Frith, Fred - Guitar Solos CD
SKU
FRED FR 9001
In the almost 30 years since this was released, so much has happened, and artists like Keith Rowe and Derek Bailey have become relatively well known, so that the shock of this record back then is hard to imagine now. But it was shocking, believe me.
"Heres the original CD as released by the Virgin subsidiary Caroline, in the early 70s. Hugely influential at the time, and still legendary, this is just Fred alone with electric and acoustic guitars, and the help of multiple pick ups, scrapers, and countless techniques for getting new sounds out of the guitar. He describes some of his techniques: Theres a number of voices coming from one guitar. I use a stereo guitar, with a pickup at the wrong end of the neck, thats three separate sources going into three separate channels, each of which can be equalised and treated differently. So one channel might be clean, and another might be distorted, which makes them sound very different from each other. And when you put a capo across the 12 fret, the notes on the left and right of the capo are not only different, but not even in the same tuning, so youre dealing with micro-tonality as well. And if you have a volume pedal on each line, you can decide which aspect of the guitar is heard when. Thats the basic premise for Guitar Solos, and its still the basic set-up I work with today, except that I seldom use a capo any more I prefer to let things bleed into each other more. It requires a completely different technique to control the different aspects of this system, involving both hands and feet, which is perhaps why no-one else has taken it up, even now after 30 years.