The Alternative Acoustic Podcast
A deep dive into acoustic artistry, with the guitarists who play their own way. Hear the stories behind their innovative guitar playing and receive exclusive tips and tricks to enhance your playing and creativity.
The Alternative Acoustic Podcast
Episode 15 - Jon Gomm Bootcamp - Ft Pino Forastiere and more
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Head to Alternativeacousticpodcast.com for an accompanying lesson and more....This Episode was recorded at the Jon Gomm Bootcamp 2026. A huge thanks to Rob Barnaville and Mark Morgan for the epic work on the live audio. This episode was brought to you by Ibanez UK.
Boot Camp Setup And Three Sections
SPEAKER_15This episode was recorded at the 2026 John Gon Boot Camp. It's divided into three, frankly, fantastic sections. In the first section, we're treated to a conversation with Pino Forestrere. He plays some fragments of his pieces and gives us an insight into his incredible sonic world. The second section was recorded in front of a live audience. It was a conversation with John Gomm. The original idea was to focus around his fantastic signature Ibanez Acoustic. It really turned into so much more than that. Somewhere between inspiration and pure comedy. The final section we hear from a handful of inspiring attendees of the boot camp, and you'll hear a collection of performances from them too. You'll get to experience a real rich tapestry of different approaches to acoustic guitar playing. Now I had the pleasure of teaching and performing at the John Gon Boot Camp this year, and I managed to hang on for another day as well to record parts of this podcast. And I'm really, really so grateful to have had the opportunity to do that because it was a really inspiring couple of days in the company of some really fantastic people. Recording and capturing these conversations makes me feel like this podcast is not just for entertainment, it's also kind of an archive, a snapshot of the acoustic guitar, and an insight into different approaches to it. And of course, if you head over to alternativeacousticpodcast.com, you will also find an accompanying lesson that I've created inspired by my time at the John Gon Boot Camp, very much focused on percussive playing. I hope you enjoy that, and I hope you enjoy the episode. Amazing.
Pino Forestrere And Hearing Sound First
SPEAKER_15Okay. Um Pino.
SPEAKER_01Greece.
SPEAKER_15Thank you for doing this.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for inviting me.
SPEAKER_15Um you are one of my favorite musicians. Thank you. And your your touch is just so goddamn beautiful. And in a very short period of time, I would love to for listeners to hear some of what I find so beautiful and maybe to understand how your mind works. We got 15 minutes.
SPEAKER_01So um the the I I need to think the sound is uh in your mind. And uh I think I have uh in my in my mind exactly this the sound I want. And I I I work a lot to find this sound because uh if you have sound things in your mind is i is not in the reality world, it's in your mind. So you need to work to understand how you can now make this sound in in the real life. So I study and practice the right hand specially, and I found, I think I found my personal sound. Um that's that that's it. See, it's just work, work, work, work and work and follow your sound, your personal sound. If you have one. I think I have a personal sound in my mind, and I work a lot of time, I work a lot of time to find the sound who I have in my mind.
SPEAKER_15Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So you have a real clear absolutely, absolutely clear. When I was young, I I I had the idea of this of the sounds, of the sounds generally speaking, and the sound of the guitar. And I've I've just followed the now my mind, um trying to search this sound in my i i in my spirit and after that in my hands.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01No, because you you have your sound in your mind and after that you you need to move the sound from your mind to your finger. This is hard. This is hard.
SPEAKER_15And what do you think is if you could play something that showed your sound, how would you show it? Yeah, even just a little small sub.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Just a piece of piece.
SPEAKER_15A piece of piece. I mean, that's otherworldly. That's stunning. Um Thank you. Yeah, it's just immensely beautiful.
Designing A Personal Orchestra Guitar
SPEAKER_15Um how let's talk about your guitar, because for people because it be mainly people are gonna be just listening to this, right?
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_15So they're gonna be also thinking, well, how was that sort of really top sound? So we could we describe a little bit about that and how this came about?
SPEAKER_01Basically, this is an heart guitar.
SPEAKER_15Okay.
SPEAKER_01Uh, but this is my personal heart guitar. Because I had the bass here, high strings here, and this is the sound of the percussive orchestra. I I I think this like a my personal orchestra. I have the high repister here, I have the guitar here with the counterpoint and blah blah blah blah. Bass, very bass, and this kind of sound.
SPEAKER_15Wow, yeah, let's let's hear that. So that's kind of like a kalimba.
SPEAKER_00Yes, like a kalimba. This is not exactly the kalimba can play can play.
SPEAKER_15Because he's playing the other strings as well. I mean, it's magical.
SPEAKER_01Did you create it yourself? Yeah. I I I design all all of this stuff on the paper. So I I'm not a looter, but I have a friend of mine who is a looter, Regini Davide. And uh we we start with a prototype uh maybe five years ago, trying to build all of this stuff. And after a couple of years of experiment, two or three years of experiment, we decide, okay, eight string ears, five string ears, guitar, you know, kalimba, all percussive, here this this kind of sound, and after that he building all of this in one year maybe. And uh and and so now I have the personal orchestra on my hands and this is good because I can play a lot of different sounds you know guitar and other stuff. And um I'm happy about that. I'm happy about that too. And yeah, so this guitar is uh is basically um the guitar. I play the guitars, you know, like a guitar, but also I can have other opportunity to explore the sounds around me. And uh this is my idea uh about the music. I I need to capture the sound, transfer the the sounds on my guitar, and I play the sound while I listen to my guitar. And if I have this, if I have this, if I have this, if I have this, I can organize the sounds while I listen around me.
SPEAKER_15Could you show something that brings in those other elements within the because in the first example, which was okay beautiful, but we heard the sort of sympathetic higher strings, but to sort of hear those other bits? It's just like uh you you're creating a a world.
SPEAKER_01I I try to create a world and um sometimes this world is clear, uh other times this world is in confusion, um other times a mess. But uh it is exactly like the life is. No, sometimes it's good are are good, other days uh it's not okay. But I I I love to try to to live with these strange things. Because I I uh actually today we have this very strange life full of contradiction, full of of noises, no rumors, and uh it's important to me to try the way to to to live together with the mess who we have around of us. Through through the music, through all these kind of sounds I think is possible, and I to try to do this. I I don't know if I am able, but I try. I think you're doing it, man.
SPEAKER_15Thank you. That was honestly the most sort of profound two minutes of playing I've ever heard. Thank you. Genuinely, thank you.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Shall we do it? Shall we do it? Good
Live Q&A With John Gomm Begins
SPEAKER_02morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_06Um morning, Mr.
SPEAKER_02Gom. Um, yeah, so as I told you this morning, we're gonna do a bit of a QA this morning, and uh it's kind of uh Chris is the alternative acoustic podcast which he um hosts and presents and publishes publishes. So he's um we're gonna do a little kind of interview thing with some questions from you, maybe. Um but Chris is in charge and I'm entirely happy about that.
SPEAKER_15It's going great, it's going great, man. It's going great. I'm I'm hosting brilliantly. But it's like a power struggle that I enjoy. All right, let's do it. So I uh the the the main idea I think behind this is to um unpack that's like a therapy word, isn't it? Um John's signature instrument and understand a little bit about it. Why some of you have one anyway, don't you? Yeah, interesting. Yeah, we got a few.
SPEAKER_02I've seen a few hanging around the guitar camp. I've seen I don't know if I've seen a has anyone got a JGM 10? Oh and who has a five? You have a five, but you don't have it with you. Yeah. I'm sure I've seen more than one now. Oh yeah, okay. So yeah. There's a couple hanging around.
SPEAKER_21I upgraded. There's a couple hanging around.
SPEAKER_15Fantastic. So they got left-handed or something. Do they not know? I mean, these are all things that we're gonna have to. This is this is the unpacking, the unraveling. Um
How The Signature Ibanez Started
SPEAKER_15so I think, John, to be quite honest, if I ask you the very, very simplistic question of how it even came about, would be wonderful.
SPEAKER_02Okay, it's quite funny and typically me how it came about. So I was at a I was at a guitar show, a trade show called Guitar Summit in Germany. And I play a lot of acoustic guitars and it's um and it's nice and everything. But I very rarely get my electric guitars out at home. I used to love playing electric guitar all the time. And my favorite brand of electric guitars was ibernet guitars when I was a kid because I liked Joe Satriani and Steve Vai and Paul Gilbert and John Petrucci and Jennifer Patton and Frank Gambali and all these people. I used to get my local guitar store to get an extra copy of the Ibanez catalogue each six months when it or year when it came out. And I take one home and cut out the pictures, and it's really tragic. So when I go to a when I go to a guitar show, I'll often gravitate to the um Ibanez stand and play all the guitars I wished I owned when I was a kid, like the Joe Satriani model and stuff. So I was there shredding on a JS 10 or something at the guitar summit beef, and um one of the guys came over to me and said, Oh, John, um, would you like to try one of our acoustic guitars? I said, No, I'm fine, I'm having fun with this. No, leave me alone.
SPEAKER_16Leave me alone. Pass me the catalogue.
SPEAKER_02Um and he said, But have you tried them? And I said, Yeah, funnily enough, you guys uh sent me, sent me one um a couple of years ago to try, but I just didn't, it wasn't really for me, I didn't really like it. And he said, Oh, why not? And I just had this little moment in my head where I thought, I could just say, Well, it's just not I just wasn't to my taste, or I could actually tell him what was wrong with it. So I then spent about 10 minutes berating this poor man about everything Ibanez had done wrong with their guitar design, and what Ibanez, as a progressive builder who always makes guitars which are pushing the boundaries and also making it possible for shredders on electric guitar to play things you can't play on a regular strat, so you have to get the super strat. And this is what you should be doing for modern guitarists. And I explained all this to them. And he said, All right, and then just walked away. And then a couple of weeks later, I got an email from Japan saying, John, yeah, we heard all of your ideas, they've written them all down, and then uh we'd would like you to design a guitar with us, for us. And uh that's how it started.
SPEAKER_15That's fantastic. I didn't expect such a beautiful, beautifully crafted and comedic story. So what were those problems then? What were they let's let's start with the negatives. What were the things that and was it just because you say like Ivan has been progressive? Was it just because you thought they should be doing that? Or are these like fundamental acoustic guitar problems?
