Preston Reed

The Fourth Workshop

I taught my fourth annual guitar workshop last week. It was the best yet. There was a 14-year-old from Germany, a 17-year-old one from Ireland, a 22-year-old and a 38-year old from England, all converging on the little seaside town of Girvan in southwest Scotland for five days of intensive learning, playing, and growing musically.

Gerrit had come from Germany to learn more of my tunes (he was already playing 15 of them that he had taught himself). Although his English wasn't good, we never had a problem communicating musically. He left playing three more, with corrections on some of the ones he was already playing.

Tim came from the south of England to learn more about the craft of composition. He left with a new composition -- his own -- as well as an expanded toolbox of ideas and approaches for making his music more expressive and interesting.

Mark came over from Dublin after seeing me play a concert there last fall. He left having learned three of my tunes. More importantly, he left with a new awareness of how to use rhythmic accents and control the tempo in his own music. He's coming back next year.

And Matt had first seen me play in Brighton last year. When he came to see me again at a gig in London last fall, he asked me if I teach. I told him about the workshop. He signed up right away.

When he left he told me it had been the best week of his life. He's coming back next year too.

It wasn't all work. We had lunch and dinner together most days, a cookout on the terrace one evening, and a three-hour boat trip around the Ailsa Craig one afternoon. We had many serious conversations on both musical and non-musical subjects. We laughed a lot too.

We got together as a group every day. We also broke off into separate areas where I taught each student individually. As the week progressed my attention was required less and less as each student locked in on the goal he had set for himself.

I spoke about the craft of putting a concert set together, the importance of tempo consistency, strategies and devices for orchestrating a composition, and the concept of multi-voicing.

I spoke about how my music should be viewed as a starting point, a way of learning to think in new ways, and not as an end in itself.

I answered their questions, and asked them questions.

My favorite part of the workshop was the last evening, when the students played for Catherine and me. I had asked them to prepare anything they wanted, whether it had anything to do with what they had been working on during the week or not.

We were treated to some amazing music by some seriously accomplished players. Getting them to play for us at the end was like giving them back to themselves after five days of intense self-challenge, paradigm-shifting, and wood-shedding.

There was a special, added treat in store when Catherine asked Matt, Mark and Gerrit to play "Ladies Night" together. It made me blush with pride. It also sounded damn good.

We took group photos. There was a wonderful, warm, shared feeling in the air.

I was reminded again, as I am each time I teach this workshop, how much I admire the courage, focus, dedication, and stamina of all the students around the world who have come here to Scotland to challenge themselves, to learn new things, and to grow.

They have invested in themselves, and there is no more important investment in life.

Listening to Jaco Pastorius

A few weeks ago, when I was on tour in the south of England, Paul Reynolds gave me a cd to listen to on my drive back up the country. It was Word Of Mouth Revisited  by the Jaco Pastorius Big Band. I absolutely loved it. 

I went out and bought everything I could find with Jaco on it...his epynomous debut recording Jaco Pastorius, his second album Word of Mouth, all the Weather Report cds he is on, an anthology cd set (Punk Jazz) with music he has done with Pat Metheny, Mike Stern, Joni Mitchell and a slew of others, and several live concert cds.

I am now a Jaco fanatic. Why didn't this happen a long time ago?

Ironically, I think it was about listening to the wrong word of mouth.

He had a reputation for being difficult.

He used to tell everyone that he was the greatest bass player in the world. Maybe that didn't come across well.

The thing is, he was. 

And as far as I'm concerned, still is.

As Pat Metheny wrote in the revised liner notes to Jaco's debut album, he changed forever the way the bass is played by all bass players.

He had a short career and a terribly tragic end.

Maybe this has made people wary of checking out his amazing music.

If you have never listened to Jaco, it is time to start.

If you liked what he did with Weather Report, you need to hear him playing his own compositions and arrangements with his own bands.

I never knew until I listened to all the music he has played on that in addition to being a mesmerizingly-talented bass player with impeccable rhythm and phrasing, he was a brilliant composer (check out the lush, tango-inspired, hauntingly romantic and simply exquisite "Three Views Of A Secret" on Word Of Mouth), arranger, producer (he co-produced all the Weather Report cds he was on) and band leader.

