Guitar hero determined not to be stuck in a rut
AMERICAN guitarist Preston Reed is undoubtedly best known for his visually and musically spectacular "hammering on" style of playing, but it is only one facet of his talents.
Reed, who settled in Ayrshire a decade ago after meeting his wife and manager at the Kirkmichael Guitar Festival, was a well-established player in finger-picking style by the mid-1980s, with five albums to his credit and a solid following in his native USA.
The player himself, though, was less satisfied.
"Around 1987 I felt I had reached a plateau," he explained.
"I was always composing my own music and I wanted to find a way to create more of the music I was hearing in my head, but was unable to play in the particular style I was using. I was interested in getting more voices and textures and instrumental sounds happening than was possible using a conventional playing position."
At that time he was aware of four guitar players using a variant on a tapping or hammering style of playing — acoustic guitarist Michael Hedges and primarily electric specialists Jeff Healey, Eddie Van Halen and Stanley Jordan.
"I had been watching them and was interested in it, but I wasn’t really motivated to copy what they were doing," he said.
"What did get me thinking were the sounds that you can make on the body of an acoustic guitar as a percussion instrument. Depending on where you strike it you get different textures.
"I thought: is there some way that I can make use of these wonderful drum sounds in a solo guitar composition? The only thing of that kind I had heard was in flamenco music, but I was looking for a more integrated way of using percussive sounds in the music."
He realised that it was not going to be possible to do what he was after in the normal guitar position and had to set about re-inventing things for himself.
"Instead of thinking about starting with the guitar, I started to think about a drum groove and then working out the guitar playing," he explained.
"Once I found one I liked, I would work guitar notes into it. It sounds strange, but it worked.
"It opened up the guitar as a much more powerful composing instrument for me. I was able to start thinking compositionally rather than guitar-istically, if you like. I took a more broad-minded approach to my music, and that included coming up with a lot of new techniques for the guitar — but they all came out of solving compositional problems."
Reed has been developing that percussive approach for over two decades now alongside more conventional styles of playing and feels there is still plenty of room for development — no new plateau is looming just yet.
"I’m writing a couple of new percussive tunes for my next record right now, incorporating integrated percussion," he said.
"I think the key word in all of this is integrated. I never get tired of doing that and I think it will always be a vibrant part of my playing and writing now."
He acknowledges that while he loves the instrument, he is not one of those guitarists fixated on it for its own sake, but rather as a vehicle to a greater purpose.
"Guitar is absolutely a means of doing what I want to do musically," he said. "I’ve never been in love with the guitar for itself, but for what I have been able to do with it. I love acoustic guitar and I also love to play electric. I do play the guitar normally as well as the two-handed hammering on stuff, and all of that is part of the set.
"I’m always wary of getting stuck in what I’m doing, and that includes two-handed ways of playing the guitar — that can also potentially be a way of getting stuck."
He will be using four different guitars in his solo show at Eden Court, including a new custom-made baritone guitar by Ayrshire-based maker Mark Bailey, a 12-string, a semi-acoustic jazz guitar and a standard six-string acoustic.
The show will include a spread of music from across his 30-year career performed in a number of styles
He concedes that there times when that eclecticism and refusal to be pigeon-holed has been a commercial drawback.
"I hate being labelled, but it is part of marketing to specialise and expect something to be this certain thing," he said.
"I’m not about to change, though — I’m happy to take credit for the innovation I have created on the guitar, which has been taken up by guitar players around the world, but I also want to be known for not being limited to that."
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Preston Reed appears at the OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court,on Wednesday.
