Sahara Jannah

This an album inspired by deserts, more precisely the deserts of North Africa and North America. I knew I'd be making an album of solo electric guitar music but I wanted to wait until I returned from a trip to Morocco to find out if I could take anything back. At one point I 'had' something, rhythmic motifs running inside my head learned from the drummers I met and a better knowledge of Sahel guitar styles, the scale or mode that characterises the desert blues idiom. Most of all a sense of the unfathomable depth of people and landscapes. Then I lost it all and eventually found it again in Bounou on the edge of the Sahara. A few specific motifs keep surfacing in the album, variations on a melodic/rhythmic figure that I can’t seem to escape. 

There's no point in claiming that this is the real thing, African music, because it isn't. African music by definition gets played in Africa, every day, and when you come home you’re left with an impression. This impression can of course be informed after the fact by developing new techniques, research and focus but it's an impression nonetheless and indeed some of the pieces on the album are impressionistic. For example I had my head removed one night as I lay in the desert picking out Scorpius above. That experience deserved a piece of its own (Aleaqarab as it happens).
The music I encountered in Morocco was essentially social. People got together, played and sang songs.  But this music is also highly sophisticated. I make no claims to having mastered any of it though I'm digging deep into practising djembe, maracas and other small percussions in the hope that I'll be able to extend my rhythmic grammar and eventually transfer some of that to fingerstyle guitar. There are no percussionists I know of interested in experimenting with new music anywhere near where I stay in Scotland so for future albums I'll have to learn and play the percussion instruments I have, buy new ones or make some of my own (I’ve already collected branches and piano wire for a quintet of mouthbows).

Sahara Jannah began with some initial ideas I had from what I'd call American country music, actually more the 'Western' part of C&W (leaving out the Mexican strand which I’m looking into for another album) and from contemporary solo guitarists re-interpreting the traditions and extending the possibilities of the instrument. I've then merged my understandings of this with new ideas from Morocco. 

Apart from sitting in with African drummers I spent time playing and conversing with young Jasper Cussac who shared his knowledge of the kora and the musics of North Africa. Jasper has travelled regularly to Bamako to study with Toumani Diabete and members of the family. The great master passed away recently but I imagine the younger generation will continue the traditions and the teaching. I wouldn't even begin to try to play kora music on the guitar but both instruments are essentially played with the fingers (I only play fingerstyle) so some of one rubs off on the other. Jasper and I also talked about our shared enthusiasm for Brazilian, Afro-Cuban and similar musics which got me thinking about how to abstract from those great guitar traditions and make some new work capitalising on a knowledge of the ‘Spanish guitar’ repertoire.

Returning home I was able to make more sense of all the listening I did, along with book and video research into African forms, and from this the new album took shape. Several of the pieces are improvised. I worked on a very few core ideas then extended them in performance till a given piece sounded the way I wanted. Others are partly composed which means the core ideas were more refined so I had small cells or motifs to shuffle around. One or two are composed and played largely according to a learned structure because I kept changing horses in mid-stream so to speak.

From the sonic perspective the electric guitar is, as we all know, a very interesting and versatile instrument. I have different guitars with different strings and body sounds. I tune them differently. I also have two decent amplifiers and a selection of pedals but for this project I recorded the entire album using a Helix Line 6 modelling floor unit, then mastered it in my home studio. With the ever increasing power and memory of modern processors along with their smaller sizes I'm now able to call up from a portable floor unit a range of models of all the best preamps, amplifiers, cabinets of all shape and size (with microphones and placements), effects, compressors and more. I struggled at first but then got a copy of Craig Anderton's Big Book of Helix Tips and Tricks. This opened up a new world of technical and studio engineering possibilities. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to use the Helix devices. I play the unit through a good pair of full range flat response (frfr)  speakers. I'm fully persuaded that for recording the modelling technology is every bit the equal of physical amps and speakers from the aural side and in my view more enjoyable and challenging from the technological side. They're simply different processes and people can decide what suits them. Plus I can't afford Boogie, Soldano, vintage Fender or massively expensive boutique amps. I do have 'real world' equipment and can't find any overwhelming qualitative reason not to use the digital technology. Of course amps and pedals look good on stage and everyone likes messing around with cables and devices and then arguing about their merits on online forums but that's a different domain of activity, especially useful for winding up mainly American men with too much gear to which they seem to be symbiotically attached.
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Music is fundamentally the art of sound and this album is an attempt to create my own sound world on the electric guitar. I’ve favoured the low and lower midrange registers which gives a thick creamy sound to some of the pieces. This also allows the pulsing bass octaves and fifths played by the thumb to function orchestrally. With complex right hand picking and the sustain of the electric guitar the modulation effects - tremolo, vibrato phasing, flanging and so on can create interesting textures with compound time, irregular metres, yet another avenue I want to develop. I like to feature slide guitar and lap steel slide on solo guitar albums. Because of film music the slide guitar often calls up a host of images of various scenes - dusty railroad yards, cowboy hats and boots, drug cartels and so on. I always think of being spaced out in the desert so I’ll stay with that. One of my challenges for the future will be to find out how slide guitar techniques can coalesce with the complex African rhythms. Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Touré made a great album which does just that. I don’t want to copy them or anyone else so I had a go at my own way of doing things, for example with La Reine Selen on the lap steel.

The playing on the album is at times rough and ready and that's how I want it, to sound as live and off-the-cuff as possible, which is pretty much the case. I didn't want to make a nice clean album of 'perfect' guitar music and instead preferred to let some of these African compound rhythms in particular roll over each other almost to the point of collapse. For this approach I'm indebted to both historical and contemporary significant solo guitarists from North Africa and the Americas. In my own way I'd like to think that one day I can make a modest contribution to the development of the instrument. 

Technical Notes