I was repeatedly surprised listening to these cds at how tasteful, supportive, and appropriate-to-the-tune Jaco's playing consistently comes across. He posesses the rarest of qualities in a musician: he makes everything he plays on his own, yet he neither gets in the way of the music nor draws (inappropriate) attention to himself. His spectacular virtuosity never interrupts his utterly precise, fluid rhythm. Every tune he plays on is enhanced and energized by his presence, and every musician he plays with is beautifully supported.

I have not read his authorized biography yet (Jaco: The Incredible And Tragic Life Of Jaco Pastorius by Bill Milkowski). I am not in a hurry to.

The bottom line is, when it comes to music, I am not interested in whether someone pissed a lot of people off, had an oversized ego, drug and alcohol problems, mental health problems, or anything else.

Jaco's music says everything I need to know about him. It is inventive, soulful, funky, emotionally complex, and just plain thrilling. He was supremely generous in sharing a brilliant, totally new way of hearing music and rhythm. It is a gift to anyone lucky enough to come aross it.

Listening to his music makes me feel like I know him.  I have the greatest respect for him.

My music used in an Andrew Wyeth slideshow

A little while ago I received an e-mail from a photographer who works for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His name was Chip Fox and he was asking permission to use one of my tunes for two online slideshows of photographs "visually exploring the two sites where Andrew Wyeth did the majority of his paintings"

The project is meant to accompany a retrospective exhibit of Wyeth's work now happening at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Andrew Wyeth is one of  America's all-time greatest painters. I have always admired his work. I said yes immediately.

The tune he was interested in using was "Franzl's Saw". There are two versions of "Franzl's Saw" available, an electric version from my latest album History of Now, and an acoustic version, performed on a National steel guitar. He wanted to use the acoustic version, from my album Metal.

The results are stupendous.

Chip is a talented photographer who has obviously thought carefully about his music.

Each show runs the length of "Franzl's Saw" (around six minutes) and includes photos, text, and quotes from Wyeth about his life and work.

Each show is beautifully and tastefully produced, echoing the stark simplicity and desolate realism of Wyeth's paintings.

Eerie, atmospheric, emotionally moving, they transport you instantly into another world.

I got chills more than once.

Thank you Chip. I am honored.

Multimedia Slideshow

Take twelve minutes to visit the world of Andrew Wyeth. You won't regret it.

You can e-mail Chip Fox at cfox@phillynews.com

The wrong trousers: a travel story

I decided it was time to wear those moleskin trousers I'd been avoiding. I had paid a lot for them at a trendy shop several months earlier. Slightly dressier than jeans, but still not "dressy", they might be just the thing for the trip I was about to take.

My wife Catherine and I were going to Frankfurt to attend a huge music trade show called the Musikmesse. We would be taking an evening flight from Glasgow on Ryan Air.

If you've flown Ryan Air to Frankfurt before, you know that it doesn't take you to Frankfurt at all, but rather to a place in the middle of nowhere called Hahn, after which you get on a bus for a two-hour ride to Frankfurt. When the bus finally arrives in Frankfurt it stops on a side street at the back of the central train station. At 1:40am it doesn't feel like a terribly safe place to hang around.

The contact who was supposed to pick us up wasn't there. We tried calling him and his phone was switched off.

We tried the hotel he had booked us into but there was no answer.

We decided to get a taxi to the hotel.

A taxi pulled up driven by a young, Middle-Eastern-looking driver. His English was not good and he didn't know the hotel, but it came up when he punched it into his GPS.

It was several miles outside the city center in a residential neighborhood.

When we arrived the hotel sign was dark and the reception office was closed for the night. There was no one waiting for us, no night staff around, and no emergency number to call.

Our contact was still not answering his phone.

Catherine suggested we take the taxi back into town to the Marriott hotel -- a towering Frankfurt landmark. If our contact was out looking for us, this would be an easy place for him to find. There would also be night staff available to help us.

We got back into the taxi and I told the driver to take us to the Marriott.

When we pulled up to front of the hotel, I grabbed my wallet, paid the driver, got a reciept, and got out of the cab. We said goodbye and he drove off.

We stood beside the entrance of the hotel with our bags, feeling tired and shaken about the closed hotel and our no-show contact. A hotel room would be impossible to come by at this hour of the night, unless by some miracle the Marriott had a room available, which, if they did, would be exhorbitantly priced.

Still, it might be our only option.

We made a contingency plan: while continuing to try to reach our contact, we would see if they had any rooms.

I checked for my wallet before heading inside. It was gone.

