In an old auto-body shop on an industrial spur outside Burlington, a group of luthiers have built an independent, nose-to-tail acoustic manufacturing haven.
The exterior of the building, touted as the largest spherical structure in the world, is covered in 580,000 square feet of LED displays. The interior, capable of 16K resolution, adds another 160,000 square feet of displays. It’s perhaps the most exciting music venue in the world, and on four consecutive evenings in April, Buchwald watched legendary Burlington band Phish play it.
Buchwald, 46, has been a Phish fan since the ’90s, so to see his hero Trey Anastasio, the iconic frontman and guitarist of the band, playing on the hottest stage on earth, accompanied by the sort of psychedelic visual atmosphere befitting the band, was a thrill. But for Buchwald, there was an even bigger, personal treat: On three of the four evenings, Anastasio played an acoustic guitar Buchwald had built.
The dreadnought was made with gorgeous, hand-picked “mother of curl” Koa back and sides. The top and bracing are 100-year-old German spruce; the neck is 75-year-old mahogany. The appointments are stunning: holly binding and trim, Waverly titanium tuners, black pearl inlays indebted to American artist Roy Lichtenstein. The instrument was commissioned by Phish keyboardist Page McConnell after he and Buchwald crossed paths in a Burlington paddle-ball group. Buchwald, who owns and operates the guitar brands Circle Strings and Iris Guitar Company alongside luthier-supply outfit Allied Lutherie, was honored to take up the task.
There are plenty of high-end 6-strings on the market from trusted legacy brands like Martin, Taylor, or Gibson, but Anastasio chose an instrument from an independent guitar builder in a small northeastern city to bring to Vegas. So how did Buchwald’s acoustic end up centerstage at the Sphere? You can find the answer in a red, aluminum-sided 15,000-square-foot shop space in an industrial spur on the edge of town, near Burlington’s airport.
Principal luthiers Adam Buchwald and Dale Fairbanks joined forces back in 2019, and along with a team of talented guitar-builders, like CNC expert Will Hylton, they now design and build all their instruments under one roof.
“I never wanted to put my name on the headstock.” —Adam Buchwald
The sprawling, labyrinthine single-level space, which takes up part of an old auto-repair shop, is an acoustic guitarist’s dream. Four distinct brands live under the one roof: Circle Strings, Iris, Allied, and luthier Dale Fairbanks’ Fairbanks Guitars. On a video call, Buchwald walks me through the building. We snake from the front office through to the shop floor, where racks of wood planks tower over Buchwald on every side. There are molds where the wood is bent into shape, and nearby are hulking custom-made CNC machines (including a Haas VF-2 and a Laguna M2). A 3D printer sits alongside them. Further along, there’s a finishing area complete with a spray room. “Smells like delicious chemicals,” quips Buchwald when he pokes his head around the room, where bodies and necks hang like slabs of meat in a butcher shop.
In an adjoining production area of wide workbenches, someone labors on a neck for an Iris guitar; Fairbanks, headphones on, plugs away on one of his own creations. A sanding room juts off from the main floor, where a mask-clad worker smooths out the top of an unfinished body. Through another set of doors is the setup workshop, where head of setup Storm Gates is hunched over a stringless, caramel-colored dreadnought. Finally, there’s the recently opened showroom and store, Ben and Bucky’s Guitar Boutique, where Iris, Circle Strings, and Fairbanks acoustics hang on the wall for people to try and buy. There’s a snappy collection of amps for sale, too, plus other odds and ends.
