtaking film score are apparent. Pulsating ambiance melds with expertly layered Middle Eastern instrumentation, creating a sonic environment more than a typical song arrangement.
That spacious experience continues throughout In Parallel, leading one to ask, “Why am I reading about this in a guitar magazine?" As Harrison explains, even in an album filled with mind-twisting sonics, his guitars are never far away. “A lot of what you would think would be synth programming is, in fact, just guitar parts that are really processed." And so, like his father, Dhani Harrison is also a master of using the guitar to conjure gorgeous musicality, without resorting to the expected.
In our conversation, Harrison gave Premier Guitar readers a peek behind his creative curtain. He showed pride in being the son of a Beatle. He explained what it is to consider Tom Petty family. He dug into what drives him to conjure experimental guitar tones. He waxed about how his metal-at-heart band for In Parallel keeps him in touch with the rocker inside. And, most important, Harrison illustrated how he translated all of this into his debut solo album.
Being the son of a Beatle, your musical upbringing was unique. But what was it that initially attracted you to music?
I grew up in the studio. I always played music since I was a kid: piano, guitar, drums. And I sang a lot too. So I got my 10,000 hours early. Sometimes I'd come home from school and walk right into the middle of a tubular bells recording, and I'd be like, “Oops, I was just going in the kitchen." I'm pretty sure I tried everything possible to not do music. But I knew I was going to come back to it at some point.
What led you to film scoring and media production?
It's just the family business, really. I've always done design work. When it comes to my dad's catalogue, I've always helped him with artwork. Then, obviously, after he passed away, I finished Brainwashed as a producer, kind of taking his place as the artist. Jeff [Lynne] and I were co-producing.
TIDBIT: No guitar amps were used in recording In Parallel. Instead, Harrison exclusively relied on amp plug-ins from the likes of Native Instruments and Universal Audio.
He needed someone to make the decisions that we knew were going to have to be made. And I studied industrial design at Brown University. It comes in handy, especially for all the packaging and all the custom stuff I've been doing. It was just trying to maintain the most amount of control over the quality of the products that we're releasing.
What inspired you to release a solo album now?
I always write by myself. I very rarely write with people, even though I collaborate with people. So I had gone really far down the rabbit hole of making this record before anyone else came in. I tried to get Paul Hicks to collaborate with me, but he was like, “Wow, this is already a fully formed band. This needs to be what it is." And I had Jon Bates from Big Black Delta say the same thing. He was like, “I don't want to change this. I hope you put it out under your name." And I was like, “Okay. Maybe that's what I should do." And the further along I went with it, the more I realized that was the answer.
The harmonies and the chorus on “All About Waiting" and “Admiral of Upside Down" definitely bring the Beatles to mind. Is that intentional or simply a product of who you are?
Purely a product of who I am. I love stacking vocals; I love harmonies. I really wanted to have great harmonies in this record. After doing Fistful of Mercy and having such great singers in the band with me—Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur—I was missing out on the vocals. I really wanted great singers on this record. Jonathan Bates—I came in to sing with him on his Big Black Delta record. So after we'd done that, I was like, “Jon, definitely!"
Female vocalists also play a prominent role throughout the album.
I'm trying to write a story about what's happening right now. What's happening to man and woman alike, and female perspective is so important in the story. They've got to be strong characters like Camila Grey [featured on “All About Waiting"] and Mereki [“London Water," “Poseidon (Keep Me Safe)"]. Cami Grey was singing on [Bates'] record, so she was definitely in. And then the last person to come in was Mereki. She's just got such an interesting sound and she's such a great songwriter. I was playing guitar in her band, so that was a no-brainer. She really nailed it the first day, and it was like, “Oh, okay. We need to make a whole other record now." [Laughs.] It was too quick. So, it's me and Jon with the male characters and Cami and Mereki with the female characters. Everyone knew each other so well, and it was just really natural.
If you’re unfamiliar with Venezuelan guitarist Felix Martin, your first reaction to his technique might be, “Seriously?!”
Martin, who is left-handed, plays an upside-down, extended-range/multiple-string, doubleneck guitar. But his guitar is no ordinary upside-down, extended range/multiple-string doubleneck: The two necks are conjoined—although the fretboards are separate—and create an almost contiguous 16-string playing surface.
