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So you didn't actually read the interview? All I see is a summary list compiled by...who knows?
Originally Posted by James W
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07-20-2024 04:14 PM
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Yes. But I have no reason to be suspicious about the list, it chimes with what we can corroborate with pictures and John McLaughlin's own words... Originally Posted by jazzshrink
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For all McLaughlin-ists (I am not one) I found this website:
Pages of Fire: Articles
There is something strange going on with the formatting of some of the articles but you can copy (Ctrl + A; Ctrl + C) the texts and copy them into a text editor.
Maybe the answer to the mystery of John's Fenders is hidden there somewhere.
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Off-topic again: Damn, it's gone (it was a red one). The lady who had published the ad had pressed her boyfriend to sell some of his too many guitars LOL. But another one is gonna come. Beginners buy cheap guitars and sell them frustrated after a while. Used Harley Bentons are offered daily ... Originally Posted by 339 in june
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Leaving aside the whole digression on what McLaughlin did or did not play ... Early Mustang and Duosonic pickups are the same as strat pickups, but with different covers and the pole pieces pushed flush with the bobbins. The easiest way to get close to that in a modern bargain Mustang is to put decent strat pickups in it. That said, at the moment I'm in the honeymoon phase with plain old Gibson P90s (in a Les Paul). So at least for now those are my favorite single coils, though (based on past experience), I'll eventually circle back to my strat for an extended spell. Originally Posted by SimplyTH
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I recommend Wilde Strat and Tele pickups combined with Bill Lawrence's wiring diagrams. I really like the L-280 series pickups for both Tele and Strats. I have a set of Tele Micro Coils with ceramic magnets which also sound great (the alnico versions are reputed to be glassy/stratty which I don't really dig). I think that you can readily approximate the JM sounds from that era with these pickups in the Fender Mustang or Duo Sonic, I can't remember which one the OP had.
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Here's the article: Originally Posted by James W
John McLaughlin's guitar mastery spans so many traditions that historians 200 years hence may argue that the figure known by that name is actually a composite of several individuals--or perhaps even entirely mythological.
Born into a music-friendly home in a small village in Yorkshire in 1942, McLaughlin was surrounded by the classics and encouraged to play by his violinist mother and other family members. He studied piano at nine, and discovered the guitar a few years later--just as the British underground blues scene was beginning to heat up. The music of Muddy Waters and other Delta deities seduced him into what would become a life-long love affair with the instrument. After a fling with flamenco and the jazz stylings of Django Reinhardt and Tal Farlow, McLaughlin entered the gravitational pull of Miles Davis and John Coltrane--forces that permanently altered his aesthetic trajectory.
Stints with some of London's best blues and jazz bands and a smattering of major-artist session work quickly led to gigs with the phenomenal American jazz drummer Tony Williams and Miles himself. During that period, McLaughlin also released three solo albums that would prove to be prophetic to his future work: the intricately bopping Extrapolation, the distortion-driven Devotion, and the transcendent My Goals Beyond, which combined soulful acoustic guitar duets with extended Indian-infused improvisations.
McLaughlin's work with Miles is legendary ("The Man with the Horn" even named a song after him on the revolutionary Bitches Brew), but with the release of the Mahavishnu Orchestra's debut album in 1971, the young guitarist ascended to the ratified echelons of instrumental accomplishment occupied by Davis and his other heroes. The fiery excursions into sonic hyperspace contained on The Inner Mounting Flame and the follow-up album Birds of Fire established a formidable benchmark for what would soon be labeled jazz-rock fusion. Then, just as the Orchestra was moving millions of records and packing mammoth venues, McLaughlin disbanded the group, switched to acoustic guitar, and began performing with three Indian musicians--a move that horrified his record company and left many fans scratching their beads.
Diehard fusion fanatics never forgave McLaughlin, but 30 years on, Shakti's pancultural collaborations are viewed as bellwethers of the nascent world music movement, a perspective further validated by the success of recordings and tours by Remember Shakti--the group's must recent incarnation. And, as if mastering two of the world's most demanding musical traditions were not impressive enough, McLaughlin has also composed several orchestral works, including Apocalypse (1974), Mediterranean Concerto (1988), and the newly released Thieves & Poets [Verve]--a work which he feels recapitulates his musical journey through life.