Buchwald moved into this space in 2018, after years of building his Circle Strings guitars in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. Since he was 10 years old, Buchwald has been obsessed with guitars. His parents were constantly driving him to local guitar stores around his hometown of Bedford, New York, to check out “the best of the best,” he says, and after high school he went to the University of Vermont to study music theory and composition. He wanted to be a performer, but when he needed money back in New York after school, he took up a spot in his father’s manufacturing company, Circle Metal Stamping. “I worked on machines and saw how a factory worked and got experience using my hands and all the tools and everything in front of me,” he explains. Around that time, Buchwald began tinkering with his guitars and had a realization: “Wow, I could actually build these things.” He had all the tools he needed at his disposal. After a guitar-building course and apprenticeship at a New York City repair shop, and a job running the repair shop at Brooklyn’s RetroFret Vintage Guitars, he started to build his own acoustics.
Buchwald always drifted toward acoustic music: Bluegrass, newgrass, classical, and jazz were his stomping grounds, so it followed that he’d build acoustic 6-strings. Around 2005, he started his own company, Circle Strings, a nod to his family’s business. “I never wanted to put my name on the headstock,” he notes. In 2008, he, his wife, and their newborn baby moved north to Vermont, where he taught lutherie at Vermont Instruments, and worked at Froggy Bottom Guitars for a spell. He built his Circle Strings guitars out of his garage before moving into a proper shop space in Burlington next to his friend, electric guitar builder Creston Lea.
Orders for Buchwald’s guitars began to take off, and before long, his boutique acoustics were fetching more than $5,000. Even so, he’s not terribly precious about his work. “I can sit here and try and bullshit my way around this whole conversation and tell you I’m tap-tuning and voicing tops,” he says. “I’ve studied all that shit, learned different methods and people’s theories on brace carving and how they’re played and how thick they are. I just feel like we came up with a formula that works, and we just stick to it. To me, it’s more about picking out the woods and how I’m piecing them together. That’s my way of thinking about voicing.”
Obviously, Buchwald’s approach works. Phish’s Anastasio is far from the only convert. New York-based fingerstyle guitarist Luke Brindley has been playing Circle Strings acoustics for nearly a decade, and he just got a new one this year—a 6-string OM-size made from German spruce and Brazilian rosewood. “I’m not sure how Adam does it technically or whatever,” says Brindley. “I know he’s an expert on woods and obviously a musician himself, but ever since the first guitar I played of his, I felt like it perfectly suited my “voice.” I don’t know. It’s just like a perfect combination of the craft and then a little bit of magic and intuition.”
Phish’s Page McConnell commissioned this Circle Strings acoustic as a gift for bandmate Trey Anastasio, who recently took it to the stage for three nights at Las Vegas’ Sphere.
Photos by Shem Roose
In 2018, Buchwald launched Iris Guitar Company, which would produce more affordable, less decorated models for players who couldn’t shell out for Circle Strings instruments. The following year, he took another leap. He bought Allied Lutherie, a wood and supply company based in Healdsburg, California, that was up for sale, along with all of their materials, for a fair price. The owners gave Buchwald a good deal, including interest-free payments over the next few years. The lumber was shipped from coast to coast, and Buchwald and his team in Burlington loaded their score of tonewoods, plus a boatload of other materials, into their shop. Now, Buchwald could sell guitar-building materials to any and all comers, and Circle Strings and Iris instruments would be produced, nose-to-tail, under one roof.
Soon, so would Fairbanks guitars. Dale Fairbanks loved the old acoustic guitars he had when he was young, but he had no idea how the hell people managed to build them. How could luthiers force the wood to contort and hold the shape of a guitar’s body? Answers came in the form of William Cumpiano’s 1984 book Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology. It became Fairbanks’ bible, but eventually he needed to go beyond the page, so he drove up to see Massachusetts luthier Julius Borges and badgered him with questions as long as Borges would stand it. Fairbanks’ 1933 Gibson L-00, which he bought in his early 20s, has always been his benchmark for acoustic excellence, and after 10 trial-and-error runs of guitars, he started selling his creations around 2009. He’s never been without an order since then.