SPEAKER_02It was just something that's missing, really. So um if so all my peers play very expensive Luthia, handmade luthia-made guitars, which sound different to guitars like a Martin or a Gibson or those kind of derivative guitars that you can buy in a guitar store. Um but a Loudoun, which is a very beautiful guitar, is like the cheapest guitar that any of my peers play. You know, it costs like even maybe, I don't know how much Thomas's Loudoun is, like four, four grand. Six, okay. But Andy Andy, my friend Andy McKee, his greenfield is like 25 grand, you know. And wait five years. Yeah, and wait five years, you know. And I I've played all these beautifully made, incredible guitars, and they're absolutely unbelievable. And the gulf in it's but it's not just because they're better made, it's because the design has progressed since the Martin Gibson, etc. derivatives. It's a different beast, isn't it? It is, they're more playable, they have a completely different sound, they have different bracing, they have different neck shapes, neck widths, so then they have more bass and more treble, less kind of.
SPEAKER_15It's kind of nice to imagine the aesthetic of Poptolin recordings being played on a greenfield or something. It's just it would just be better. It wouldn't be even if somebody else was singing them Chris. We were having this conversation last night, but it would it wouldn't work, would it? It wouldn't it that all those low all those complex frequencies wouldn't necessarily fit into that aesthetic.
SPEAKER_02Or I don't I don't know, but those guitars aren't going anywhere. It's not like I want to change what the acoustic guitar is, I just want to change what is a options there are for people who want to do different things, you know. So um yeah, I mean that would that was the that was the problem really that needed fixing. In my opinion.
SPEAKER_15Okay. Okay, and
Pickups For Maximum Sonic Options
SPEAKER_15pickups, what about that though, surely? That's uh the technical.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so so there's the the guitar itself, there's that stuff. So there's like all the body shape, the bracing pattern, the neck length, neck width, the fret material, the wood the woods that are used, um, all kinds of different stuff that's different on this guitar than it is on like any other uh guitar you can just buy off off the shelf, if you know what I mean. Um but then the pickup system is a separate thing almost really. And because that's not about the acoustic sound of the instrument, I mean it has something to do with it, but surprisingly little. And my approach to pickups is to have as many sounds being captured by the pickups as possible. So that you can then you then have all of those sounds available to you in your amplification system, your mixer, your amp, your um door, or whatever. It doesn't necessarily mean that when you when you plug them all in and just turn them all up to the same volume and have them you know mixed evenly, it's gonna sound exactly how you want. Or perfect. It's not a simple plug it in and play system. It's more, okay, here's all your different options, and you can now do anything with those with those sources. And that's the um that's the idea. So it has three pickups, the magnetic pickup does the strings, and what I call the note delivery, the data delivery, because it's all very well having a beautiful, pretty acoustic guitar sound. But I think it's really important you can hear the fucking notes that are being played as well. And if it's all air and sparkle and sub-y bass and no mid-range and no directness, you can't hear the melody somebody's playing very well. And I want that, it's important. And I want sustain, even if it's artificial, which is what a magnetic pickup gives you. And it has a microphone inside there for turned up now so it can pick up everything from the body, and then it has a transducer stuck to the wood under the bridge. How can I not turn off my okay? Sorry for the reverb on your podcast then. It has uh it has um a transducer stuck inside, which gives you all this deep subby bass stuff because a transducer is like doing this on your microphone, okay. It's just like going right up to your microphone, and it and it's like maximum proximity effect, it's literally touching the thing that's vibrating. So it's incredibly sensitive and will give you a ridiculous amount of low frequencies. Um, so with those three things, and then being able to output them separately from the guitar if you want to, you can then get just unlimited, really sonic possibilities, which sounds a little bit like a what Gillette would say about pickups.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, I can see that in the animal. Now with three sources, yeah. I think it's game changing. So I I I I don't know if I I said this story uh when we first chatted on the first podcast, anyway. But I'll do it again. Um I remember meeting you at Shin's, which we worked out was like maybe 15 years ago or something horrific like that. And uh you I thought, wow, you got an amazing live sound. And I was like, John, John, what's your secret? And she said, Unlimited sonic possibilities. You said, Well, I you know, I have my pickup split into two, and I have the mic, and then I have the and you know, you almost don't have a hope in hell of getting it that big without those two, and then I was like, Oh wow, okay. And I then I I did that and it opened this whole new world. So I attribute that sort of technology and way of thinking to you. How did you arrive at it? Did you uh were there other guys? That's where your question's going.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so it's yeah, no, so there's a there's a book by Michael Hedges, or about Michael Hedges and by Michael Hedges called Rhythm, sonority and silence, which is a book of transcriptions, advice, stories, but also a book explaining his Did he write it? Did he Yeah, I think so. He did, right? He wrote all of the text in there.
SPEAKER_24John Sadcraft, didn't?
SPEAKER_02Didn't Hedges write the text? Is it in the first person? I've not read it for such a long time. But anyway, he explains his pickup system and his amplification, what it what he's trying to achieve. I already knew a lot of that stuff from So he was doing that, was he? Was he splitting it? Yeah, so he had two pickups inside his guitar, which were really weird boutique pickups. I mean I have, but I own both of them. I I have a drawer full of acoustic guitar pickups of all kinds, and um yeah, so he was using them for different things, and he would put only puts he liked kind of a chorus modulation effect, like a detune modulation effect on his guitar, but he'd only put it on one of the pickups, for example, not the other. Because he didn't want it on the bottom end, he just wanted it on the sparkly stuff. So there's lots of and his e he would carry around a parametric EQ rack, really, stereo one as well. So it's like he was absolute audiophile, and his rider says, Um when you're doing sound for Michael Hedges, don't assume that you're doing it a sound for a folk acoustic artist. More think of it as like you're doing sound for a rock band, okay? Because they don't want to turn up and they've not bothered to bring the subs, you know. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_15Oh, how wonderful. I need I need to put that in my tech, right? Because that that is there's so many that situation. Like, oh, you're sorry, you're just plugging in the guitar on you, mate. No, no, no. There's a whole world of pain coming your way.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, amazing.
SPEAKER_15Okay, so that's a hedges thing. That's that's really, really, really cool to know. Okay, so we've discussed techie stuff. What about physical elements within the guitar, like backtracking a little bit that are really
Asymmetry And Ergonomic Body Design
SPEAKER_15unique instruments?
SPEAKER_02So, my the body shape is a thing. So it's my favorite thing about the body shape is it's that it's not symmetrical. You can see it on this one now. You know, this is the time. Let's have a look at this guy. So I can hold for you, mate. I'm cool, so it'll be okay.
unknownI mean yeah.
SPEAKER_02This is Marvin, by the way. This one's called Marvin. How many do you have? Well, I had 31 guitars at one point. I never used to have that many guitars, but then I, since working with Ibernets, they give me guitars, electric guitars, bass, and stuff. And I just have all these JGMs, loads of which are prototypes, or spares, or whatever. So I but I have um Marvin and Colin are my two main JGMs that I actually play. Marvin. Everything has to have a double meaning, so for me. So Marvin is named after um Hank Marvin, one of the greatest, most important guitar players ever in the history of guitar, one of my favourite guitar players ever. But also Marvin, the paranoid android. And Colin is named after my old band mate, Colin, in my country and western line dancing band when I was a teenager. We obviously need to unpack that as well. It was Colin's band, not my band, but you know, we've all got to make money. And um, but Colin is also there's another android in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who is the anti-Marvin, who is irrepressibly cheerful. I think Ford Prefect ends up killing because he's so annoying, called Colin, the cheerful android. So yeah, this is Marvin. But um, this object is the first JGM.
SPEAKER_15But I don't know if it says anything, is I think body shape, then Joe.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, I sent concept drawings to them, but they were very much concept drawings. I'm not a luthier or an engineer, but is this kind of very good at drawing then? I suppose so, but I'm not very good at drawing neatly or correctly. But it's um yeah, so one of the things that I love about uh the guitar is the asymmetrical body shape. So I want a big guitar because I like a big sound. I'm a big long arms and stuff, but I want a big sound, but I don't want it to be so difficult to a problem with big louding guitars, which I played before, that a lot of people have, is reaching up over this the top of it. It's so big. If your arms are a bit littler, it's too big. So this bit is shrunk and squished this way, and it's made up for by being fatter and deeper on this end. So it's still the same size overall, but it's more ergonomic. And it's the same here, like this bit is bigger and this bit is smaller. So it's it's all wonky, it's like it's like it's melted a little bit, like a like a Stratocaster as a and it's funny because I had to do a lot of checking as physics, because a guitar, an acoustic guitar, is big circle, little circle. That's the shape of an acoustic guitar or classical guitar, all of them. So if I'm gonna change that, is it gonna still work, you know? So I did a load of research on it. There's a guy who wrote his PhD building snare drums that were not circular. So he built hexagonal ones, he built uh kidney bean-shaped ones, or just just different shapes and to check how they sounded. And what it does is it changed what's called the wolf note or the harmonic note, which is the very strong note. So when you hit a snare, it's got a pitch, it's got a frequency, right? It's the same with guitars, um, and violins, and in violins, they insert a little bolsawood rod inside the violin to kill that dominant tone. I know I know so much random shit about luthier. So it does that. It doesn't, it doesn't really matter. If anything, it lessens how strong that one overriding resonant frequency, the mid-range frequency that might feed back when you plug it in, for example. Yeah. But it lessens it by a tiny amount that you couldn't even notice. Anyway, but I love the fact that it's asymmetrical. I love the fact that the bridge is offset and it's not straight, it's wonky like that, which is just to give you a bit more room here. I see because the only thing I like about fanfret guitars is that the bridge is angled. No offense, I just don't like playing them. So it's just um, yeah, so that's one thing that we did. But but this is cool because you see it doesn't have the head headstock that I designed yet, because they hadn't had enough internal meetings at Ibanez HQ to see if my headstock that I'd drawn was acceptable or not. In the end it was, thankfully. But um, yeah, this is the first one they brought. So it's the correct scale length, which is slightly longer than a regular guitar. Very slightly, very, very slightly.