Panicking, I checked all my pockets. No wallet anywhere.

It was not on the ground where I had exited the taxi.

I must have missed the slippery back pocket of my trousers while putting it back after paying the driver. It was now sitting on the back seat of the cab.

No wallet. No cash. No credit card to pay for a room. No contact to help us.

Fuck. I hate these trousers.

I went into the the hotel and asked the concierge for help. His name was  Gidde. He asked questions and made calls. He never asked me if I was a guest, which I appreciate.

Did I know the name of the cab company?

No.

Did I get a reciept with their name on it?

Yeah. It's in the wallet.

Was it a Mercedes? (This would determine whether it was one of the two main cab companies)

I think so.

Did I remember anything else?

I had noticed a metal plaque on the dashboard as I was leaving the cab. I thought it read "Munawar Anwar".

There was no driver named Munawar Anwar at either of the two main cab companies.

All that was left to do was to call the cab companies back in the morning and see if someone had turned in a wallet. And report it to the police if that didn't work.

I went back outside to give Catherine the update.

She had just gotten through to our contact. He had left his phone charging in his room while coming to pick us up at the train station. He had just gotten back to the hotel after driving all over town looking for us (without his phone).

He would be there shortly to pick us up.

There was a measured feeling of relief. I would deal with the missing wallet in the morning after getting some sleep.

I went back in and gave the concierge our mobile number in case the driver brought the wallet back to the Marriott. He took down the info. I went back outside.

Catherine was pointing and smiling.

"I think it's him."

It was our cab driver. He pulled to a stop at the front door. I rushed up to the him.

"Do you have my wallet?" I said.

He smiled, reached beside him, stepped out of the cab, and handed me my wallet.

I hugged him. He didn't seem to mind.

He said in broken English that he had noticed it on the back seat after dropping us off and kept it safe. He had brought it back as soon as he could.

I handed him a twenty euro note, which he did not refuse. We thanked him over and over and he drove off, smiling and waving.

A closer inspection revealed that everything was there. I pulled out the receipt I had gotten earlier.

His name was actually Munawar Ahmed. I had been close.

I went back in and told Gidde that the driver had returned the wallet. I shook his hand and thanked him for his help.

Our contact picked us up a minute later and took us to our hotel.

If you are ever in Frankfurt and need a cab with an honest driver, contact:

Munawar Ahmed Taxibetrieb, Breitenbachstrasse 1, 60487 Frankfurt am
Main, Germany, Tel. 01625089308.

I will be avoiding moleskin trousers in the future. They're not worth it.

Where I Live

I live in a seaside town on the southwest coast of Scotland called Girvan.

It's a nice to see it appear between the hills as I wind my way home at the end of a tour. The locals may take it for granted, but as an American from upstate New York I find it hard not to be continually awed by the scenery here.

No matter what direction you approach Girvan from you get a spectacular view of the Firth of Clyde (the waterway where the Clyde River opens up to the Irish Sea), the headlands jutting out into the water, and the Isle of Arran (called the "Sleeping Giant" by locals...on a clear day it really does look like a giant Disney dwarf lying on its back having a peaceful snooze).

But most spectacular of all is the Ailsa Craig (called Paddy's Milestone by the Irish across the water) sitting in the middle of everything nine and a half miles out...a giant, almost impossibly perfect-looking volcanic granite mound. It is now a bird sanctuary with one of the largest populations of gannets in the world. The sunsets over the Ailsa Craig are unreal.

It has become a tradition during my summer workshops to take my students out to the Ailsa on a local boat. While there's nothing especially guitaristic about these jaunts, a certain spiritual feeling seems to take hold of everyone.

The surrounding area -- the countryside of South Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway -- offers seemingly endless sightseeing and history. Robert Burns and Robert the Bruce are the biggest names around here.

There's Culzean (pronounced "Killane"...like so many Gaelic names in this part of the world, you could never figure out how to pronounce it from the way it's spelt) Castle where Eisenhower resided during the latter years of WWII and is said to have planned the D-Day invasion.

There are the ruins Crossraguel Abbey along the road to Maybole, the Castle Kennedy gardens -- with the finest walled garden I've seen -- a forty-minute drive south, the artist town of Kirkcudbright (pronounced "Ker-coo-bree") still further south, and -- my favourite one-hour walk -- the Wood of Cree nature reserve on the way to Newton Stewart.