For years, Buchwald and Dale Fairbanks had talked about joining forces to share overhead, production costs, staff, even ownership. When Buchwald bought Allied, he pitched Fairbanks again: Come up to Burlington and build guitars under the same roof, with a load of wood at our fingers. Fairbanks and his wife wanted a change from central Connecticut, so they packed up their house and headed north to Burlington in November of 2019. Soon, the two luthiers were settling into a new, expanded shop space complete with a large spray and finishing booth, and Buchwald’s newly launched Iris line promised to keep a steady revenue stream while they produced their more time-consuming, intricate instruments. Like Tom Petty sang, the future was wide open.
Fairbanks’ made-to-order acoustics, like this gorgeous tobacco burst F-20 model, can cost more than $10,000. From the start, Fairbanks has been committed to uncompromising quality.
Then the pandemic hit. Offices shut down, layoffs rocked working people, musicians went silent, and budgets shrank as business ground to a halt. Millions went into survival mode. For a time, it seemed like the purchase of Allied might nosedive into disaster. Buchwald was saddled with a small forest’s worth of wood, and it seemed like no one had the money to put him to work on it. If things got bad enough, reasoned Buchwald, he could sell off the wood at least. But surely no one would be lining up to buy high-end acoustics for a while. “It was terrifying,” says Buchwald. “I’m like, ‘Fuck, I just bought this business, I just rented this shop, I just got all this equipment, and then the pandemic happens.’”
“Now, I have to give up control to other people with my guitars, which took some getting used to. Luckily, we have a really good crew.” —Dale Fairbanks
Luckily, Buchwald’s fears didn’t come to pass—if anything, the opposite happened. “Everybody bought wood, everybody bought guitars, and the businesses took off,” says Buchwald. He was able to pay off Allied, expand the Iris lineup, and invest in new equipment and people to pad out the operation. The Iris models, quicker to produce while still being high-quality guitars, paid the bills so he and Fairbanks could spend more time and care on their custom projects.
While some elements of Fairbanks’ builds have been changed by the new production facility, they still retain key Fairbanks qualities: They all have glued dovetail necks rather than rather than the bolt-on mortise-tenon joints Buchwald prefers, and Fairbanks still builds most of them himself after the body is assembled, although he’s also adopted some of Buchwald’s techniques.
For Fairbanks, this type of collaboration has been a lesson in letting go. He had worked alone as a one-man operation building his Fairbanks guitars for 15 years before shacking up with Buchwald, and suddenly, other hands were working on his instruments. “Now, I have to give up control to other people with my guitars, which took some getting used to,” he says. “Luckily, we have a really good crew. So many talented people have come from different parts of the country to work here.”
One of those people is Will Hylton, the “chief CNC wizard” at the complex. (Hylton had to reschedule our first interview time because he was working on a replacement guitar neck for Keith Richards’ ES-335. “It’s the dream come true, really,” he says. “One of the reasons I got into guitar building to begin with is like, ‘Man, I want to build guitars for my favorite guitarists.’”) Hylton says that with Iris, he and his colleagues have endeavored to apply the Toyota Production System—a set of lean manufacturing principles developed by the Japanese automaker in the decades after the Second World War—to prioritize efficiency in their processes, while safeguarding the more time-consuming parts of the Circle Strings and Fairbanks builds. “With the higher-end guitars, there’s more problems to solve and things to work through that are pretty fun, depending on the mood,” says Hylton, who designs and programs the CNC cuts. “Iris is more my engineer side, while the Circle and Fairbanks stuff, I get to appease my artistic muse.”
With four different companies under one roof, Hylton’s days can vary. “It could be working on figuring out a way to speed up a process in the production realm, or it could be working on a $3,000 inlay, or it could be fixing a machine,” he explains. “There’s always a big curve ball.”
Burlington musician Zach Nugent, who played with Melvin Seals and JGB and helms the Grateful Dead act Dead Set, swears by his Fairbanks acoustic. “There are a lot of really high-end boutique guitars that are great on paper, but just don’t move me,” says Nugent. “Each brand new guitar feels like it’s got a hundred years of gigging and amazing stories in the sound. Every person that I introduce to this guitar, I say the same thing. I know how stupid and whatever this sounds: ‘This is the best guitar you’ll ever play.’