SPEAKER_15Why? Why is that?
SPEAKER_02Get nicer, deep fundamentals on the lowest notes. Okay. This kind of piano bass. That like Michael Greenfield has a slightly longer scale length. Um Vlad, who's the Canadian luthier that Eric Monglan uses? Yeah, Stefan Schwartz, he uses a slightly longer scale length. Yeah, just a little longer. It just gives you this kind of deeper fundamental on the bottom. If you find the strings are too tight, you just tune down a bit, you know. But it's I I've never noticed. And um, so it has that, the body shape, the bridge is correct, but the bracing isn't even correct. And obviously you can see it. There's no the wood is not correct. This is mahogany and just regular spruce, and it has no, it's just got a plastic rosette because we haven't designed one yet. It doesn't have any binding or anything else. Yeah, anyone's pretty cool. I kind of want to look at this. Vlad, you look at it, man. If anyone wants to look at it, it's fine. Don't break it, but I'm not super precious about it.
SPEAKER_15We were you happy when it sort of came in the place we like.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, all it's not like the sound. I I was the trick, those strings have not been changed since they gave that to me in like 2020 or something or something. So is it your strength? 68. Yeah, I think so. But feel free to give it a tune, you know. But I I because John, I I'm surprised how good it sounded. Sorry to answer your question, but um, but I was what was important was the the shape being, you know, did it feel right? Could you actually play this? Did it feel good? And and I was so nervous, I was so nervous. These eight guys flew over from Japan to Birmingham and I came to meet them to show me this get this guitar. And I was like, this is so much feels like so much pressure. So much pressure. Sorry, mate, it's shit. And then I I finally I was really nervous, and they gave me the guitar, and it and I they all went very quiet, and I sat and I I played it a little bit, feeling very nervous, honestly, about how I was playing, you know. Do I sound good? Because that's what we do, right? That's how we feel. And then I looked up at them and I realized, holy shit, they're terrified of what I'm gonna say. Like, there's so much writing on my reaction for them. And I said, It's amazing, I love it. And they were like, Oh my god, you know, and I suddenly realized that it was them who were nervous. It was really weird. Yeah, anyway.
SPEAKER_22Amazing. There is a difference between your debt and this debug, like uh uh.
SPEAKER_02Hey Vlad, have a mic, have a have a mic. Uh Vlad Vlad Vlad Vlad uh is one of our campers and he's a luthier, among other things, and a
Luthier Perspective On Builds And Specs
SPEAKER_02tank.
SPEAKER_22I'm first of all, I'm working at Enderton's Music Company, and uh of course I know all of these models. Every day we check, and they firstly before guitars go to store, they go to my department in a warehouse, and when I check and say yes, that guitar is good, and they will send to the store. If uh the my department say no, we need to fix something, or maybe probably. Then you destroy the guitar, you just play you have a big fire, you have a big fire. I I wanna say now we failed one and 1,500 guitars. Failed. And I and I fixed it. It's it's that's only this year. But I want to say we bought this year about 20,000 guitars. 20,000.
SPEAKER_03You kick in so many.
SPEAKER_22I have job on next five years. Fail this one! No, but you haven't even looked at it for it. I don't care! No, no, I want to say just uh this is a of course it's a cheaper version, but uh between yours and this, so on this guitar's top and back a little bit thinner than on yours guitar, firstly, and there is no stainless steel fret. In my opinion, it's uh nickel silver frets in the city. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's not your do you think it's not the same gauge frets either, right? Maybe maybe close. It's not the same.
SPEAKER_22It's it's it's 2.5, 2.4, 2.5. It's like medium. Yeah, yeah. Medium and not too high.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_22Uh on your guitar installed stainless steel, I know. Yeah, a little bit uh also uh medium frets, not narrow and tall, medium frets. Uh it's a standard scale, in my opinion, 650 more, maybe 655. You're a little bit longer because on a bass strings, yeah, a little bit longer scale.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_22Uh but it uh for more than 50 star guitars, that's maybe the greatest guitar we have. Now, I mean, because uh you are true. We are selling a lot of like Martin guitars, Gibson guitars, Taylor guitars. Yes, they all have a special sound, like Martin guitars, like Gibson guitars, like Taylor guitars. There are a lot of people who love one brand or other. Of course, yeah. That's true. I want to say uh last last week or two weeks ago, uh, we checked uh new Martin guitars. Uh uh, they don't release this guitar, it's like um uh some new series, and we will be just selling uh because we are like uh our store, uh like a partner. We are the first company who will sell this guitar, and uh it's an embargo, embargo. So, and I check and I wanna say uh there was some guitars, amazing sound. Just I wanna buy it. I just play, I wanna buy this guitar, a little bit smaller, but sounds like margin. You know, no one guitars like Gibbs and Taylor sounds like margin.
SPEAKER_02I mean, maybe, maybe I'm no it just means true. But the point the point of the uh the point of this guitar. The point the point of the um of designing guitar is it's absolutely not to try to replace more because it's absolutely not to do that because people love those guitars and love that sound and love the way they play and everything about that, and that's absolutely absolutely cool. You know what? I'm gonna talk, can I say a little thing about when I met Chris Martin of Martin, not of Coldplay, of Martin guitars.
The Future Of Acoustic Guitar Access
SPEAKER_02If I met Chris Martin from Coldplay, then that would be headline news. Something would happen. But I asked Chris Martin, basically, I would I'd finished doing a masterclass at a guitar show, and he was doing a talk afterwards, and I was packing my gear away at the edge of the stage and watching them do, and then they said, Any questions? And it's that thing in the room, nobody's got a question, it's just stony silence. So I I was like, Okay, I've got a question. And he said, Yeah. He didn't know who it was or anything, I don't think. And it was like, like, um so yeah, Mr. Martin. Uh one thing that concerns me as an acoustic guitarist who really cares about the instrument is the future of the instrument in general, because the acoustic guitar has always been in my lifetime number four, like the cheap portable thing that you can pick up. It's really easy to learn how to play simple stuff, and you can it's really easy to be creative with it and write music with it. And it's just that that thing, that entry into being creative with music for millions of people. And I worry that that is being replaced because young people now are might pick up um their phone or their other device and uh you know open an app with a or with a beat maker or like a little music maker or God forbid, you know, what's it called? Son.
SPEAKER_15Oh Suno, right?
SPEAKER_02Suno, God forbid. And um and do that instead. And he got really angry with me. Like I'd asked him uh some kind of political question. I don't remember. He's just like, well, I don't really think that's uh, you know, we're we're here to sell high-end guitars to you know to that's what we're here for. We want to we want to create guitars for people who really care about you know, quality.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02Oh, okay then. Sorry. Enjoy your fucking golf match later. I just it was really shocking to me. I wasn't trying to be I didn't say that to him, obviously, and I don't mean it, but it I I found it shocking that this this podcast has been completely out of control.
SPEAKER_15It's quite like just I just want to say, think on, Chris Martin.
SPEAKER_02Think about the future of the instrument. It's not just about selling guitars to dentists. Do you know what I mean? It's gotta be more than that. Anyway, Vlad, see if anybody else wants to look at that man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's fun.
SPEAKER_15Um, what a story. But uh it's interesting the the price price point as well, isn't it? Because you've chosen to work with a brand.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because I all that stuff I said about dentists, and then these guitars are about three grand. But there is a cheaper version, and there's also this thing called the PA model, which I didn't design, but it is absolutely based on this design.
SPEAKER_14Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that those are, you know, I I think it's like 600 quid, which is not absolutely not nothing, but it's nowhere near what you would pay for, you know. Yeah, but I what I mean at three grand at risk of especially in these times, but I don't want to three grand for a I don't think it is three grand this guitar, it's less than that, a two and a half or something.
SPEAKER_15I can't remember, but it's um But yeah that that is essentially an affordable um uh professional for being a professional. But I think I think working with a a brand, a mainstream brand, and I don't know the sort of correct terminology that produce guitars that are accessible and some of which that are 200 quid that are designed for yeah, young people and people who are accessing the instrument, I think it's a to me.
SPEAKER_02That's really, really, really important, you know. For that reason, for the sooner reason. Yeah, I think that's and the fact that you know Ed Sheeran's making guitars with louder and and also giving away he gives away so many guitars as those sheer and models, and um you know, because he's got charities that a charity that's about giving free instruments, free guitars to kids, you know, and wouldn't otherwise be able to access them. You know, I think it's cool, man. Absolutely good on him for doing that, you know. It's good for us. I'm saying that so I can prove I can be nice about as a famous person as well. But anyway, I wanted to ask you some questions about yourself. Is that all right? I love talking about me, John. So I'm gonna quickly ask Chris a couple of questions, and then we'll see if you guys have got any questions about whatever this chaos is. And and before we do, though, let's just mention that we have stuff for them to play. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, so what I mean, we've only bought what I've put mine here, and then the FRH, which I think is really interesting. Well, you you talked about like um Ibanez being a sort of a progressive band, and I think they cannot make enough of these.
SPEAKER_02People absolutely adopt this guitar. Oh, it's so much fun. It's so much fun, yeah, and they're they're absolutely irresistible little objects, and I really recommend trying that. Um this is Chris's, but we have another one of these, and we have a couple of other Ibanez models, which will be in the lounge area for the day with Chris. If you want to go and just try something for fun, just go and hang out. Um, if you broke your guitar, come and try one of these instead.
SPEAKER_15Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_15But I I I think it they actually just having these two here and yours shows the sort of progressive nature, doesn't it? Because I think well, mine has a percussive.
SPEAKER_02This isn't what I played. What if they showed me what you had, I'll be like, This is I wouldn't have said anything because it's Already. No, it is. It's like, but what they they hadn't come out with this stuff yet.
SPEAKER_15Well, yeah, I think it's probably been inspired by that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So they've started making nail guitars, which are incredibly. And just modernized stuff, like the amazing cutaway that they get on that one. And some of them have like an invisible cutaway. Have you seen that yet? No.
