On acoustic guitar I tend to stay in the key of D for some reason. On electric guitar I keep basic: C, G, D, and A. The key of D minor is also real good for me.
More than any other instrument, the relationship between an acoustic guitar and a microphone is super-important. The kind of mics that you use and your placement of the mics to the guitar can radically alter your sound.
I normally write on acoustic guitar, although piano is the instrument that I actually studied. Occasionally, I’ll write on the piano or sometimes with no instrument at all.
As a producer, when I’m trying to make something soft, I start with a slow tempo. Then after that, it would be straight to acoustic guitar and vocals, or I’m going to go strings and just piano.
I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.
I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I’d also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn’t have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow one from a friend so I could play folk joints.
There are a lot of cases where I’m using, if not an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar more as a rhythm instrument. Rather than blasting away, I use it to create more of an acoustic feel.
My foundation is acoustic guitar, and it is finger-picking and all of that and sort of an orchestral style of playing. Lead guitar came later, more out of the necessity to do so because of expectations in a particular situation.
I most enjoy sitting down with the acoustic guitar and just fiddling around and trying to come up with something like a hook or some sort of melodic line. That’s something that I do habitually.
I played acoustic guitar so intensely, for so long – for nine hours a day as a 10-year-old, writing songs through the night, on tour constantly from when I was 19 – that I destroyed my arms and shoulders in the process.
It’s amazing what the acoustic guitar can bring to the picture.
In 2002 I did a big tour of Europe, by train, by myself, on foot, all the time walking from train station to the venue, in a weird town, in a weird country. I’d brought an acoustic guitar with me but it got broken somehow in transit.
I was just a punk-rock kid who never played acoustic guitar.
With my songs, the question is always, ‘Can you pull it off live, alone on just an acoustic guitar?’ That’s the litmus test. If I can, then it’s a song I ought to record. If I can’t, it’s probably not good enough.
The classical guitar has a dynamic to it unlike a regular acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. You know, there’s times when you should play and there’s times when you gotta hold back. It’s an extremely dynamic instrument.
There’s something about approaching universal truths with the simplicity of the acoustic guitar. You can take it anywhere, and it helps me reach listeners of all ages and walks of life.
When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that’s a good test of a song, when it’s really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.
Artie travels all the time. The rehearsals were just miserable. Artie and I fought all the time. He didn’t want to do the show with my band; he just wanted me on acoustic guitar.
The best way to do that is to pick up a new instrument or an instrument that you don’t typically write on and see where it takes you. Whether it’s using an acoustic guitar, or piano, or electronics as tools, all of these lead to creating different types of songs and I used all of these methods for this record.
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