At the heart of the Burlington operation—and the seemingly magical acoustics produced there—is the vast collection of old, rare woods that Buchwald purchased from Allied Lutherie and various other sources.
“I know $2,000 is a lot of money for a lot of people, especially for a guitar. But once you get a better guitar and you sound better and you play better and it feels better, you bond with it, and you’ll get better as a musician.” —Adam Buchwald
“I don’t know if Dale is just stopping in and making guitars for the humans for a little bit, but something really special is going on with those guitars.”
None of the guitars that Buchwald, Fairbanks, Hylton, and the rest of their colleagues build are what you’d call “cheap.” Iris guitars still cost upwards of $2,200. People say all the time that the “affordable” line isn’t all that affordable. Buchwald doesn’t mind. “I say, ‘The only way to get it done cheaper is to have it made overseas,’” he says. “It won’t play as well, it won’t look as good, they won’t use as nice materials, and you won’t be supporting focused, dedicated craftsmen like what we have here. I know $2,000 is a lot of money for a lot of people, especially for a guitar. But once you get a better guitar, and you sound better and you play better and it feels better, you bond with it, and you’ll get better as a musician.”
That belief in the irreplaceable value of a carefully made guitar is probably part of the reason why Circle Strings, Fairbanks, and Iris are unlikely to ever take up entire display walls in your local music stores, like other acoustic brands do. “I don’t necessarily want to make 500 guitars a week like Taylor does,” says Buchwald. “I want to keep the quality of it as high as possible and limit the supply so there’s always some demand. I like having guitars that are sought-after.”
Earlier this year, an investor proposed a plan that would have doubled the production and output at the Burlington warehouse. It “scared the living day-lights” out of Buchwald. “I knew that the people that I hired to do this work would look at me after two months and say, ‘Fuck this, this isn’t what we want to do, we’re not some huge manufacturing company,’” he explains. “If we can expand, we’ll expand slow and steady.”
The title track from their forthcoming new album is available now on all streaming services. Listen here.
Phish will follow the Sphere run with a summer tour getting underway with a three-night stand at Mansfield, MA’s Xfinity Center (July 19-21) and then continuing on with performances at Uncasville, CT’s Mohegan Sun Arena (July 23-24), East Troy, WI’s Alpine Valley Music Theatre (July 26-28), St. Louis, MO’s Chaifetz Arena (July 30-31), Noblesville, IN’s Ruoff Music Center (August 2-4), Grand Rapids, MI’s Van Andel Arena (August 6-7), and Bethel, NY historic Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (August 9-11). The tour will culminate with Phish’s traditional Labor Day Weekend run at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, CO, returning for four nights (August 29-September 1). Limited tickets remain available for most dates.
Evolve arrives via JEMP Records on Friday, July 12.
Cover Painting by Mehdi Ghadyanloo.
This summer will see also Phish hosting Mondegreen, a four-day festival set for August 15-18 at The Woodlands in Dover, DE. The band’s 11th self-produced festival and first in nine years, Mondegreen will see Phish performing over four days and nights, alongside an array of interactive fan experiences, specially curated regional food and drink, art installations, and much more.
For more information, please visit phish.com.