SPEAKER_15Oh, it's unbelievable. And the soundport on the side or the airport is kind of that's kind of you you don't have one, you didn't opt for that. No. Interesting. Okay.
SPEAKER_02I don't um I I'm really good at putting holes in the guitars with everyone.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, you don't need any help, do you?
SPEAKER_02Anyway, so I uh after watching Chris last night, I wanted to take the opportunity myself to ask him some questions. So I thought that um Chris is really unusual guitar player, but in a way that kind of shouldn't be unusual. Like, why isn't everyone doing that? So it seems to be so much about two things to me. Firstly, is like this kind of sonic atmosphere. So it's atmosphere and mood, and creating this atmosphere with the music and kind of stories or it's kind of impressionistic. So you you could it's really easy to close your eyes with Chris's music and imagine a place or stu stuff happening, and it'll be different for everybody, you know, what what you see, but it's kind of got it feels impressionistic to me. And then the other thing he does really amazingly well is that this touch, you know. So there's so much about dynamics. So he'll he'll he'll pluck a note, obvious, but he'll he'll do it, he'll do it hard, he'll do it softly, he'll do it all the places in between, but he'll also do it sharply or kind of warmly, it seems like sometimes do you have nails on your right hand? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But sometimes you're not using them, you sometimes you're using more nail and sometimes you're using more flesh, you know? I'm guessing, just from hearing, you know, and it feels more like like an electric player or a classical player. So it might you remind me more of like Jeff Beck in the way that he touches the strings and touches the guitar or a or a classical player of your choice. I don't know. Julian Breen, you choose. So are you, were you an electric or classical player? Oh, very interesting.
SPEAKER_15Uh yeah, I was a bit of a rocker.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_15Um, but then yeah, I dabbled in classical because I kind of yeah, wanted. I think my entire musical career, possibly life, has been about me just seeking validation. So uh I went to classical in order to be like, well, if I, you know, do sort of classical. To be proper and be respectable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I had to read music. I have Latin ailable for that exact reason. Do you?
SPEAKER_15Give me a what grade?
SPEAKER_02Doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, so yeah, classical thing. I got a lot from the technique, but for me doing classical, it was like I was already sort of playing, I don't know, Hendrix solos, and then I was having to read sheet music, so I was doing like nursery rhymes, so it became hugely frustrating.
SPEAKER_02Oh well, screw that.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's interesting. So um, yeah, but well, with that, because you it's funny because I had to get all of that, guess all of that, from your technique, not from the music you're making, because the music you're making doesn't sound like electric guitar music. I guess you play it licks, but we all do that sometimes, you know what I mean? But and it doesn't sound classical.
SPEAKER_15And I think secretly electric guitars are cooler, aren't they? I think that's that's it.
SPEAKER_02Wrong wrong crowd to say that in front of. I don't think they are I think I thought that when I was a kid, I thought that. And now if I pick up an electric guitar, I get very bored very quickly because it they just feel like it feels like a toy to me. It's like, oh, you've got to plug it in. And you know, wh why does it not really have any bass or any training? Why can't you hit it? Why can't you hit it? You know, what it's not real. It's like a it's like uh the difference between you know an a a keyboard and a and a real piano. Yeah to me it is.
SPEAKER_15No, no, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02The exp the acoustic experience is more than everyone who plays electric guitar is an idiot and lame. I think we all agree. So um yeah, okay, well then in that case, so in terms of your own music, do you have inspirations from finger styles, steel string guitar players? Uh a little, yeah, I didn't I can't I couldn't pin it down, I wouldn't be able to say who it was.
SPEAKER_15So yeah, no, I I was well we were talking um a few of us yesterday, actually. Yeah, I I sort of maybe this is an age thing, but I yeah, I didn't hear Michael Hedges, etc., until much later. Um and I when the Andy McKee drifting video came out, I was just angry at Andy McKee, do you know what I mean? And kind of like, Why are you doing that? Show off. Okay. Do you know what you know what I mean? Yeah, I've evolved since then. I think we spoke about this before. Yeah, but uh so I yeah, I wasn't the finger style thing didn't really I was banging to like John Martin, Nick Drake, and that kind of gorgeous, yeah.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, do you know what do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_15That sort of like and yeah, percussively playing, but I didn't I wasn't really blown away by instrumental finger style. But I think I think honestly, um possibly just out of a little bit of jealousy, uh just sort of wanting to do that, but seeing Well you can you can watch something.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I I absolutely I I knew Andy before drifting, you know. Did you really? Yeah, okay. And uh I actually heard drifting on an MP3 posted to a Michael Hedges fan website. Wow, and I learned it, or or most of it, or some of it, but I had never seen him play it, so I learned it all wrong. I just I figured out what tuning it was in and did it with tappings, but I didn't play the notes in the right places. The first time I met him, I played it to him, it was so funny. But anyway, yeah, so um I've known him a long time and we we're good friends, and um and I love his music, I absolutely love it. Same, same, big fan. That's too late, Chris. Um I just want to add that on balance. But I on the other hand, I think it's absolutely a thing and a really awesome thing. If you see somebody or hear somebody, but particularly see somebody playing the instrument you play, and you you hate it, you hate it, right? You get angry, it makes you angry. Don't dismiss that music, don't dismiss that moment because knowing what you hate is really, really important and can be really really inspiring. Because maybe what you hate about it isn't that you don't actually like it, it's that it somehow offends your sensibilities as an artist. It somehow offends that's not how that should be done for me. But there's something about it that you do love that it is getting wrong, and that's why it makes you so angry. So figure out what it is that you love about it and do it right. Do you know what I mean? So he's maybe for you it was like Andy's figured out this way of like tapping, drumming, playing upside down, all that kind of stuff. And um, and it's just you know, but actually the music is really interesting, or actually, I like the sound of those techniques, but he's doing it in a show-off way, I want to do it in a different way. And I'm not saying that it's it is about ego and stuff. Oh, you think so? But when you think definitely it's okay. That's okay. If if if what comes out of that is is finding yourself eventually, that ego won't be there anymore because you'll figure out why it was there and you'll have used it creatively. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_15Yeah, I I think I think when you listen to guitarists or watch guitarists, but the conclusion that I later came to, um, it's just that passing any kind of judgment whatsoever is futile. That's you know, ultimately useful.
SPEAKER_02Well, the only judgment that I that I have time for, and I think is a good judgment to make, is uh with music and stuff, is do you like it or not? It's totally okay to listen to music and like it or not, but it's not okay to listen to music and say it's good or bad, or that um that person is a good musician or a bad musician, because that is not a qualitative thing that you can just it's not a thing you can just make an objective judgment about, or there's any reason to.
SPEAKER_15But I think sometimes it enjoying or not enjoying, you know, that can be your mood, and sometimes music that's just shocking, or you know, it doesn't have to be uh enjoyable, it doesn't always have to be enjoyable as well. Do you know what I mean? So you basically like torturing yourself by listening to the channel. Yeah, I think so. A festival's a good example where you sort of discover something and it's just weird. It's just an experience. Maybe you really liked it in that environment, you know. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe I don't know, it's just something to put on your Instagram story.
SPEAKER_02Should we see if these guys have questions?
SPEAKER_15Yeah, I think we've run. Yeah, go on. Has anyone got any questions? Oh, it's particularly about John and his guitar. Or no, the fact that you use size gauge 14 strings, man. I didn't
Heavy Strings And Ultra Low Tunings
SPEAKER_15realise this until someone was telling me very late at night last night, John uses gauge 14 strings. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, that is nuts. Does anyone else use 14 here? No. You do? Cowards. Oh, you do you do as well?
SPEAKER_19Uh yeah, but I do hobbies out there.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, so which is copyrighted. Listen to how deep his voice is, right? So, yeah, I'll use 14, so that's just incredible.
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's just it's not though. It's just it's just like making your guitar into kind of a pseudo-baritone, really. So I tune low, so my strings are very heavy. So if I so I tune, because I tune so low, if I used even just th regular 13-gauge strings, the strings will be unplayably loose and flappy and like wet spaghetti, right? So I use 14 to 68, because I want my bass strings to be even heavier, because I tend to tune the bass further down than the treble, because kind of what's the point of not? So if you if I want the bass to be able to go basier, right? I don't see the point always of tuning the the treble strings really low because why would you want to get your try and get bass out of your treble strings? These are not necessarily sensible things, but this is anyway. Um yeah, but if you tune f really big strings really low, they don't feel any harder to play. In some ways it's easier because they're bigger and you don't miss them so often. Um but yeah, it doesn't feel harder, it really doesn't. So in some ways, when I play a guitar with really thin strings on it, it's like, oh god, it's cutting into my fingers like razor blades, it's horrible, you know. Um yeah, so uh that's the reason. But people might say, well, why don't you just play a baritone guitar? Well, that's a different instrument. So on my guitar, I can just strum a G chord or strum a C chord, right, in regular tuning, yeah, regular guitar chords, and it just sounds like a regular G or C chord but lower. If you do that on a baritone guitar because the strings are so much longer, if you've ever been down to the left-hand end of a grand piano and played like a major triad chord, and the notes just all distort together and mush because the overtones are so strong you can't do it. So you can't play a regular G chord on a on a baritone guitar, it's a different, it's a different instrument. So that's why. And I'm not the first person to do that. I mean, Joni Mitchell just been tuning her tuning her guitars lower and lower and lower. Was she using 14? I guess she must have been upping the gauge of strings, otherwise they wouldn't be able to, you know, they'd just be flapping around. But as her voice has got lower and lower, she's just tuned her guitar. Roy Harper, the 70s folkie, he tuned his guitar lower and lower and lower and lower over the years, probably because of his copious smoking habits. Lower and lower and lower and lower and lower. And and then as a result, his son Nick, who's one of my favourite musicians ever, ever, ever, Nick Harper, he tunes his guitar really low because he was playing along with his dad. Yeah. So he ended up with a low-strung, low-tuned. Yeah, he's always breaking strings. Well, Nick does it on purpose his strings on purpose. So, Nick, if you've if it's well worth Googling, there must be videos up there of Nick Harper string break. Just Google that. Because Nick Harper will break a string and then change the string mid-song while still playing the song and turns it into part of the song. It's very impressive. It blew up. But it's not it he'll do it in a beautiful song. He won't just do it in like a song, it won't just do it in a fun song, he'll do it in the middle of. I mean, it tends to be in the very aggressive songs that he does that because he strums really, really, really hard. But I've seen Nick get towards the end of a gig and so far no string has broken, and I've seen him like trying as hard as he can to actually break a string. I've I know he does that.