At the time of the interview, the guitarist was preparing to depart on the second leg of a Remember Shakti world tour, recording a series of instructional DVDs, planning a new Shakti Remembered studio album, and threatening to further alienate '70s fusion fans with his take on electronica.
*******
Why this music now?
Thieves & Poets exists primarily because my friend Jurgen Nimbler in Germany called me up one day on behalf of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonic--an orchestra of young players based in Cologne--and asked me to write a piece for myself and them. It involved about a year of writing, and once we got it all together, we toured all over Europe, and it was absolutely wonderful Years later, in 1991, I reorchestrated the work for symphony orchestra when I was invited to do a series of concerts with the Orchestra de Paris. It was during the time of the Gulf War, but there was also a war going on between the orchestra members and the conductor, and, because of that, there were all sorts of problems. It was a nightmare. It disgusted me, and I concluded that the whole classical world really sucked, and that I should never get involved with it again.
Then, about four years ago, the choreographer of the Monte Carlo Ballet asked me for a piece, and he insisted that it be symphonic. So, I pulled out the future Thieves & Poets once again, and at that time, I realized it wasn't finished. I wrote more solos and supplemental music for the rest of the orchestra. I'm very happy with how it came out, but I think it was only by virtue of the fact that I was able to live with it for all those years. It kind of grew on its own--like a plant.
In your liner notes you say that the three movements correspond to the Old World, the transition to the New World, and the New World, with the finale being the joyful unification of both worlds. Was that something you'd planned, or that emerged in retrospect?
I only realized it upon listening to the completed version. But listen, even in the first movement, when [violinist] Viktoria Mullova comes in mad we do this tiling in unison--that's right out of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. It's unbelievable!
I hear so many references, not only to your own work ...
I know, but believe me, I didn't consciously allude to Mahavishnu. But your past is always with you, and it's expressing itself on a continual basis. The moment you try to do something, you see thing--though not always right away. At the same time, there is also without a doubt a subconscious movement to update my past, and I have the distinct impression that sometimes I have to lake two steps backwards to take one step forward. Things are happening both consciously and subconsciously. The violin part was absolutely unconscious, but at the same time, I've got this conscious intention of trying to recapitulate my past, so it's a very ambiguous process. I'm sorry to be so vague about it, but that's absolutely how it is.
It's a difficult thing to talk about.
Well, as a musician you understand that you go into a certain state of mind while writing music--a very special place where you hear music, only there's no sound--which itself is a big mystery--and this place doesn't correspond to any time zone. It's as if your past exists there as much as your present. In fact, there's no real present, there's only the past [laughs]. But it's brought up-to-date by your being aware of it now. It's very tricky, very abstract, but you know what it is, and you have to go there to understand it--to feel it. And in that place, you also pass stuff coming back at you, but you see it with different eyes or hear it with different ears. As a musician, you understand that, but sometimes it's difficult to explain to non-musicians.
Some aspects of Thieves & Poets, though, are obviously very conscious--such as the deconstruction of "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." What is the compositional process like for you? Do you write outlines of the parts on the guitar and then give them to the orchestrator?
No. On this particular piece, I wrote everything using either a keyboard or a MIDI guitar. For example, I would write the string parts using two-part piano notation, which I would then give to the orchestrator. He would have all the notes, and basically just arrange the distribution. I did the same thing with the brass, woodwinds, tuned percussion, etc.
Did you use notational software to create the documents or do it by hand?
Both. Sometimes I'd be away, and just have my guitar. You know, you gel an idea in a hotel room, and you just write it out longhand. Although recently I've been traveling with a computer. I'm actually using a laptop on stage.
With Remember Shakti?
Yes, I'm bringing kind of a whole new Western dimension into Shakti this time, and it's pretty amazing. On the tour two years ago, I used a '72 Gibson ES-345 with a scalloped neck [pictured on page 55], but currently I'm using a Godin LGXT with Synth Access. I began using the Godin while recording my DVD, which we'll get to, and I was so happy with its MIDI capabilities that I had to try it with Shakti. It's the best MIDI controller I've ever used. Routing it into the laptop through a Roland GI10 MIDI interface there are no glitches, and only about 1.5 milliseconds of latency. It's unbelievable!
What software ate you using?