On top of that, Martin is a bona fide virtuoso. He plays using an eight-finger tapping style, one hand per neck, and the parts he plays are often contrapuntal, polyrhythmic, and piano-like in their harmonic richness. He insists that he doesn’t practice two-handed independence, but your ears may tell you otherwise.
This complicated style isn’t a gimmick. Martin is a diverse musical talent who graduated from Berklee College of Music, where he studied composition, orchestration, production, arranging, and transcribed music from around the globe. His genre home base is post-Dream Theater prog, but he’s fluent in multiple styles including classical, world, and jazz fusion.
On his latest album, Mechanical Nations, Martin chose to focus on that which makes him different: two-handed tapping and percussive techniques. Despite his formidable picking chops, he stopped using a plectrum three years ago. He also doesn’t currently use distortion, a traditional amp, or stompboxes—instead deriving his tones from a Fractal Axe FX II, which he runs direct to the board both live and in the studio.
And still, his new album is heavy. The music’s rhythmic intensity and powerful percussive element help maintain his metal credentials. Using clean tones means he can showcase his music’s complexity without sacrificing aggressiveness (or muddying up the mix).
Left-handed, conjoined, doubleneck guitars aren’t commonplace, obviously, and Martin’s instruments are custom built (see the accompanying sidebar to learn about his latest collaborator, Polish luthier Skervesen Guitars).
We spoke with Martin as he was about to embark on a 10-city tour with Middle Eastern fusion masters Consider the Source. Martin discussed his innovative approach, building his unique instruments, his deep musical roots, and why—despite what looks like compatible technique—he doesn’t play a Chapman Stick.
What is the genesis of your approach?
I started when I was 12 or 13 years old. For me as a beginner, it was very hard to play fingerstyle guitar. For some reason, tapping was a lot more natural. I started playing these classical tunes, pop songs, and everything using tapping instead of classical fingerstyle. Then I started playing with two guitars at the same time.
I feel if you have one hand on each guitar, there’s more freedom. You can play chords in one hand and then melodies in the other hand and your hands won’t overlap. I spent a lot of time when I was in high school playing like that—taking a regular Ibanez 6-string guitar and a Stratocaster, and playing them at the same time.
Did you take lessons at the beginning?
I grew up in a small town in Venezuela, so there weren’t teachers there. Nobody played electric guitar; just three guys in town. It was hard for me to learn guitar but, at the same time, it made me creative, because I had to discover everything for myself. Fingerstyle was extremely hard for me. It didn’t make sense for me at all. That’s when I started tapping, basically. Tapping was more natural. It made more sense—everything was more organized.
Did you ever try a regular doubleneck guitar?
No. I’m left-handed, so to find a left-handed guitar like that is impossible. My guitars are different from a traditional doubleneck.
Your music incorporates so many different influences. What do you listen to?
I grew up listening to everything, from classical, to jazz, to metal. I was into world music a lot when I was growing up, too. When I was at Berklee, at the Berklee library, I would take music from each country and transcribe it.
Felix Martin’s latest album, Mechanical Nations, was recorded with his trio, which consists of bassist Kilian Duarte and drummer Victor A. Carracedo. Martin prefers no layering or backing tracks on his studio recordings.
Music from Greece, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, and all of Europe—world music was a big passion I had. When you want to be a professional musician and have music as a career, you want to learn every style. That’s what I did for many years. Even traditional jazz and death metal … everything.
So, you can play everything from Charlie Parker to Napalm Death, and everything in between?
I could play it, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m mainly a rock and metal guitar player. There’s a video of me playing Charlie Parker—and it’s cool and it sounds good—but I’m not a jazz player.
What did you do to develop your two-handed independence? It looks like your hands do very different things.
Mainly, a lot of practice. I actually don’t practice independence that much; I just do stuff. If I have a musical idea or a solo thing that I’m working on, I try to mix it with both hands. It just happens. One thing I’ve noticed: When you’re playing two things at the same time, you’re not thinking “twice.” Some people think, “You’ve got two brains.” That doesn’t exist. You have one brain. The two things you’re doing, you’re doing as one thing. You’re thinking one thing, but you’re doing it with both hands.
You hear it as one idea.
It’s just one idea. When I’m playing these complicated lines with both hands, I’m playing it as a regular guitar player. I’m thinking just a single thing in my brain. It’s easier than people think.