SPEAKER_15How known is Nick Harper out of interest? Yeah, hands up if you know. Right. Okay, it's kind of a mix, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Also, there's certain songs where he'll break a string because he likes the string break version of that song. I've seen him change two strings. I've seen him break a string, change it, then another one breaks, he has to change that in the same song. It's like 12 minutes long or something, but it's cool as fuck, man. It's nuts. Yeah, he's a great, he's such a performer, isn't it? He's a genius, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, he's uh brilliant. Okay, should we do questions then?
SPEAKER_10Uh I was gonna ask John for the um what do you use for the top on your signature guitar? So you're gonna use the scratching on the on the body.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so we tried the after we did this, oh where is it? After we did the first stage prototype, the next one was they actually built the kind of proper guitar pretty much, but with loads of different woods. And um I ended up choosing spruce for the top, but it is cooked, it is torrified or thermo-aged, is the uh what Ibenes call their process, which means that the wood is put in a kiln and kind of baked at a really high temperature for a bit. And what that does is it removes loads of moisture from the wood so it becomes lighter while still retaining its strength. So basically it sounds really old. If you ever get a chance to try a cheap thermo-aged or torrified guitar, I recommend you do it. That was the first one I tried, it was actually an Ibanez, and it was like a 250-pound guitar of a just a regular, excuse me, kind of classic style, vintage style steel string guitar, but it had a thermo-aged top, and you strum it, and it sounds like it's from the 70s. It's mad. It sounds like you know when you pick up one of those old Yamaha Martin Coppies from the 70s, have you played many of those?
unknownYeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if many people have played ones that have been they've lasted since the 70s, and they sound incredible because the tops have aged. You know those ones, Vlad. I mean, they're legendary. If you find one of those and it, you know, going cheap in a secondhand store, just get it. But um, yeah, so that's what it does. And then um yeah, the the finish. So I was worried about transition transitioning from my old guitar, which was really, really beat up, going to a brand new looking guitar. And I hate playing really, I hate new new things in general that aren't scratched up and covered in black marks or stickers or something because I break everything eventually. So anything pristine to me is just filled with terror. So I thought if we got this super thin black finish on the top, as soon as I start scratching it, it's gonna start coming off. So I explained that to them, and then we found a you know, kind of black oil-based um finish to use on the top. Yeah, so but it's it's also the bracing is thermo-aged and some other stuff is thermo-aged inside there, so it has that lightness and it's really good, it opens up the sound, yeah. Do we have more? Henry.
SPEAKER_08Uh Chris, I was just wondering what the pickups were in your guitar.
SPEAKER_15Groovy, yeah. Uh so these are just the standard pickups. So this is uh AAM380, and it has uh transducers under the body. I think I I I'm gonna say this. I think it might be three, but just under here, and then it has just a piezo under here, and that's the standard IBS pickup system. There's a microphone inside that. There's no microphone, and it has two outs, Chongom inspired, so that you can treat them differently. However, you don't do that. Yeah, I've just become completely complacent, and uh I just plugged in and it because it I I probably put more transducer in what I can tell you, I I use a hundred percent transducer and then fifty percent piso, and it just works perfectly. It's a very like honest, you know, magnification of what the sound is, I would naturally, if that makes sense. But yeah, it's what what is in it, nothing done to it whatsoever. Which is really cool, and that's actually the reason that I first started working with iBenis, because it's just it's really great to be able to.
SPEAKER_02You know, I'm I have one of those at home, although it's Natasha's now and she's claimed it because it's so nice.
SPEAKER_15Oh, really? Yeah, it's it's that that airport thing on the side, it kind of ruins other guitars, doesn't it? Because it's just then you know, where's the biggest? The audience can't hear that, Chris. That's yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, yeah, do we have more questions? Who is that? Francis at the back, I think. I've got the glasses on, mate, sorry.
SPEAKER_04Um a question for both of you. Um, what's been your best experience while playing
Best Live Moments And Playing Together
SPEAKER_04live somewhere?
SPEAKER_02I thought it's really tricky. Best. I don't know. That's really tricky to say. I mean my favourite ever gig that I've probably done in my whole life was the warm-up gig for my tour in 20, would it be 20? When was when was the year of where we could gig again after COVID? It was the end of 21 or beginning of 20. So it would have been that. I played in a was it the cricket club or the village hall of a little village called Wilsdon, which is fairly near where I live. But I just did it because I needed to do a warm-up gig before I did a tour. I felt like I felt like I need to do that now to be honest. And um it was just really like one of the smallest gigs I've done for years and years and years. In a really odd little place where I might not normally play. It was the first time Indigo had seen me play since she was a baby that she couldn't possibly remember. I had loads of mates there who were getting told off actually for making noise by other people in the audience. And um and just because uh it was the post-COVID thing, it was the first time I ever played this Marvin on stage. It was the first time I'd played the Ibanez, I was incredibly nervous about that working and everything being okay. And um, it was really great, and I had such a great time and just enjoyed playing so much and was so happy to be back playing and had people there that I loved, and I think that was my best ever live experience, to be honest, which is probably not that it's not like the most rock and roll answer, but that's the truth.
unknownThat's cool, man.
SPEAKER_15That's good. You could have said the I don't know, whatever beautiful, wonderful venue, but you went with that. That's good. Wilson Village Hall. Wilson Village Hall. Uh I actually really enjoyed playing last night, but we won't say that. Um, so I've done some well, that piece of music that we all did as a group. I think I yeah, I said to a couple of you we did a performance of that at the London Olympia, and uh we invited members of the public to come and play that that we'd never ever met before. Um, and that was a really beautiful experience, partly from relief because I was really worried I was gonna look like a complete and utter moron uh after inviting the whole world to come and play guitar with me, and then I just get up on stage on my own. But um, yeah, I I I'd say that the feeling of playing with lots of people that you've never met and different abilities of player as well. We had Clive Carroll was on stage with us, and then they were you know really young kids who were you know presumably new to playing.
SPEAKER_02Clive is the best guitarist in any room that he's in.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, yeah, that's why I put him, I put him up. To be fair, one of those kids might have been like Marcin or something at the time.
SPEAKER_02He's still Clive would meet Marcin and Marcin would show him something, and Clive would be, oh yeah, like this. You just do it immediately. He's just he's just the absolute just makes everybody cry with with his own.
SPEAKER_15He's he's top, isn't he?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_15Um but yeah, I'll go with that. Because I think I think that hearing that and I'm gonna get full hippie here, but the beauty that even the most novice player can bring out when they're playing simplistically, yeah, like that you know, beginner kid next to Clive Carroll were of equal value, if you like, at that point, because they're playing the same thing. That's amazing. But yeah. That's really, really amazing. Clive would be like, What are you talking about? That's way better than that kid.
SPEAKER_02To be honest, Clay, can you dial it down a bit, mate? You're just ruining it. Once more with a bit less feeling. Okay, what's up, John? Do we have uh Okay, it's time to stop.
SPEAKER_15So Well, let's wrap it up. Tell you what, for the podcast, John, can I can we just sort of close it off? Can I go, thanks
Closing The John Gomm Conversation
SPEAKER_15so much, John? And then you can say, like, that was the best podcast ever, and then everyone can like. Yeah, you go ahead and do that. Thanks so much, John. So yeah, that's what you're gonna do, isn't it?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_02You do that now, that'll be great. Thanks so much, John. So that's what you're gonna do, you say brilliant. We're done.
SPEAKER_24Hello. I'm Jacob Shelleski. Hello. Hello. Um
Jacob Finds His Way Back
SPEAKER_24what do you want from me?
SPEAKER_15Like a a little spiel about myself or like Yeah, yeah, I I well interestingly you I mean, yes last night's performance was uh I and everyone will agree was like deeply profound. What you played was stunning.
SPEAKER_24Thank you.
SPEAKER_15Uh but you also said you said like you had like gone you sort of you know almost fallen out of the guitar. Would you be happy to talk about that?
SPEAKER_24I'm happy to talk about that. Um so for years I've been going to the Austrian boot camp and a part of this amazing community, but then COVID happened, and a lot of people used that as an excuse to get back on their guitar, I've got loads of time. But I was working in a really hard job in uh looking after young children with autism, and that was like 15-hour shift. And uh I didn't have time for the guitar at all.
SPEAKER_1515-hour shift? Yeah. Is this like living stuff or something?
SPEAKER_24No, so I uh my mate was living with me and he was working in the same job, and we'd drive there, half an hour drive, and then do 15-hour shifts, and then I didn't have time for the guitar, I didn't have mental headspace to do it, and because the guitar had been such a big part of my life beforehand, I strangely I knew that I needed to have a breakaway to become fresh because it became sort of routine, you know. Um so I used that as like, okay, I'm not gonna put any pressure on myself because I don't have the whole universe, it stopped. So there was no demands or expectations for me to be a performer or be a guitarist, which was quite refreshing. Um and and it's hard to say no to gigs when you're being asked. Um so there's no need for a rehearsal.
SPEAKER_15Yeah. There's no like you got no end sort of.
SPEAKER_24Yeah. So I did that, but then after we stopped the universe and sparked back to life again, I didn't quite know how to connect with it, and I've been trying not to find my way back to it. Um and then last year, when I saw that John was plotting on a UK boot camp, I was like, this is what I need. So I came back. And quite poetically, we had Stuart Ryan and Clive Carroll. Stuart Ryan and Clive Carroll were the tutors on the first workshop I ever went on, which was in Eric Rochewell. Um unfortunately Eric wasn't able to be there because of um being so unwell. He did break out of the um hospice that he was in and got to the bus stop and they came and found him and said, No, come on, Eric.
SPEAKER_15Oh my god.