On the road, I'm running Logic Platinum 5 with Spectrasonics Atmosphere and Emagic ES2 synthesizer and EXS 24 sampler plug-ins on a Mac Titanium PowerBook. It's a very powerful combination that allows me to emulate many of the sounds I'd gotten previously using hardware, while also providing the architectural flexibility to create lots of fantastic new sounds.
Was one of the things that inspired you to create an instructional DVD your dissatisfaction with conventional music education?
You've seen the videos out there. Come on, they suck! Another reason I decided to do it, though, is that I turn 61 this year, and I've got a lot of stuff in my pumpkin that might be useful to somebody. Not that I've done millions of master classes in my life, but I've done a few, and I have personal students, so I know the problems confronting aspiring guitar players.
What's on the DVD?
There are actually three DVDs, with a total of 12 chapters, and the instruction is in six languages because there are a lot of guitar players in the world who don't speak English.
For example, there ale people in Southeast Asia who are crazy about guitar, and all they've got are these five-year-old copies of Guitar Player. I'm serious. They are hardcore, passionate guitar players and they want to learn. You do have to be able to read music, though, otherwise the DVD will be useless. I believe that if music is your basic language you have to read and write it. That's how you communicate--at least in the West.
Each chapter opens with me discussing a particular scale and its modes, and the chords you can create by playing specific notes of the scale simultaneously. Then there are exercises to develop fluency skills, with concentration on both the left and the right hands--particularly rhythmical articulation. In jazz music, if your rhythm is off, you're off--and you don't have the right to articulate bad rhythm [laughs]. All of these areas are addressed, and the entire time you can see both of my bands and the scare as I'm playing.
Then come chord exercises, and two demonstrations of improvisation [accompanied by a virtual band] and the harmonic structure is explained in a way that relates directly to the exercises in that chapter. The second demonstration uses the same musical material as the first but it's more advanced. Finally, the score of the advanced demonstration is displayed on the full screen, and I analyze it while the music is playing. Each chapter is about 15 minutes long, and, taken together, they cover quite a lot of ground--from relatively simple to very advanced. In fact, the last chapter is called "Tough Tunes," and it contains material in complex time signatures at fast tempos that really is tough [laughs].
Complementing all this is a huge library of phrasings thin are part of my own vocabulary, which can be applied to your improvisations. There's really no big mystery to improvisation, is there? You've got your licks, or cliches, or whatever you want to call them, and you've got your material. You apply those ideas as a way of getting to that special state where you discover new things. The only way to the unknown is through the known, and that's my philosophy throughout the entire DVD. I'm not able to teach you to play guitar your way. What I am able to do is show you with as much lucidity and clarity as possible what I do and how I do it. Then you can appropriate what I do and find your own way, because, in the end, we can only play our own way.
A SELECT DISCOGRAPHY
HERE'S A LIST OF THE MAJOR RECORDINGS IN MCLAUGHLIN'S 35-YEAR CAREER. McLaughlin kindly provided information on the guitars he played on each album, as well as a few session notes.
--BC
(I cut out all the stuff from the Italian site, which goes here. Also I cut out the few pics)
ABE WECHTER ON BUILDING GUITARS FOR MCLAUGHLIN
SHAKTI #3
"This was the first really major project I ever built on my own," remembers Wechter "John was incredibly supportive and patient. Helmut Schaller made me the custom tuners for the sympathetic strings as a personal favor. The internal bracing for these strings is cantilevered from the top so that the primary six strings are more free to vibrate. The most time consuming part was hand polishing the blued steel bracket that holds the seven sympathetic string tuners. The hardest part was making the curved ivory head veneer with inlayed fleur-de-lis for the back of the peghead."
MARIELLE
"Marielle is the culmination of a set of three nylon-string guitars I built for John," says Wechter. "These guitars are the origin of the jazz nylon style I've continued to build ever since. Marielle has the first Lotus peghead. I think this guitar defined my hand-making style more than any other."
OUR LADY
"John asked me to build him a guitar based on the magnificent stained glass rose window in the South Transept of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris," says Wechter. "The top is a very special piece of flamed bear claw spruce. The back, sides, and neck are covered with quartered birds eye maple and abalone. The center of the peghead is open, like a window. The solid gold filigree work on the peghead and around the inside of the soundhole was lost wax cast from ink drawings I made on drafting mylar."
Last edited by jim777; 07-23-2024 at 08:27 AM.
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