Phish Live 2024
APRIL
18 – Las Vegas, NV – The Sphere (SOLD OUT)
19 – Las Vegas, NV – The Sphere (SOLD OUT)
20 – Las Vegas, NV – The Sphere (SOLD OUT)
21 – Las Vegas, NV – The Sphere (SOLD OUT)
JULY
19 – Mansfield, MA – Xfinity Center
20 – Mansfield, MA – Xfinity Center
21 – Mansfield, MA – Xfinity Center
23 – Uncasville, CT – Mohegan Sun Arena (SOLD OUT)
24 – Uncasville, CT – Mohegan Sun Arena (SOLD OUT)
26 – East Troy, WI – Alpine Music Valley Music Theatre
27 – East Troy, WI – Alpine Music Valley Music Theatre
28 – East Troy, WI – Alpine Music Valley Music Theatre
30 – St. Louis, MO – Chaifetz Arena
31 – St. Louis, MO – Chaifetz Arena
AUGUST
2 – Noblesville, IN – Ruoff Music Center
3 – Noblesville, IN – Ruoff Music Center
4 – Noblesville, IN – Ruoff Music Center
6 – Grand Rapids, MI – Van Andel Arena
7 – Grand Rapids, MI – Van Andel Arena
9 – Bethel, NY – Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
10 – Bethel, NY – Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
11 – Bethel, NY – Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
15 – The Woodlands, Dover, DE – Mondegreen
16 – The Woodlands, Dover, DE – Mondegreen
17 – The Woodlands, Dover, DE – Mondegreen
18 – The Woodlands, Dover, DE – Mondegreen
29 – Commerce City, CO – Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
30 – Commerce City, CO – Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
31 – Commerce City, CO – Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
SEPTEMBER
1 – Commerce City, CO – Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
Trey is probably best known for his exploratory flights over a one- or two-chord vamp, but in this lesson we’ll look at how he navigates changes. What does he do when more than one scale or arpeggio is needed? Some guitarists might think the improvisational techniques we’re about to examine are only relevant to jazz, but they would be wrong. Many rock tracks are prime examples of a soloist playing over changes, and there are plenty of these moments in Phish’s music.
We’ll look at a few instances where Trey handles this beautifully, and then trace some of his vocabulary back to legendary jazz guitarists. Think of it as using Phish songs as a lab where we can experiment with different scales, arpeggios, and chord voicings.
YouTube It
In the second set on 7/3/14, Phish morphed from “Bathtub Gin” into one of the better versions of “Limb by Limb” from the band’s 2014 Summer Tour. Trey leads the jam starting at 3:21 before leaving the tune unfinished and heading into “Winterqueen.”
Let’s start by taking a look at Phish’s classic tune “Limb by Limb.” For the majority of the jam section in this song, Trey solos over a simple F Mixolydian (F–G–A–Bb–C–D–Eb) vamp in a lilting 12/8 time signature. But for me, the highlight of this jam occurs during the outro of the solo, when Trey continues to blow over the chorus chord progression. This progression consists of a measure of Db, a measure of Eb, and two measures of F. The latter two chords are still technically diatonic to F Mixolydian, but the Db is actually borrowed from F natural minor (F–G–Ab–Bb–C–Db–Eb), which means F Mixolydian won’t work over the Db.
There are a few solutions for tackling this progression. One approach would be to simply use F natural minor (the F minor pentatonic or blues scale could work, too) over Db and Eb, and then shift to Mixolydian for F. However, Trey usually prefers to outline changes with arpeggios. In Ex. 1, you can see how he might use triad arpeggios to seamlessly move from one chord to the next. He takes the shapes and breaks them up into creative, melodic ideas. Also, he doesn’t restrict himself to using only notes in the arpeggios, but will include other notes from the scales as well. There’s sage advice in those licks. Don’t just play guitar. Play music!
Click here for Ex. 1
Let’s move on to another Phish classic, “Stash.” This song’s jam almost always goes off the rails into insane places that don’t end up having much to do with the progression. It does, however, almost always start here, and the studio version pretty much sticks to it all the way through. I highly recommend checking out the version from A Live One. It’s a great example of a band working together, playing off one another, and a guitarist breaking rules and using his imagination to create some exhilarating tension and release. This is as true as improvisation gets in my opinion, and because a guitar lesson like this can’t begin to summarize the interplay, it’s best to simply listen and enjoy.