SPEAKER_24Uh but they were the first they were the two tutors on that first workshop. So it was almost like full circle, like a bookend of like my first workshop, and the first one of workshop bootcamp that I came back to had the same two tutors. Um you still work in the same job? Uh no, I now look after labour of brain damage. Um but I've always been in in mental health and care. Yeah, yeah, but not 15-hour shift. No, 12 hours. But it takes me an hour to cycle there. So yeah, just 14-hour days now.
SPEAKER_15We needed you to work less so you have more time to produce.
SPEAKER_24We do, yeah.
SPEAKER_15Could you play an excerpt of something? Of course, the thing you did last night would be amazing.
SPEAKER_24Well, that's that's that's um I've got loads of tunes that I've played to death and played out and played out, played out, and since having that break and coming back, I'm sort of leaving them alone. Um I want to work on creating new stuff, so this is the new piece of music uh I wrote. It's uh dedicated to my mum because she was a massive instigator in me being the guitarist that I am, and also coming back to the guitar, realizing actually this is where I'm meant to be, I'm meant to be playing guitar. Um, so this is called The Reason I Am.
SPEAKER_15Probably only have time for an exercise. That's fine, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Beautiful.
SPEAKER_24Can I just say thank you to all of you guys? Like without you guys being in my life, life will be a lot harder. Um these these boot camps are more than just learning to play guitar and learning like new techniques. It's about the community that we all share and the support that we give each other in this thing called we're musicians. And the thing that we call love.
SPEAKER_22You know what, man? My first boot camp was Tutor was Jacob, Thomas Lips, you are trying. Last year, Jon Govern, Thomas Lips, you are trying.
SPEAKER_15So go for it, mate.
SPEAKER_22Hi. So um my name is Vladimir Chemneshov. I'm Ukrainian fingerstyle guitarist. Uh
Vladimir On Brotherhood And New Music
SPEAKER_22you know, it's uh first time I I met Thomas and John in Austria in 2017. Almost nine, nine years ago. Yeah. Uh and uh after after I I that changed my life. That uh you know that first boot camp it comp almost changed my life, and I was I saw uh a lot of uh friends, not just friends, brothers and sisters. And um it was second uh boot John gone boot camp here in UK. I was in the first one and on second one, and um the most important thing, firstly, I go here to meet with my friends, with my brothers and sisters, and play some new tunes or listen to other guys and just relax.
SPEAKER_15Relax and you did a beautiful performance last night.
SPEAKER_22Oh, thank you so much, man. Thank you.
SPEAKER_15Are you able to to play a little excerpt of something maybe? Would that be okay?
SPEAKER_22Yeah, I wanna play. I wanna play one of my tune-in from uh a new album. Uh the album called Train to Kingston. Uh the song that I'm going to play in is Dead Get Tune In. Uh the song called Curly Holly.
SPEAKER_15Curly Holly.
SPEAKER_22Curly Holly. Yes. Okay. Well, man.
SPEAKER_15Um that's that was really lovely. Thank you so much. Um Praz go for it, man. You introduce yourself and do the Yeah, hello.
SPEAKER_12Um, so yeah, my name is Prez. Oh, my nickname is Prez, because my actual name is not pronounceable
Prez Builds A Guitar And Searches
SPEAKER_12for most people in this country.
SPEAKER_15Oh we're international today.
SPEAKER_12So my name is Szemis Waw Hotlash. I come from Poland and I came to England when I was 12 and moved to Darkmouth, where I lived for a while, and then I went to Falmouth University to study music in 2015. And yeah, I decided to stay in Cornwall and I got a job um as a guitar teacher at Cornwall Music Service Trust. So I go around primary schools and you know just inspire little kids to play guitar. You're you're a local Cornish lad like me. Well, not Cornwallish like that. You can't claim to be Cornish unless you're actually born in Cornwall, can you? Yeah, they're pretty hot on that, aren't they?
SPEAKER_15So uh yeah. Um that's alright, mate. Uh crack in. Um and you've got a beautiful instrument in your hand.
SPEAKER_12Yes, so um, this is guitar um I made myself with um Cornish um guitar maker called Graham Imes. He makes quite nice, um, very nice um traditional Spanish guitars. Yeah, he's an amazing guy and you know amazing builder, and just very talented. He doesn't he has a very tiny little workshop, there's no fancy you know equipment there, like no fancy like electronics, everything he does is just you know done by ear. He would just grab a piece of wood, tap it, and it's like, oh yeah, sounds good. That's what we want. Yeah, that's fantastic. And that's your main is that your main guitar that you've made. My main classical guitar, yeah. So yeah, it's got a very nice and dramatic Zuricote on the back and front is um C datup. And there's one little detail about it that no one can actually knows unless you look up very close. But the rosette is a pixelised cannibal sleeve.
SPEAKER_09Oh wow, okay, that's cool.
SPEAKER_15Um fantastic. And what's going on with that little fret marker at the top? That's pretty cool as well. Uh like the dots on the top. Not dots. Oh, they are just dots.
SPEAKER_12It's literally just stickers I put on kids' guitars. Classical players never put any dots on top of the guitar, and it's like, what is fret number seven? Where is fret number nine?
SPEAKER_15Why make it hard, man? Isn't it? Just like put some dots on it. Yeah, exactly. So I uh I play cello and um yeah, cellists would be like, No, don't put dot you know, if anyone wears even like a polka dot shirt or something, they're gonna start freaking out. And I've got yeah, I've got fret dots, fret markers. Well, there's no frets, but markers all over it. And um, yeah, fuck 'em.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_15Amazing.
SPEAKER_12Would you be happy to play a little? Yeah, um, I haven't got any of my music um to play for you guys. Um, for the last few years I've been having slight musical existential crises. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing yet with my music, so I haven't written anything. I've been studying a lot of classical flamenco, lots of slappy tappy fingers now, but I'm still trying to find what it is that I like to do. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, maybe I can play you something by someone who's not around. Yeah. Someone is dead. I'll just make a quick little snippet of um Grand Vowels, which is the first beginning, or more known as the Nokia tune.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_15What would you like me to Well, I'd love to hear who you are and Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_18My name is Christian Whalen. Um, I've been a guitar player
Christian Learns Tunings And Writes
SPEAKER_18probably for most of my adult life. Um, but I really uh took a shine to finger style guitar probably in the last dozen, thirteen years or so. And uh got inspired by the likes. I'm a Canadian, so I got inspired by the likes of uh uh Don Ross and Callum Graham and and those guys. Um and just at first I was gonna throw my guitar away because it was like, who's gonna ever be able to keep up with these guys with some of the stuff they're doing? And I just uh didn't know what to do. And then I started thinking about it and listening to it a bit more and realized, you know, hey, they're doing something with different tunings. What if I tuned my guitar differently? And tried it out and I found that it really maybe wasn't as hard as maybe I thought it was gonna be. Um so the inspiration just kept rolling and I kept listening and learning. Um, to the point where I actually like got the nerve up to introduce myself to some of the players, like Don and Callum, and asked them if they gave lessons, and both of them accepted, and I managed to take some lessons from both of them over the years, and uh and we became friends, and uh lots of inspiration came from some of those meetings. So kind of cool.
SPEAKER_15Fantastic. And are you now using that in your writing? I mean I can see you've you've got the old banjo tuners on there and all sorts of things. Exactly.
SPEAKER_18Um yeah, I mean, some of that stuff comes through. I do have a background from playing in different bands over the years when I was younger. Everything from heavy metal to, you know, Celtic rock music to um soul and funk and uh uh uh I don't know, um like folk music, country music, uh so it's just an eclectic mix of uh of different things. And all of that kind of probably shines through a little bit here and there.
SPEAKER_15Cool. Can you play as an excerpt something you've created?
SPEAKER_18I can, yeah. Um I don't have a uh name for this particular song, but uh I got inspired by a tuning that we received at one of the boot camps. Um and it's uh it's a C over G minor tuning, so it's uh a low C with a G minor in the bottom five strings. Beautiful. And so we just kind of mucked around with that tuning and uh came up with this sort of small tune. Some of you may have heard me uh jam away on this a couple times. But you can play some neat chords and stuff with that tune. Yeah. Um so I don't have a name for this, so if anyone has a suggestion, perhaps uh uh they could uh let me know and I could think about it. So here we go.
SPEAKER_15Added tension because of what did you see the wasp come in? I didn't, yeah. So I'm like looking at you like I'm gonna land on his fingers.
SPEAKER_10That was great, man. That was great. Oh, thank you. Yeah, cool. So uh what would you like, Chris? Just a little like one minute. Oh, I'd like to know who who are you? Oh, okay.
Dan Lewis On Niche Community
SPEAKER_10Well, okay, well that's a good place to start, actually. Yeah. Uh my name's Dan Lewis, and uh yeah, I'm from Cheltenham, acoustic guitarist, funnily enough, finger style. Um playing about 17 years. Started off on electric and uh yeah, gravitated towards acoustic. But then I realised it's just so much easier than like being in a band. Part of me. And also because I love the uh there's less administration, isn't it?
SPEAKER_15Yes. But someone's own more work.
SPEAKER_10Yeah, no, that's true. But then it's also fun because you can do everything yourself and be the whole band and uh and everything, which is really good fun.
SPEAKER_15And what what brought you here, man?
SPEAKER_10Uh well, I came last year because um, well, was a fan of John for a long time, and uh yeah, and also I live really close to here as well. I live in Cheltenham and uh yeah, I met some other people who were coming, and it just seemed like a really good way to to network with people, make new friends, meet new People from the fingerstyle world, and I definitely think that it's sort of created a because I don't know about you, but like I think for a long time kind of felt like a sort of solo rogue finger style guitarist.
SPEAKER_08An outcast.
