Knicks Morning News (2023.08.25)

Scary Pockets is an ongoing collective made up of some of the best players in the local jazz and funk scene here in LA, which is incredibly robust at the moment. Very much in the style of the legendary Vulfpeck. I play in a band called Fan Fiction that kind of exists in this scene, although we don’t play very often. We’re often on the bill with Scary Pockets-related musicians like Nick Campbell and Larry Goldings. I also play with Maya Rudolph’s Prince cover band PRINCESS, and the drummer of that band Rob Humphreys is a Scary Pockets regular.

There are so many talented players and singers here in LA that they have no problem finding amazing guest vocalists. Everybody knows somebody who’s dope.

Can you shed some light on that? In other words, can someone at your skill level pretty much copy 99% of the riffs and solos out there? And if not, what’s the nature of the obstacles from player to player?

Interesting question.

For starters, I’d say this: all players have a ceiling to their technique or what we also call “chops.” In the professional world, I’m not really an elite “chops” player by any stretch of the imagination. My strengths are time-feel, versatility, and (I’ve been told) taste. Guitar is my second instrument, and I’m not the kind of player who can perfectly mimic the most difficult Eddie Van Halen solos, or play like John McLaughlin or Yngwie Malmsteen or any of those elite shredders. That’s simply beyond my ceiling of technique. There are some other styles that are really difficult to play, like for instance bluegrass flat picking. I don’t think my fingers could ever move that fast if I practiced the rest of my life.

But short of that kind of stuff, I’d say that yes, I could probably play 99% of what’s out there. I could definitely play the “Sultans Of Swing” solo, and during the pandemic I actually got into a hobby of learning a bunch of difficult but not impossible guitar solos, and it was a lot of fun. I got really into Larry Carlton’s solos, learned his solos from “Kid Charlemagne” and “Don’t Take Me Alive” and I also went back and learned some Zeppelin and Hendrix and Clapton solos. Those are all attainable to somebody like me if I put in the work. At least, I can get my fingers on all of the frets at the right time. “Kid Charlemagne” took me a while to get together, I had to practice that for hours to be able to get through it.

To actually PLAY like, for instance, Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan or Prince or something… that’s a whole other thing. Those are guitarists that have incredibly strong voices, extremely forceful phrasing and command of their tone and so on. Like Jeff Beck, for instance: I could probably learn most Jeff Beck songs note for note, but he’s a magician when it comes to phrasing, the most accurate string bender who ever lived. He also often has his amp dialed in so it’s right on the verge of feedback, so he’s able to coax that feedback out of it in just the right amounts at just the right times to generate extra overtones and really make his playing sing. That stuff is basically impossible to emulate. Those are really my favorite kinds of guitarists, the guys who have something beyond technique, who have a strong voice as players.

Yeah, I guess that’d be the hard part trying to really nail “Sultans Of Swing,” the fact that he doesn’t use a pick. Same with Lindsey Buckingham, to really nail his sound you can’t use a pick.

One of the most impossible things to play that doesn’t even sound that difficult is “Never Going Back Again” by Fleetwood Mac, which is just the most insane Travis picking thing. This guy in this YouTube video does a great job of explaining why it’s so impossible to play, and why it’s so great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeNyc9pXm1w&t=435s