There's the Turnberry hotel and golf course five miles up the road, which will be hosting the 138^th Open Championship in 2009.

Back in town, there's the Girvan Bowling Club, tucked away behind the North Parrish Church, with its four beautifully coiffed outdoor greens.

And there are lots of sheep. Everywhere.

If you want to see more of the coastline, you can take a drive north on the coast road to Ayr (check out the Electric Brae...one of the oddest things to experience in a car...the illusion that you are being towed uphill by an invisible magnet), or south on the A77. You won't miss fantastic scenery in either direction.

A trip around the Islands and local ports on the Waverley, the world's last remaining ocean-going paddle steamer, is a must-do.

I was surprised by the Waverley's speed and robustness the first time I rode on it. Because of the designation "paddle steamer" I had in mind of a sort of easy-going, riverboat-type experience. While capable of placid cruising in and out of ports -- or a gentle, gannet-filled circling of the Ailsa -- this vessel is no slouch on the open water.  The massive engine below decks, which you are welcome to observe up close if so inclined, its giant pistons pounding away at centre drive-axle, make the whole boat throb. It goes like the wind.

I ride my mountain bike along the seafront promenade and up around the hills most evenings. I often stop at the end of the pier at the mouth of the harbour and look out to the Ailsa and Arran , then back at Girvan, and finally at the sheep-dotted Carrick hills behind.

I still can't believe I live here.

Why I play seven guitars

When I first moved to the U.K. five years ago I was playing one guitar exclusively -- my custom-made Ovation Adamas longneck. I wrote lots of music on it and had been performing all over the world with it for years.

I wrote music in different styles on this guitar -- percussive rock tunes like "Tractor Pull", jazz ballads like "First Summer Without You", bluesy tunes like "Lost Time", and outright drum compositions like "Rainmaker".

But then over the past several years’ things started to change. I started to open up my thinking. Now I play seven different guitars in my concerts, and I'm having a blast.

What I discovered is that the more instruments I play during a show, the more fun I have and the more entertaining the show becomes for the audience. With the addition of all these new instruments and their associated sounds I am able to write in more different styles, and show more of what I can do musically.

I have always loved all kinds of music, from rock to jazz to blues to classical to country to bluegrass...and on it goes.

Now I can pick up the classical guitar and play a sensitive ballad like "False Spring" or "Woman In The Tower".

I can pick up the 12-string and play the triumphant "Overture".

I can grab the archtop jazz guitar -- with that soft, classic Wes Montgomery sound -- and play "Chord Melody".

I have even re-assigned a few tunes originally written on acoustic guitar (e.g. "Instrument Landing") to one of these new instruments because they literally take on a new life.

My repertoire keeps growing in new directions.

Every time I pick up a new guitar, audiences hear a new Preston.

.

Watch this space for what's coming next.

Thoughts on composing music

I am a guitarist. I am also a composer. I wrote my first composition on guitar when I was eight years old.

I have always heard and created music inside my head -- not guitar music, but multi-voiced band and orchestral music. Wanting to find and use those sounds on the guitar has led me to invent new ways of playing the instrument.

The music I create on the guitar leads to technical innovations, and the technical innovations spur further creativity.

I have done quite a bit of exploring of guitars and tunings. Every guitar and every tuning has a different personality, and certain personalities suggest certain compositional directions. Pursuing those directions has led to many new compositions and much creative evolution.

You could say that my music over the past thirty-five years has been the result of a dialogue between what I have heard in my head and what I have heard from the guitar. Sometimes I apply my will to a situation, other times the guitar speaks first, and I answer. Either way, one of the wonderful things about composing on the guitar is that I have often gotten back more than I expected.

I would like to talk about some of the elements that contribute to an effective composition, and my composing process.

A composition of any kind must have something to say beyond the instrumentation, techniques and conventions it employs. It must evolve in some way, whether the composition is one minute long or twenty minutes long. It must tell a story of some kind.  This story might emphasize the harmonic/melodic, the rhythmical, the textural, the spacey/moody/ambient, or a combination of any of these at different points, but there needs to be a theme proposed, developed, ventured away from, and returned to in such a way that, as a listener, you both recognise the theme and understand it in a new way.

This return to the theme need not always be literal. It can be conceptual, i.e. not included in the composition but still finished in the mind the listener.