SPEAKER_10Yes, well, for lack of a better word. And uh because obviously what we do is fairly niche. So um, and then it's like after I came last year, suddenly like, wow, like I've met so many other like-minded folk who love guitar and are really passionate about it. And you know, after last year as well, not only after making so many friends, but everyone we had like a WhatsApp group, a group chat from everyone in the at the camp, and it's just carried on. It hasn't like fizzled out or wheeled off despite the fact that it's been a year since everyone's been together. And I think that's a really good thing for the uh shows not only that everyone kind of has not only bonded and like made friends and and stuff, but that it's carried on, it's not just a circumstantial thing, and that this kind of mutual passion for guitar and and music has sort of really brought people together. From you know, obviously people in this room here are you guys who are who are from other countries and stuff who've come all the way here. Kind of it's funny to to think that I live like so close relatively speaking, and that you guys obviously come from the far distant corners of the earth to uh conjugate here and uh and shred together, you know. So uh yeah, no, I think that's really cool. And it was it was yeah, a great reason to to come back. Like, you know, so Grove.
SPEAKER_15And what are you gonna what are you gonna play, mate?
SPEAKER_10Uh I'll play something off my um I'm gonna play a song off my album, which came out about a month ago or so. With Candy Rat. With Candy Rat, yeah. And uh yeah, the song's called A Drop in the Ocean. And uh yeah, it's for the album's called A New Leaf. So yeah, it's out now, go check it out on YouTube. Don't mind the shameless plug, sorry Chris. Do it, but uh yeah. Do you want the whole song or do you just want to do it?
SPEAKER_15I would love the whole song, but in reality, but probably uh snippet with it.
SPEAKER_10Or but or you can play the whole thing and I can That's okay. I've I've recorded snippets before, so you like it. I'll I'll leave the tuning bit in. Yeah, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_15It's what the people want to listen to, yeah. Yeah, of course so, right?
SPEAKER_09That's the best part, the uh the buildup.
SPEAKER_06That's what you can tell stories. This is it.
SPEAKER_09There we go, that'll do. Okay, here we go. All right, so should we bring that over? Yeah, there you go, all good.
SPEAKER_15I tell you what, you do that, and then and then you'll sound great, so yeah, whenever you're ready, right? Let's do it.
SPEAKER_09Thank you, man. Thanks, Chris. Sorry about your guitar, I think it's all good. Thanks for that.
SPEAKER_14Pleasure, right.
SPEAKER_15Henry, you up for a lot of it. Yeah, amazing. Go for it. Please introduce yourself.
SPEAKER_08I'm I'm
Henry Blends Post Rock Into Acoustic
SPEAKER_08Henry Poham, uh, guitarist. I don't know, I never know what to say about myself. Well, what do I say about myself? I mean, I've come I've come here all the way from Scotland. Um there's only three of us, which is more than last year. But um, yeah, I've cut I've come here from Dundee. Uh um what what kind of thing do you do, man?
SPEAKER_15What's your thing?
SPEAKER_08What's my thing? Yeah, yeah. What's my thing? So I uh um I'm a big fan of sort of like post-rock and math rock, like um um Arctangent is like that lineup is the that is the one. So I've tried to sort of like pull that into like my acoustic guitar playing and um have uh I guess follow following Dan's shameless plug. I've also released an album last year, um though not as professional, don't worry. I'm not I'm not trying to show you something. Uh so yeah, I've I've got uh a bunch of my own tunes that um I'd yeah, I'd love to play one for you. Oh, yeah. Um yeah. Uh this one's called uh Weasel.
SPEAKER_15Beautiful. Thank you. I love it. No, it's great, mate. Hi Chris. Hey dude. Can you introduce yourself and then just you know, just do your thing?
SPEAKER_20Sure. I'm uh Chris Hart. I'm from Romania, Transylvania. Originally born under the name of Vlad, and uh
Chris Hart And A Vocal Original
SPEAKER_20for that reason and for future future jokes, I'm several hundred years old. So um yeah, don't worry, I don't bite. I'm actually uh quite a sweet guy, so at least that's what everybody here at Camp Camp says about me. But um I don't know what they think about me after I've gone to bed. Which is a crack of done after I ate some garlic. So well, this sounds nice. What have you got in your arms? Uh in my arms I've got the Ibanez MRC 10, the Marcin signature, which believe it or not, I um I bought his beauty as a safety net as a second guitar, and I said okay, maybe it will be good, maybe not. I didn't know what to expect. And actually it has become my main guitar, and I just bought a second one as a spare just in case something happens with this one. Um something about uh the tone and uh voicing of this guitar sends me back to my first real stage partner. I had a um guitar with spruce on top and map on the sides and back, and uh people really said that that guitar captures my uh my voice, my personality. I'm uh teeny teeny teeny teeny tiny bit, ADHD, let's call it neural spicy, and I just found out recently, and uh something about that guitar um because it was a bit more lively and a bit more bright, uh, people seem to associate with me. And uh Marcin has that uh lovely clarity and it's explosive and it's it's lively, it's live, even if uh some people might argue it's a bit bright. Like I also played John's guitar, uh, and I also owned the GGM5 for a while. Uh sold it to a good friend for because it wasn't getting much uh action in my uh home after I bought uh this one. But that is quite a quite a different guitar, uh, especially if you tune it down low, it's it's more uh growly, it's uh the tone is more earthy, and uh it's a different tool for certain and very useful for certain situations, but for I think for my personality and for how I uh do things and how I am, uh this just suits me way better, and people seem to agree because I've gotten quite uh quite a few compliments on the tone of the guitar. I don't have an album out yet. I'm working on an album, so I'm uh a little bit less prepared than my uh fellow colleagues, which I uh uh warmly invite you to check them out. Also myself.
SPEAKER_15Can we hear a little exit of of something that you've created? Maybe would that be okay?
SPEAKER_20Sure. You wanna do a vocal and guitar? Because all my people, all my other fellow guitarists have played instrumental songs. Would you like to hear an original that also has some voice on top of it? Whatever you want to do, whatever you want to do, it has to be original.
SPEAKER_15But I just originally hear you, man.
SPEAKER_20I wanna hear you. Yeah. So this is a lovely tune called Catharsis, written in my first ever boot camp in the Alps with Thomas Leeb, and um kind of got hooked on it. And uh this is my first year at uh at a guitar boot camp. My second year at uh John's boot camp.
SPEAKER_06Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_20And I'm very happy to be back here with all these lovely people because uh yeah, we learn a lot of good things, but community is the best part. We're few and scattered all over the place, all over the world, and it's an absolute joy to be here with everybody time and time again, year after year, to find out what has changed and to improve ourselves uh as guitar players and also as people. Because a community forces you to grow whether you want it or not. You all leave better guitarists, yes, and better humans.
SPEAKER_14Better humans. Wow, that's a tool.
SPEAKER_15No argument here. Yeah, yeah, amazing. So if I leave and I'm shit at guitar and a bit of an arsehole, then I know it hasn't really worked out.
SPEAKER_20It means you have to come back next year and to buy us all around the drinks.
SPEAKER_15That's it depends where you start as well, doesn't it? Okay, anyway, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_20So um we'll have a go at it. Here is um only a verse and a chorus from my song catharsis because I don't want to spoil the beans. We did an entire production, we filmed it in Austria with drones and everything, it will be out uh in 2027. Wow. Among other beautiful gems from my own uh original library.
SPEAKER_19I don't want to spoil the beans, so this is just kind of a sneak peek water, clear sky filled with grace, the sunlight on your face, a smile you can erase, passion flower Growing in the heart, glowing in the dark, turning into art little starhost, dancing in one night, the other night a cry Donuts, dumb deny, open heart, leaving all behind Love for peace of mind, learning to be kind of my broken high school that's got my broken things, and I will dance with pain again.
SPEAKER_14Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_15Amazing, thank you so much. Over to you, man.
SPEAKER_05Sweet. Um my name's Francis Simmons. I'm uh I'm sixteen and I'm from Leeds
Francis Writes Across Genres
SPEAKER_05up north in West York, West Yorkshire. Um I like to play around with quite a few genres. I enjoy finger style and tapping, you know, John Gong type stuff. And um I also like some more punk and Midwest emo stuff. Um I've got a couple of projects on the go at the moment actually. Um work in progress. Um I'm just looking to get my name out of that. My dream to make it in my full-time career. Music is everything to me. I think that it would be a mistake without music. Genuinely means everything to me. Um you can compare so many different messages in a single song. And I think that that's quite special. Something that nothing else that I've experienced can actually encompass and do as well as music does. Um play uh something a little different from the other songs. Um we'll be tapping into a little bit of the Midwest Emo stuff, but this is a song that I made uh called Nothing Is Working With Me. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_13I Marco and I'm from Switzerland. Ah, Marco, what's your full name, Marco? Marco Favoro. Faurrog
Marco Shares A Song Draft
SPEAKER_13from Italian descent.
SPEAKER_15Fantastic.
SPEAKER_13Um what what do you do, man? Um I'm a music teacher, mostly guitar, and try to make a living as well as a musician a little bit. So Okay. But yeah. And what what why did you end up at boot camp? Um I just I mean, I studied on jazz guitar, and now like two years ago, I finally picked up the acoustic guitar again. Uh-huh. And I've been following John Gong for a long time, and then I was like, yeah, that's maybe where I have to go to kind of really dive into it again.
SPEAKER_15Because you're writing your own stuff, aren't you?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, yeah. And already put out an EP this year, and now writing more songs, and I feel like I could improve my guitar skills. Yeah, yeah. Also my singing as well.
SPEAKER_15Can you show me something?
SPEAKER_13Or is that just like uh yeah, I mean, does it record when I just play from the phone or play from the phone?
SPEAKER_14Oh play, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_15Uh yeah, we don't want the um Yeah, I mean I mean, man, just to say, uh there's birds in the background. It sounds good, it sounds absolutely heavenly. Go on, go for it.
SPEAKER_13Okay, it's uh cool. So this is from a song called Peace of Mind.
SPEAKER_15That's beautiful, man. Something like that. That's gorgeous. Thanks. Beautiful. Thank you.
SPEAKER_17And so the mic turns.
SPEAKER_15Hello. Hello, what's your name, man? I am Vito. Vito. Um Italian, but I live in London.
Vito Experiments On Seven Strings
SPEAKER_15Fantastic. And you got well, you got a seven string in your hair, man.
SPEAKER_16Yeah, but it's not mine. It's not.
SPEAKER_15Just playing with it.
