INTRODUCTION
I've been playing guitar and writing music for just over 30 years now across various bands. My main ones have been Livonia from 1993 to about 2002, Electrico from 2003 to 2008 and In Each Hand A Cutlass since 2008. My day job has been an in-house corporate lawyer in various tech companies, and I also have another full-time job, namely being a fur dad to Choya, my nearly 4-year-old Shiba Inu. So to be honest, making music has kind of been relegated down the chain of priorities these days.
PLAYING STYLE
With IEHAC as my creative outlet for instrumental music, my playing style has been a blend of progressive rock, metal, cinematic post-rock and textural soundscapes. I try to play what suits the song, but I've always had an eclectic and diverse music taste. I use effects liberally, but I wouldn't feel too crippled if I just had to plug into an amp without anything more than some gain and maybe a dash of reverb.
My early guitar heroes and musical influences in the 90s spanned indie rock, shoegaze, UK Britpop, US-based alternative and college rock, grunge, metal, punk and emo. I loved spazzy frenetic guitar sounds that would clash and clang, but at the same time as a kid I was raised on radio of the mid to late 80s, the hair metal and thrash metal with fast widdly guitar solos and crazy bends that went out of fashion soon after grunge took over the landscape - the guitar acrobatics thing that was way above my pay grade then was always fascinating but I'd only dabble in it occasionally and learn whatever little I could that might help expand my playing vocabulary. I would buy magazines like Guitar World and Guitar Techniques, and try my best to learn from the exercises and lessons, even those that were styles that I normally wouldn't play in my bands like jazz and blues. There were plenty of useful things I picked up, especially theory, as I never had any formal music education or took any lessons, so I had to learn a lot of things on my own - things like modes, altered scales, arpeggios and chord construction, substitutions, inversions etc. The guitarists I most admired and tried to learn from in my fledgling years were probably J Mascis, Johnny Marr, Graham Coxon, Paul Gilbert, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jerry Cantrell, Dave Navarro, Jonny Greenwood and Billy Corgan.
In the 2000s I was into the heavier spectrum of metal bands and prog - Opeth, Mastodon, Porcupine Tree, Gojira, Ihsahn, Lamb Of God, Killswitch Engage, Dillinger Escape Plan, Between The Buried And Me, Cynic etc. so I started focussing more on techniques that I had only previously glossed over at best. I started to focus a lot on my picking technique - alternate and economy, and also on hybrid picking which I find I've subconsciously incorporated quite a bit into my style over the years. I found joy in being able to play what would have seemed impossible to me when I first started out - I enjoyed the challenge and the ability to internalise the woodshedding and incorporate some wild runs or extended chords into my repertoire without really having to think about it.
I don't have that much practice time these days save for weekends but I try to get at least 15 or 30 mins every day, even if I'm winding down after work watching some Netflix, I'll just take a guitar out to the couch and my portable Boss Katana Air amp running on rechargeable AAs, and I'll just run through exercises and licks from a previous detailed practice session that I'm still trying to make second nature. It's better than not playing at all.
When I do try to put in the effort to learn something, YouTube is an absolute treasure trove of amazing guitar players offering an absolute wealth of experience. My favourites are studio legends Tim Pierce and Tom Bukovac - you could get lost in their guitar videos and nothing else and you'd probably have enough learning material to last a lifetime. They're so many others including the incredible educator Tomo Fujita, Paul Davids, Martin Miller, Ben Eller and Rick Beato.
I try to avoid pointless noodling by playing things are programmed into my autopilot mode by now, especially pentatonic blues-based meanderings, so if I find myself gravitating towards those old familiar licks, I'll just stop. I try to warm up by running through some diatonic modal and chromatic scale runs both vertically and horizontally, and then some sweep picking arpeggios - starting with major and minor patterns from the 5th and 6th strings, and then extended arpeggios - diminished, maj7, min7, dominant 7th, and then connecting arpeggio patterns over a chord progression.
If I really want a brain and finger workout and have the time for a real practice session out I'll try to work on some circle of fifths type exercises where I'll work around scales, and arpeggios over that circle. I might practice melodic minor modes, chromatic CAGED patterns, or work on jazz chordal voicings. I also sometimes try to figure out songs or solos by ear as part of ear training by painstakingly pausing an audio recording or a YouTube video, slowing these down, finding the notes and committing them to memory. Some of the hardest ones to figure out involve rhythm playing with unusual chord voicings. I try to work on my rhythm playing - Cory Wong for example is an incredible rhythm machine, and his songs are a lot of fun to play. Another modern player I really admire is Tim Henson from Polyphia - truly creative left-of-centre playing and composition that fuses a bunch of different techniques to form a unique rhythm/lead hybrid approach that makes learning just one of their songs a soup to nuts lesson and workout.
The whole point about practice is to force yourself to learn new things and play in ways you've never done before, so I try my best to make sure my practice sessions are about playing something new and building it up to accuracy, fluency, and speed in that order. It never gets easier, but over the years I think I've been getting less frustrated with my own limitations, and I get a better understanding of the time it takes to meaningfully progress.
MAIN INSTRUMENTS
The 4 main guitars in the bands I've played in (from L to R) have been my 1959 Fender Jazzmaster, 1989 Fender Stratocaster Ultra, 2008 Suhr Pro Series S3 and 2013 Suhr Modern. I used the Jazzmaster almost exclusively with Livonia, the Strat Ultra with Electrico, and the Suhrs with IEHAC. All of them except the Suhr Modern have been heavily modified with pickup changes and additional switching options etc. The Jazzmaster has a Mastery bridge which has been essential in improving its stability and playability - it's also gone through 2 re-fret jobs over the years. The Strat Ultra and Suhr Pro S3 now have stainless steel frets which I really like - after playing my Suhr Modern which came with stainless steel frets (my first encounter with those), I figured I had to have them on as many of my guitars as possible.