“Stash” has a simple progression in D minor. If you wanted to, you’d be totally fine playing D harmonic minor (D–E–F–G–A–Bb–C#) or D minor pentatonic (D–F–G–A–C) over the whole thing. What I find really cool, though, is the ominous Bb7 in the second measure. This chord is almost diatonic to the scale, except for its b7, which is Ab. This note is super cool because in the key of D minor, it's the b5, which sounds very creepy and distinctive. When soloing over this progression, I really enjoy including that note in my lines—or even ending phrases on it. It yields some really cool melodic motion, and you can create some dramatic, tension-building lines by taking advantage of it.
Another trick you can use over this progression—or anytime you’re playing in a harmonic minor situation—is making use of a diminished 7th arpeggio (1–b3–b5–bb7). (The bb7 is the same note as the 6; we’re simply giving it a different name to follow chord-building convention.) This arpeggio is a symmetrical shape since each note is the exact same distance from its neighbors. As you can see in the diagram below, this arpeggio consists of just two notes on every string, which are always three frets, or a minor third apart. You simply move up one fret every time you start a new string (move up two frets when moving from the 3rd string to that pesky 2nd string).
For our purposes (Ex. 2), the diminished arpeggio works best when you start it a half-step below the root, which in this case is D. All the notes in the arpeggio are diatonic to D harmonic minor, but still create some cool tension. If you just jam to this progression and get a feel for it, your ears will be a great judge of when that arpeggio will sound great and when it won’t be stable enough. To put it into Star Wars terms, turn off your X-Wing’s targeting computer and just use the Force.
Click here for Ex. 2
Now let’s take this “Stash” progression and use it to practice some other approaches. A huge part of the beauty of Phish’s music lies in its versatility, so as guitarists we can take advantage of that and use these Phish tunes as a vehicle to practice other things. For this next example (Ex. 3), let’s take “Stash” and use it to develop some chord soloing ideas in the style of Wes Montgomery. If any of you aren’t acquainted with Wes, check out this video below. He was an absolute master of using chord voicings to create a huge sound in his solos that would emulate a big band horn section. Also, note that he exclusively plucked strings with his thumb, a technique that gave him a unique, über warm and full tone.
I’m taking some ideas and chord voicings that, to me, are reminiscent of Wes’s style, and applying them to the “Stash” changes. All of these chords occur on the top four strings, and most of them are different inversions of 7th chords.
In the first measure, I’m playing a bunch of different D minor variations. This is a really cool little box where you can find a lot of neat voicings for minor-key comping and even soloing. I then insert chromatic notes to connect the previous D minor portion to what I want to play for the Bb6, which is a pretty common chordal lick that’s a great fill to use over a dominant chord.
Next, I go up the neck through a couple of different inversions of Em7b5, using a few single notes to connect the voicings and give it some melodic flow. Then, I play two different A7 voicings, the second of which I add a b13 tension to give it a little more flavor, and then I end the passage on a Dm6/9 to make it a little hipper.
Click here for Ex. 3
For our last example, we’ll be looking at “Foam.” This song may qualify as one of the weirdest songs in Phish’s entire catalog, which is why it’s one of my favorites. This example has more changes than the other ones in this lesson. In fact, the form that Trey solos over is actually a peculiar 17 measures long, though we’ll only be examining a portion of it.
At first glance, the chords in Ex. 4 might seem totally unrelated, but take a closer look. First, many of the chords are inverted, which means that a chord tone other than the root note is the lowest note in the chord. So when you see A/C# that means you’re playing an A major triad, but putting the 3 (C#) in the bass. Now take a look at each chord and the bass note being played for each. The chord progression’s bass notes ascend chromatically through the entire form. (Later in the progression the direction reverses and the bass notes descend chromatically.) This is extremely smart harmony, and it features some really creative voice-leading to keep that chromatic thread running through the whole progression.