The first thing I look for in creating a composition is an essential, interesting idea. Finding this idea is the most important task.  Developing it is the second. Bringing everything home the right way -- fulfilling the promise of the idea -- is the third.

This core idea need not be melodic. It can be about any kind of sonic event or sequence of events -- a harmonic progression, a percussive groove, a bassline, a series of textures. It can be two or more improbable sounds that, in and of themselves, are of no great interest but -- pitted against each other -- create an entirely new issue.

It can be an involved sequence of pitches and textures, or it can be something incredibly simple. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most interesting.

It might be called a motif, a melody, a riff, a groove, or a theme. Whatever you decide to call it, it will be the anchor for all later development, the lens through which everything is brought into focus, and, ultimately, the justification for all the activity.

In my composition "Ladies Night", the core idea is a four-bar percussive funk groove that, while possessing minimal melodic content, propels everything forward rhythmically.

In "Love In The Old Country" the core is an Old Europe-style rubato melody that conjures up images of cafe life in an earlier, simpler time. Later developments in the tune expand upon this initial premise.

A composition can be made up of two or more smaller compositions that balance each other in such a way as to form a larger work. In the case of my tune "Franzl's Saw" the unifying theme of the two very different parts is the eerie, spacey texture of the slide.

An instrument can suggest its own composition, especially when you play it for the first time. When T-Bone Wolk, the bass player at a recording session I was doing several years ago, asked me to try out his electric baritone guitar, I instantly composed "Valhalla".

Some ideas will show me, with very little effort, how they want to be developed, what context(s) to present them in, what secondary ideas(s) to balance against them, and how to bring it all home.

Some ideas won't tell me anything, but refuse to go away. It often pays to spend time with an idea to discover its best use, since understanding its particular strength will usually show you what to do with it. But not always. An idea can hang around for years before suddenly clicking into place as the long-lost missing piece in another composition.

Lots of experimentation may be called for. Time away from the idea may be the quickest way to fulfil it.

An idea can be so "good" -- as in, so versatile -- it could be used in multiple contexts. This means a choice will have to be made before you can move forward with the composition. I find this to be one of the toughest parts of composing -- having to choose among several conflicting directions for an idea.

Once an idea is decided upon, it must be developed. What is most important at this stage is to clear the way for it, to make sure everything around it supports the story being told. Too many secondary ideas, however clever or worthy they may be in their own right, will clutter and weaken a composition.

I save these for future tunes.

One way to develop a theme is to repeat it using varied and progressively more dynamic techniques and textures.

The theme of my composition "Crossing Open Water" is a fingerpicking pattern in seven-eight time that keeps returning in successively more dynamic versions, climaxing in a percussive slap-bass explosion, and finally appearing as a coda in slightly changed form.

Another way to develop a theme is to contrast it with something very different that increases the tension of the system, and then bring it back.

"Slap Funk" begins with a percussion-filled theme and development, but then goes into a fingerpicking bridge in the middle that builds up dynamically with the aid of strumming, and then back to theme.

I have found that writing solo guitar music involves discovering what a composition is trying to say, and then making full, imaginative use of everything available -- both within myself and on the instrument -- to say it, while all the time observing the principles of good composing.

It means constantly stepping back and looking at what is emerging from the tune.

It means that where it may be appropriate to be edgy and outrageous in one situation, a more traditional approach may be needed in another.

As with any creative activity, composing music requires that you trust yourself. An understanding of music theory and a lot of playing skill can be a good starting point, but what an idea means to you -- how it makes you feel and what you ultimately say with it -- can be the only real criterion of its validity.

Walter Piston wrote, in his introduction to Harmony, that music theory follows the common practice of composers over the last several hundred years. I believe that common practice and the creations of others will never show you how to create your own, living music. You must find your own ideas, decide where they are going, develop them boldly, and believe in the choices you make along the way.

My own history with the guitar has shown me that there are no rules of guitar playing, only the requirements of the composition I happen to be writing. Through the years I have trusted myself to invent my own techniques and approaches while making full use of conventional methods wherever needed.

The result of a successful composition should be satisfying,  entertaining, involving, and, on some level, edifying, whether it be long or short, simple or complicated, easy to listen to or not. Some compositions require multiple listenings to digest and enjoy. Some are instantly pleasing. But there will always be something that feels right -- natural, organic, alive -- about a good composition.

A good composition gives back energy. It continues to evolve inside the listener over time.