I've gone through different guitars over the years because I feel each guitar inspires you to play differently. I also spent a lot of time figuring what works best for my tastes and playing style. I couldn't really bond with some of them, so for example I've let a Gibson Les Paul Custom and a PRS Custom 24 go. I still have quite a few Teles, including a Telecaster Plus from the 90s, a 1973 Telecaster Deluxe, a 2005 American Deluxe Telecaster and a recent Standard Telecaster HH which I've modded with different pickups and a Mastery bridge. I also still have a Gibson 335 which could use some love again so I should dig that one out from storage soon. In general I'm a Fender as opposed to a Gibson person I guess.
I do tend to favour Strats, so among my favourites is another 1991 Fender Strat Ultra which remains unmodded and it has the original Lace Sensor pickups - dual Red in the bridge, Gold middle and Blue neck - which are a bit of a love-‘em-or-hate-‘em thing. I think that in the right circumstances and through pedals they sound great, but one thing's for certain, they definitely don't sound like regular Strat pickups at all. Still, there's something about those old 90s Strat Ultra and Strat Plus models with the Lace Sensors which I love and it probably started when I was a teenager just starting out playing - those were the models I most coveted. They've got really nice necks which are a bit thinner than current production models. The Ultras have smooth ebony fretboards, medium jumbo frets and a flame or burst finish which is quite eye catching too. Both my Strat Ultras were bought off eBay a long time ago as they were out of production by the time I wanted to own them.
I also have a 2007 American Highway One, which I also got for cheap on eBay back in the day and which has been my modding platform over the years; I've literally changed everything except the neck and body. Now it's got stainless steel frets, an Eric Johnson pickup set, Callaham trem block, Fender locking tuners and a bone nut. That pretty much took care of my desire for a traditionally voiced Strat, as most of my others have an HSS pickup configuration.
For practicality, I love the modern features and sheer playability of the Suhrs. They're so easy to play it's almost cheating. If you can't rip on those, go learn the piano or something. Over the years I've also started to really gravitate towards the aesthetic of modern superstrat style guitars as opposed to the vintage look. In fact, I think those Strandberg headless models are calling me!
OTHER EQUIPMENT
I generally rely on pedals through a clean amp for different degrees of gain and dirt. On my main pedalboard for live use, the Boss ES-8 switching system is basically the brain and control unit. I have 5 gain pedals for different flavours of overdrive, distortion and fuzz. An Eventide H9 is my Swiss army knife for reverb, modulations, pitch shifting, synth sounds and ambient patches. A Boss DD-500 takes care of all my delay needs, and the Tera Echo setting works in a pinch if I need some kind of ambient-ish reverb-like padding or space enhancement while the H9 is busy providing some other function. Using the ES-8 as a Midi controller for the H9 and DD-500 allows a lot of versatility and instantaneous patch switching. It has saved me from having to tap-dance all over my pedals. It’s convenient and it sounds fine. Sure I miss individual stand-alone pedals and some analogue effects but the space and weight savings are a trade-off I’ll gladly accept.
For amps it's essentially a Fender 68 Custom Deluxe Reverb combo and a Mesa Boogie Recto-Verb 25 head with a matching 1x12 speaker cab for home use, or any 2x12 or 4x12 cab live. They both sound great clean and take pedals well. My pedalboard allows me to switch between mono or stereo amp configurations quite easily so I’m not too fussed these days.
At home for practice most of the time I'll just play through my Boss Katana Air which is portable and can go anywhere. The wireless transmitter is something you'd never think is important for a small practice amp, but once you get used to that, you really don't ever want to use cables again. If I'm at my study working and I need a quick break, sometimes I have my small pedalboard through an older Yamaha THR10x which actually makes a rather nice clean pedal platform. The small pedalboard has a couple of dirt pedals, a TC Electronic Flashback II for delay, a Boss RV-6 for reverb and a Strymon Mobius for modulation. I hook them up to a Boss RC-500 looper at the end which makes for a nice practice tool but also because I've been meaning to get deeper into looping as a form of composition and songwriting, but I still have much to learn in that regard.
For accessories, I use an E-bow sometimes and for picks I've been loyal to V-picks for a long time now - they're amazing and I buy them in bulk every couple of years. It's hard to use anything else frankly. All my guitars have Elixir 0.10 gauge strings on them, they last a long time and feel good, so no complaints there.
LOCAL GUITARISTS YOU FIND INTERESTING
So many wonderful players and great talent out there they're hard to single out. I think Addy Cradle, Rosli Mansor, Simon Yong and Dhalif are some of our finest and most technically accomplished ones and they're all international calibre players who bring a lot to the table. I love the guitar players from Cheating Sons and General Lee - both bands play soulful melodic roots rock and can peel off some really great guitar licks. I've always admired Amran Khamis from I Am David Sparkle - his sense of dynamics and ability to wring out textures and tension in the right places is quite something, and his playing even back in his Stroll days has always been inventive. Rasyid from Wormrot is a riff machine - tight, fast and furious and he manages to sound gigantic live - very cool. Field from Caracal has always been a great player and manages to churn out some really exciting fluid riffs. The guitar player in Forests is great at the math-y tapping chordal stuff - very nice, melodic and technically impressive!