So how the hell do we solo over it? Well first, let’s take a look at how Trey would do it. It’s his tune, after all. Just like in “Limb by Limb,” Trey often relies heavily on triad arpeggios to navigate through these changes. The only difference this time is that there’s a lot more of them. In this example, Trey starts off by outlining the C major and A major chords using their respective arpeggios, although he adds one or two other scale tones as well. He then includes a touch of chromaticism to get down to a chord tone for the G major that occurs in the next measure. After that, he employs a really cool approach that’s very useful for guitarists, which is known as “pivoting.” In this approach, Trey picks one note in each measure, and uses it as a point from which to pivot to other notes in the scale or arpeggio. He starts with the lowest note, and then plays other notes on top of it, always alternating every other note back to the lowest one.
Click here for Ex. 4
Now let’s pull the jazz card one more time, and use “Foam” as a guinea pig. For Ex. 5, I’ll be referencing my favorite jazz guitarist of all time, the great Django Reinhardt. Instrumental music can often lack a human element and be difficult to relate to, but the beauty of Django is that when he plays, you can practically feel what he’s saying to you and what he was feeling while he was playing without anybody saying a word. To me, that’s the highest level of self-expression in music.
Django employed countless scales, arpeggios, rhythms, and chord voicings in his playing, but I’m going to pick one concept and apply it to this example. This approach is somewhat similar to the pivoting idea I mentioned before, but this one can be traced back not only to plenty of jazz music, but lots of classical music as well. This is known as using “enclosures.”
Check out the link below to get an idea of Django’s playing. His solo begins at about 00:49, and he comes out of the gates full tilt, playing a burning (sorry, that’s such a jazz dweeb word) line that totally consists of enclosures.
So what’s an enclosure? Well, to use them, we’re going to need those triad arpeggios we’ve been talking so much about. Let’s take that first C major in “Foam.” We won’t play our C note just yet, but rather simply keep it in mind for a second. That’ll be what’s known as our target note. First, play the D note that’s the next note up in the scale from C. Next, play whatever note is a half-step below ourtarget note. In this case it’s a B. So what we’re doing is enclosing that C note with whatever two notes are on either side of it. Now that we’ve enclosed the C, do the same exact thing to the other notes in the C major arpeggio. Keep going up the second octave as far as you can until you reach the 1st string.
In Ex. 5, I begin by playing a C major enclosure pattern in a triplet rhythm, and I end the phrase by moving the last C to a C# to adjust for the A major chord that’s in the next measure. If you listen, there’s a bunch of other variations on those enclosures in the example, too, where I include some Django-esque 16th-note ornamentations to keep the enclosures from sounding too repetitive. The cool thing with these enclosures is that there are so many variations you can come up with, and you can cultivate a huge vocabulary from this one idea. Just let your imagination go wild, and have some patience and work ethic to let those ideas come to life.
Click here for Ex. 5
As with anything you’re practicing, you have to work persistently with these concepts to master them. Playing over changes is not an easy skill to develop, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. Whenever there’s a progression you don’t feel comfortable soloing over, start by slowly arpeggiating the entire progression using a steady stream of eighth-notes, always playing along to a metronome set at a realistic tempo. And take advantage of the internet! Search for arpeggios, look up all the inversions, and get in the shed until you have those tools at your disposal.
To wrap up, I can’t stress enough that this lesson is in no way meant to encapsulate everything about Trey’s playing in a couple of paragraphs. I don’t think that would be possible. The real heavy stuff, the stuff I don’t think I could explain in a lesson, is his fearless improvisational abilities, and his willingness to break rules and play whatever he wants as only he can. For me, the biggest inspiration from Trey’s playing, and the aspect that makes him one of the most important guitar players of his time, is that no matter what he does, he sounds completely original and always like himself. I’ve even heard stories of him throwing out all his Pat Metheny albums after someone told him he played like Metheny. I don’t know if that story is true, but regardless, his unique playing speaks for itself.