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Suite ’66: Free EP by Goldenberg & Gore!

suite-66-cover

A free EP from we to thee!

Guitar genius Mark Goldenberg and I recently recorded Suite ’66, a set of improvised duets on four tunes from 1966, in honor of the 50th Anniversary of one of the greatest years in pop music.

We teased this “release” a few months ago with this rehearsal video. The EP features a more developed version of the same tune, plus three others.

Even if you’re not familiar with Mark’s name, you’ve probably heard his playing. Mark has been a leading LA sideman and session player for decades. He’s worked with Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raiit, Waylon Jennings, Chris Isaak, Willie Nelson, Hugh Laurie, Natalie Imbruglia, and most impressively, William Shatner.

Less well known is Mark’s beautiful solo style, which resides at the intersection of rock, classical, and jazz. I was instantly smitten when I first heard Mark play in person at one of Teja Gerken‘s solo guitar events a couple of years ago. Mark’s musicianship flabbergasted me, plus we bonded over the fact that we shared the same teacher, the late Ted Greene. (Though I studied with Ted when I was a teen, so much of his wisdom went over my head. Mark, however, worked with Ted after becoming one of LA’s most respected players, so he absorbed Ted’s insights on a far deeper level.)

Listening to Mark play is sheer musical ecstasy, whether or not I happen to be picking along with him. He’s been one of my greatest musical inspirations of the last few years. (Translation: I’ve ripped him off more times than I can count.)

Listen and download via SoundCloud:

Tech notes: We recorded and mixed this in my basement studio. I’m on the left channel throughout, and Mark’s on the right. (There are no overdubs.) My instruments are a Gretsch Spectra Sonic electric baritone guitar (kindly loaned by Xander Soren), a Veillette Avant Gryphon octave 12-string, and a Taylor 150e 12-string. Mark plays two magnificent guitars: his Kenny Hill classical and a Collings 001MH steel-string.

IMPORTANT: This non-commercial recording is shared as a gift between us and our friends. It may not be reused for any purposes, especially commercial ones. We’re simply inviting you to listen in on our jam session.

Are there any particular guitar solos you’re obsessed with lately?

Here’s one I can’t stop listening to: Jim Hall’s solo on Sonny Rollins’ 1964 recording of “God Bless the Child.”

This may seem like a weird statement, given how much self-indulgent wanking infests this site, but I have a love/hate relationship with guitar solos. (Or more like a hate relationship leavened by occasional stirrings of love.) That’s especially true with singer/songwriter tracks. A good song drags you into its emotional world, and so often it strikes me as emotionally jarring to suspend the drama for a fretwork display. It can be like an ill-timed intermission in a great movie, as if you were watching Citizen Kane or Grand Illusion, and they paused the film two-thirds of the way through to bring out a juggling monkey.

That’s one reason I love this solo so much. Hall just plays beautifully all the way through. He’s like the Loch Ness Monster, undulating continuously just beneath the surface and gently lifting his head above the waterline when his moment comes.

Another is the sheer bravery with which Hall employs silence. Talk about pregnant pauses! It would be fascinating to transcribe only the rhythms of the solo, not even the pitches. The asymmetrical phrases. The late entries. It’s so suspenseful. So poignant. So unpredictable. So frickin’ brilliant.

He's such a genius, I almost feel guilty Photoshopping in a joke guitar. — He’s such a genius, I almost feel guilty Photoshopping in a joke guitar.

Equally amazing is liquid blend of chords and melodies. For many players, that’s a binary distinction: Either you’re soloing, or you’re comping. This is just…music.

But the thing that amazes me most of all, I think, is Hall’s mastery of register. Baroque music scholars sometimes refer to a technique known as “compound melody,” best exemplified in the music of — who else? — J.S. Bach. Compound melodies are melodic lines that imply multi-voice counterpoint, even when they’re strictly single notes. A tune might center in one register, then leap high or low, establishing a beachhead in another register before returning to the original one. It then bounces back and forth between the regions, almost as if two tunes were being played simultaneously on adjacent channels, with the listener flicking back and forth between them.

I’m not sure I’ve explained that coherently. But Hall does it.

Jim Hall’s students (including Bill Frisell, whose playing this track so vividly anticipates) report that he kept a sign inside his guitar case that read “Make musical sense.” For many of us, soloing is about practice, practice, practice, and then when the moment comes, we turn off part of our analytical mind and hope that our instincts and muscle memory huck up something acceptable. But I get the sense that Hall, in pursuit of “musical sense,” never turns off his analytical mind. That’s not to say his approach is cold or scientific—he wears his heart on his sleeve here! But he’s always intelligent and thoughtful.

It’s said that improvisation is spontaneous composition. Sure, sometimes. But it’s rarely this spontaneous, or this composerly.

Gotta listen one more time—BRB.

Yeah, it’s still amazing. 🙂

So what are your current guitar solo obsessions? Any style. Any skill level. Anything that makes you feel intense things.