Yes legend Steve Howe on guitar improvisation: “You don’t need very much information. You just need a bit of the plot”
Is guitar virtuosity about memorising the fretboard, or trusting your instincts? Earlier this year, Jazz-Funk star Cory Wong made headlines insisting that “advanced” players should know the location of every note on the guitar – a view Joe Satriani has publicly supported.
For Yes legend Steve Howe, though, mastery takes a different form. Largely self-taught, Howe treats the fretboard as a guide rather than a rulebook, arguing that when it comes to improvisation, guitarists “just need a bit of the plot”.
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Asked whether being self-taught shaped his style in a new interview with Uncut, Howe explains: “I guess it did. But my brain capacity when I was young was all about the hearing and not playing while you look at a piece of paper. It comes through my head, and I put my fingers on the frets, and if I can recognise the tonality, I’m in the zone.”
“That’s why I like improvising so much,” he adds, “because you don’t need very much information to improvise. You just need a bit of the plot.”
Beyond notes, Howe emphasises rhythm as the true backbone of playing.
“The important thing is that notes are fairly meaningless on their own, so the rhythm is important,” he says.
“Two of my sons are drummers – unfortunately, Virgil [Howe’s second son and longtime Yes drummer] passed away – but it runs in the family, and I could have been a drummer; it really interested me. So, I’m pretty fanatical about beats. I feel beats. People talk about time signatures, but I can’t actually think about whether something is in 5/4 or not – I’ve got to feel what it’s like when the part’s in 5/4.”
Whether players should know their fretboard back to back has been the subject of some discussion as of late. After Cory Wong split the guitar world in two with his assertion that players should know every note on their instrument inside out, White Stripes legend Jack White responded hilariously: “Ok it’s a deal; I’ll find the C, but I’m not learning all those other notes!”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