SPEAKER_17Uh, made by, who's it made by, Vito? Sorry? Who's the guitar made by? But Ivanise, of course. Yeah, there we go.
SPEAKER_15Uh sorry.
SPEAKER_14No, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Um brilliant. Okay, well what what brought you here, man? Uh yeah, this is my second bootcamp. Oh really?
SPEAKER_23Right, okay. I came to know John Gum a couple of years ago in uh he did a couple of workshops in uh in London in guitar guitar, and I didn't know him before that.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_23And uh I was of course, I say, Oh he's a sort of who's this. Yeah, I was this magician that does all these things with the guitar. But basically, I was fascinated by all these gears. Like he had a massive paddle board, and of course, I was queer about it. And then when he said uh in one of the workshops, oh I have a I have a bootcamp.
SPEAKER_14Yeah.
SPEAKER_23First we can do summer, so yeah, I have to go. And uh it was a really a great experience, so I I thought that the second one would be even better.
SPEAKER_15And you learning all the percussive techniques and stuff.
SPEAKER_23Uh yeah, I'm kind of a different type of guitarist, but I try to uh steal techniques on from all the guitarists around me, electrics and acoustic, and trying to find a way to blend them with my sound, which I haven't discovered yet. So I'm still experimenting. Would you like to play something? Uh yeah. Um try this completely unknown guitar.
SPEAKER_16Yeah! Look at that for a challenge. Can you play a seven string even though you've never played it? Uh well, I can play like um literally like a strings of people are gonna listen to this, by the way. So that's no pressure.
SPEAKER_23Yeah. Um I can I was about to play a like a six string, like a song that I did yesterday. But earlier I was kind of trying to do something like proging, like dream theater like with the yeah, kind of that's dark, man.
SPEAKER_14I like that.
SPEAKER_15I like stick metal stuff. Yeah. Oh beautiful, thank you. Fair play to you for performing on a seven stream. Thank you.
SPEAKER_21Beautiful, thank you. Yeah, I'm Sam, I'm from Hertfordshire. Um this is my second time at the boot camp.
Sam Plays A Funky Excerpt
SPEAKER_21I also went to those guitar clinics in London. Um, I knew about John Gunn before, but that made me like him more because I mean he's really good life. Yeah, I saw these boot camps come up. I thought, I want to go there, that sounds great. And it was great. Amazing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_15And you compose your own stuff because I heard it last night. Yeah.
SPEAKER_21I'm trying to make an album and it's going very slowly.
SPEAKER_15That's that's possibly a positive thing. That's amazing. Yeah, it's true. Things come to those who wake and all that stuff. Would you be out for playing something, Charlie? Yeah. Like even a little excerpt would be amazing. Oh, you were doing something on a 12 string last time.
SPEAKER_21Oh, yeah, I was doing on a 12 string. I've got something else I could do on a six string.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_21It's a bit different from what I normally do and what would be on the album, but yeah.
SPEAKER_15Super funky. Thank you. Love it, man.
SPEAKER_11Thank you. Like with a quick mate. No, I'm Eric. Um, I'm from Austria. Um, I'm here the first time, but I was in the Austrian boot
Eric Demonstrates Percussion Mechanics
SPEAKER_11camp a few times already. With Thomas Lee, right? Yes. Exactly, and uh I think two years ago uh John was there as well.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, and you did a beautiful performance last night. With your money pickup as well that you were just showing me. Which is super cool.
SPEAKER_13Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_15Um you've got a very lovely looking guitar. Would you be out for playing a little Moodle on that? Yes. Showing us something that you do. Do you work with all the tunings lots and this is in standard?
SPEAKER_11This is standard, not an issue. Okay. Um you want to hear something with percussion or yeah, yeah, anything anything that you would like to.
SPEAKER_15I really like that guitar sound so bright and big, isn't it? It's really nice, yes. Um what is it? Oh yeah. What what seriously, what's the um bundle?
SPEAKER_11A um 370 M2E. A catchy little number. A catchy little number. Yeah.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, super bright. I I think, right, because I do the like accompanying lessons with episodes, and I was gonna do like an introduction to percussion. And you're using two sounds there, aren't you, that are like the sort of integral one man band percussive thing. Can you articulate that bearing in mind no one can see that that was happening? Can you articulate the two what was making that kick snares that sound briefly?
SPEAKER_11Yeah, I hit the top with the palm of the hand. And for this is the bass crumb. And you just put it now on one and three sort of thing. Yeah, but the three was the snare, I think, right? Oh, okay. Yes, yeah, you're right. Yeah, and the snare is hitting the string with the thumb. Cool. Fantastic.
SPEAKER_15Beautiful. Thank you, mate. That was wonderful. Should we move over a bit of Rob? I'm gonna maybe move a bit closer to you, mate. That's all right. Go for it.
SPEAKER_17Hello, uh, I'm Rob Barnabille. Um I've been going to Thomas's boot camp for for seems
Rob Brings Club Energy To Acoustic
SPEAKER_17like forever. Ten years, I think.
SPEAKER_15Oh really? Wow.
SPEAKER_17So I was nine years as a student, and then last year went there as a teacher. This year it went there as a teacher, and it was uh amazing to do that. But for years and years and years I've been honored John and Thomas to do a UK camp. And John's response always was I really want to do it, but I'm not grown up enough to sort it out. So I just started talking to his wife. Found the venue because it's I live locally.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_17So we found a venue because I live locally and uh thought this was perfect. He saw it. That was three years ago, so two years on we we're into boot camp too, and here we are, you know.
SPEAKER_15And you're doing the sound as well. Doing the sound for that.
SPEAKER_17Thank you, thank you. Uh which is yeah, intense at times, but it's also a lot of fun because you get every night you get like 12 different performers, and it's like, you know, you don't go to a gig like that normally anywhere, you know. It's a real special the open mic is magical. Like a highlight for a lot of people's the learning's great, the social's great, but from my experience, most of your best memories are from when you've played in front of your peers, and so therefore for me it's really important that all those people have that nice experience, you know, and they can sound as good as they can sound, you know. So Amen. Yeah, amen, brother.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, and you're a fantastic artist in your own right. Thank you very much. Can you can you play something?
SPEAKER_17I can I can play a little excerpt of something. So I play last night was not what I normally do, so because I kind of come from the drum and bass world in Bristol for 20 years, so my music's very rooted around dance music. So I'll play a little extract of something that is new actually, but um, and I'm playing this rather lovely looking new Ibernet and the model number is AAD300 C E. Well, just tune that up a little bit.
SPEAKER_15Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take your time, Makers. I just like listen to that. It's like, oh that's a little bit more. Yeah, take your time, isn't it, Rush?
SPEAKER_17It was a missionary and I can't play missionary GDM.
SPEAKER_07The tuning song. Yeah, oh yeah. I played a lot.
SPEAKER_11You you need to have more guitars than we go, we did think close enough for jazz.
SPEAKER_15That's proper dancey, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds pumping.
SPEAKER_17Yeah, uh with the soft bass and all the pedals. Honestly, through it here. Well, that's this wonderfully designed guitar by Ivan Ed. Nice, nice. What tune was it? Oh, that is B, F sharp, C sharp, F sharp, G sharp, C sharp. Uh kind of like Yeah, I like that rattling around. Yeah, there's a lot I use that kind of almost flip the string. So it flaps like a dubstep, like wow. Yeah, it's um play that you play with that quite a lot, yeah.
SPEAKER_15So it's a lot of fun. Does it satisfy your need to go to a club by playing? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_17Yeah. Okay. So this reminds me of reminds me of being in a nightclub at three in the morning standing next to the basement. It's like I put myself back there. I couldn't go to a nightclub now. I just go to a nightclub and it's oh, it's really sticky on the floor and it all smells of BO. Yeah. And the beer's really expensive and rubbish. So, you know. Um it gets my fix, so yeah. Oh, nice one, man.
SPEAKER_15Beautiful. Quinn, would you like to check? Ah, fantastic.
SPEAKER_07Uh yeah, Quinn. I'm over from the States West Coast um near Seattle. And this
Quinn Shares Backseat Dreams
SPEAKER_07is also my second boot camp. Um is actually a weird rabbit hole as to how I found John, because I was actually looking for an acoustic amp and saw the Black Star sonnet amps, and on their sales page on the Sweetwater website, they had a uh link to one of his videos, the promo videos that he did for those. So that was my like rabbit hole. Um, because I don't play anything like this. Usually I've uh been more of a singer-songwriter type um since picking up guitar. Um but yeah, I got the the opportunity to come to boot camp last year um as part of the a vacation, like the the tail end of vacation, which was magical. Um, and then I'm I'm back this year, and it has been equally magical so far.
SPEAKER_15So are you putting some of those sort of more percussive-y techniques in, or are you just taking from the creativity?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I haven't added a lot of percussive stuff yet. I have uh since last camp been doing some more uh more finger picking, more um adding some harmonics sometimes, that that kind of thing. But um basically my brain was melting out of my ears by the end of camp last year, so it's it's still kind of trickling down. Fantastic. Amazing.
SPEAKER_15Do you want do you want to play something?
SPEAKER_07Let's see. This is kind of a um this is called Backseat Dreams Can I hold it like a cigarette? Suck between inside now, crack the window, everyone sleeping. Can't breathe in without breathing out. Can I oh shoot, can I fold it like a ladder Seal away inside my head where there's smoke, there's a lighter can't take back, I never sit. Back seat dreams and fireflies, pocking ash trees, starry skies. Buckle up and close your eyes, take a long way home tonight. Baxi dreams and fireflies, empty roads and little lines. Buckle up and close your eyes. Take a long way on tonight.
SPEAKER_15That's beautiful. Thank you.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, there's more, but you know, that's I think that's the perfect satellite.
SPEAKER_15Uh that was really magical. Thank you, Quinn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you happy for us to use that? Yeah, go for it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_07That one is is not I do have uh some stuff on Bandcamp, but that one is not there, so.
SPEAKER_15How did we find it? Use it, isn't it?
SPEAKER_07Uh it's under a temporary container. Temporary container. Cool. Cool.
SPEAKER_15Amazing. All right. Thanks guys. Appreciate it. Beautiful.