John Frusciante talks about his new solo album, The Empyrean
Last modified: 23:44:42 CET on 22 Feb, 2009 |
Guitar Magazine: How do you think of your ideas to play?
John Frusciante: I often hear guitar phrases in my head. I played the solo in Central passively, but on other songs I played more energetically, or faster, or more aggressively, I guess. Guitarists have lots of things to express with their guitar. There are so many guitarists who play too much when they play. But it's better to play to erase your ego.
You can play music wonderfully that way. When I was young, I learned that. When I joined the Chili Peppers, I over-played to try and improve my ability.
But when I stopped doing that, I found my real self, finally. By erasing my egoism, I found myself. Music shouldn't be created by forcing it.
If you forge a good relationship with your musical instrument, & you erase your egoism & not judge or analyze yourself too much, the music will be created naturally when you play. Music is a power that exists in the universe, it is born via our hands or musical instruments. It won't come out from your brain.
If you are too conscious, it'll have a reverse effect.
Guitar Magazine: You approach your guitar in a lot of ways. There are some occasions where your guitaring sounds like a keyboard, or strings.
John Frusciante: It might be a sound from a different musical instrument, from creative mixing approaches, or from arranging the sound after I played the guitar. When I make reverb, if the reverb signal is greater than the original signal from the guitar, it'll be a sound that is similar to strings. Strings have a way of making the sound rise but it's difficult to create that same feeling with just a guitar. However, if I use my volume knob or reverse the guitar, or add reverb, I can get a sound like strings. I'm not consciously trying to copy the sounds of strings or other musical instruments with the guitar... the guitar sound on this album is psychedelic, I guess.
The core of the album's sound is the keyboard or the drums. The guitar is added afterwards. It's different from my previous solo albums. I found out that continuously playing rhythm guitar throughout the album wasn't necessary, because we can hear other musical instruments. The reason why The Doors were unique and wonderful is because the sound of their guitar didn't disturb the other musical instruments. That's why I wanted to use the same approach to my album. If I do that, the guitar is so vivid. Even though there might not be any guitar sounds for a few minutes, suddenly a solo will come in and it will be a more prominent phrase that way. In addition, it was fun to arrange the sounds of the guitar, keyboards, drums & so on with modular synthesizers. I always tried to experiment. I didn't think about the sound in advance.
(a summary quote from John): |I copied all the guitar parts from The Smiths (laughs) and I learned lots of ways of layering chords from Johnny Marr's guitaring.
Guitar Magazine: What is the guitar, for you? What are the potentials of the guitar?
John Frusciante: I think the guitar solo on Enough of Me is pretty unique and I don't think I've heard a lot of people playing in that way. So, I think there are still more possibilities to find new guitar sounds. We should focus on the potentialities of new sounds rather than on the differences between existing guitar playing, because the possibilities for new sounds are infinite. Some recent guitarists play boringly or uninterestingly, compared to older guitarists. I get bored when they play the guitar as if they just want to be famous. That is because they think of the guitar as just "a guitar", they don't think of it as a "tool" to create sounds. Most guitarists these days misunderstand that using your body to play dramatically is a good performance. But I take the opposite approach. When I was 17 to 19 years old, I was doing the same thing, or I was thinking the same way, but when I removed that idea, I was released & I felt free (laughs).
When people practice the guitar for many hours a day, and they listen to other guitarists play, they generally focus on how to play technically.
But I listen to other players thinking about the relationship between the guitarist, the musical notes being played, the rhythm being played and the guitarist's relationship with other guitarists.... and how the guitar tone fits in a whole sound space. It makes me enjoy playing more, facing the guitar with those thoughts. Furthermore, I can evaluate various types of guitar playing.
It's not good playing to do too much action physically. Technical performance using the body only conveys the merits of that playing to the guitarist, because they know how they have to move their fingers on the neck, or how many long hours it took them to be able to play like that. But, it's not important to the general music listener, or people who play other musical instruments, or people who simply like the sound of the guitar. Your fingers only have a brief moment to move on the neck of the guitar. The important thing for me whenever I play any musical instrument, is to take that fleeting moment of inspiration & make it into a sound. Other things are not important. The connection between a guitarist's ideas and their music are more important to me.
Guitar Magazine: It's a big topic that Johnny Marr is a guest on the album. Can you tell us if there were any ways that you were inspired by his guitar playing...?
John Frusciante: When I made [the Chili Peppers album] By The Way in 2002, I copied all of the guitar parts from The Smiths (laughs).
I was addicted to researching how to play the guitar like Johnny Marr. I learned lots of ways of how to assemble chords, how to layer intervals differently, how to layer multiple opposite guitar parts and how to create different sound movements by layering chords. Johnny Marr is good at layering musical notes complexly by adding intervals which weren't in the original chord structure. He is at his best playing that way in The Smiths. When I listen to other guitarists playing, I analyze them with musical theory. But it's not an obstacle to listen to the music emotionally. When I listen to chords like a 9th, or an 11th, or a 7th, I hear them symbolize the emotion contained in the interval.
I was analyzing Johnny Marr's guitar playing theoretically before, but when he played my music, he didn't think about music theory at all (laughs). He was creating riffs without thinking while he was playing. So, it was very interesting for me to see how he creates his chord changes using his complicated interval relationships, and how he assembles his riffs... it was very useful. I didn't tell him how the structure of the song, but he created wonderful improvisations. When I talked a lot with Johnny, I discovered that he doesn't know a lot of music theory. He was just playing by ear, or by his feeling. People who don't study music theory already have unique theories in their head. In my case, it's easier to analyze the relationship of each musical instrument with musical theory, but the theory isn't necessary.
(to be continued)
