- 2 days ago
Acoustic maven Mike Dawes gives a dazzling demonstration of percussive fingerstyle acoustic technique - and shows us how his custom-built guitar is modded and optimised for his dynamic, exciting style of playing delivering beautiful acoustic tone and powerful rhythmic effects from one instrument and its pickup system.
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MusicTranscript
00:29I'll see you next time.
00:51Here we go.
00:58So this is my signature Andreas Kunz guitar, the guitar with the unfortunate name of C-U-N-T-Z,
01:05made by the genius German guitar luthier of that same name.
01:08And this is the guitar that I've used on every live show I've ever done since about 2016 when it
01:14was made.
01:15So my second album, Era, was recorded pretty much entirely with this guitar.
01:19And every gig I've done kind of since has been with that.
01:22And it's on the majority of the tracks from my new album, which is coming out in this summer.
01:26It's a very, very unique guitar for a number of reasons.
01:30Not one of those reasons would be the fact that it's Indian Rosewood and Sitka Spruce.
01:35Pretty common kind of combination for acoustic guitars.
01:38It's a very, very old top.
01:40I think now it was 38 years old when I got it.
01:43So it's probably about, you know, 44, 46 year old Sitka Spruce top.
01:48Indian Rosewood back and sides, you know, quilted maple bindings, all of that fun stuff.
01:52The Gotoh 510s, which is an absolute mainstay.
01:56But there are a lot of unique things about it.
01:59First of all, we have this thing, which a lot of people ask about, which is called the Scratch Pad.
02:05This was something which was actually kind of pioneered by the luthier Nick Benjamin and the late, great Eric Roche.
02:11The late, great Irish guitar player.
02:13A big fan of Eric Roche.
02:14He's kind of the reason I got into playing guitar in this kind of way.
02:18And it was actually done initially as kind of a repair to kind of stop him kind of scratching and
02:23damaging the guitar.
02:24Willie Nelson-ing the guitar, if you will.
02:26And I kind of adopted that after seeing many of my peers.
02:29People like Thomas Lieb, who was one of Eric's students at one point.
02:33And Newton Faulkner, a lot of our mutual friends, I'm sure.
02:36So this comes standard with it, which is a way to essentially get a bit of percussive kind of scratching.
02:42You know how Tommy Emanuel damages his whole guitar by doing this?
02:45Because my dad would kick my ass if I did that.
02:47So that's what that's for, okay?
02:49Additionally, the top here is actually reinforced.
02:52So there's some extra bracing about here, which is not common on acoustic guitars.
02:57And the consequence of that is it's a very, very solid top that doesn't flex much.
03:02So I can really kind of...
03:07...really hit it quite hard if I wanted to and not worry about damaging the guitar.
03:12Something else that's very unique about this guitar that the observant viewers may notice
03:15is that at the headstock here, the strings don't actually bend.
03:19You see, there's no actual breakpoint here.
03:21They just go straight to the tuners.
03:22And that's why the headstock has this kind of unusual shape.
03:25It's to facilitate that.
03:27And that means that when I'm tuning in quite wacky tunings where I take the guitar quite low,
03:31it holds tension that little bit better.
03:32So an example of that is on my first album, I was using 59s to track...
03:38Or a 59-gauge string to track songs that have this tune to C.
03:43And I can use a 56 on this and it's fine.
03:45You know, just the way the guitar's built it just holds it.
03:47You would be surprised at how much difference that makes.
03:51More so, in my experience, than a mild fan fret would make, actually.
03:55So I really, really like that about this guitar.
03:57It's an incredibly slim profile.
03:59Electric guitar players love it.
04:00It's got a 44mm nut, very, very narrow string spacing.
04:05I know Misha from Periphery bought one of these guitars.
04:07I think Mark Holcomb, one of the other guitar players in Periphery, is picking one of these up.
04:12And yeah, it's the guitar that is for the metal shredder who is, you know,
04:18dipping their toe into the acoustical world.
04:20And as an ex-shredder myself, who could tell, it's the perfect guitar for me for sure.
04:24Well, that's it.
04:25I come from electric guitar, kind of Iron Maiden-y shred music.
04:28And when I made the jump to acoustic guitar when I was about 17 in this fair city of Bath,
04:34UK,
04:35I felt like an acoustic guitar off the shelf with, say, a 46mm nut, something like a Loudon that was
04:42made for fingerstyle players,
04:44I still noticed a difference in a bit of a learning curve that I found might not be necessary.
04:49So my first custom acoustic guitar actually was a Nick Benjamin Mahogany and Sitka Spruce guitar.
04:57And it had a 43mm nut.
04:59So those 3mms made a lot of difference.
05:01But I asked Andreas to make me a 43mm nut.
05:05And he said, no, go away.
05:07I'm not doing that.
05:08It's stupid.
05:09So 44mm would be the compromise with Mr. Andreas Kuntz.
05:12And I'm forever grateful for it because it is perfect.
05:14This is a perfect guitar, and I'm very, very proud of what we made.
05:19The fun stuff is the pickups.
05:21And that's another thing that's unique about this guitar.
05:23When people want to check these guitars out, you can get them fully loaded with everything or not.
05:28But a quirk about this guitar is that there's actually four different pickups.
05:34Typically an off-the-shelf guitar might have one under-saddle piezo and that's it.
05:38And a complaint I hear a lot about acoustic guitars is, oh, my guitar sounds great unplugged.
05:43But when I plug it in, it just doesn't sound good.
05:45And obviously as someone who tours a lot and does a lot of gigs, I'm trying to get the best
05:49live sound possible.
05:50And also a contained live sound.
05:53I like to move around on stage a bit.
05:56So the idea of using an external mic, like a condenser or something on the stage, bluegrass style, is something
06:02that I'm not really comfortable with.
06:05I wanted it to all be in the guitar.
06:06And we found the best way was to combine four different pickups.
06:10The main one is your traditional piezo.
06:13And I'm actually going to solo these from my mixer here.
06:16So the main guitar sound, which I have, sounds something like this.
06:23It's pretty much the whole sound, actually.
06:26It's the majority of the sound here.
06:28But it's not an under-saddle piezo.
06:30It's a bridge plate piezo made by a company called Shatton.
06:34It's called the HFN.
06:36And it's a little block that sits underneath the bridge plate on the inside.
06:40And because of that,
06:43you don't get that kind of quacky, high-pitched sound that we're familiar with from under-saddle transducers.
06:51So that, once I discovered that, and it's very resonant, you know, it's picking up so much of the body
06:57of the guitar.
06:58In addition to that, I have a microphone in there from the K&K Trinity system.
07:03So I wired in the K&K microphone with the Shatton HFN.
07:07And by the way, if you want proof that the Shatton HFN is a great-sounding pickup,
07:11it's called the HFN because apparently the boss, I think it's Les Shatton maybe,
07:17apparently heard it for the first time and said, hey, fuck, nice.
07:21So that's what HFN stands for.
07:22You might have to bleep that out.
07:24The microphone, if I take it out, the guitar sounds like this.
07:30But if I add it in,
07:33you can hear the difference between
07:36and
07:38right?
07:38There's a big difference in the external percussion.
07:40I'll turn the delay off there, sorry.
07:42So with it on,
07:45with it off,
07:48huge difference.
07:49So when I'm playing songs that require a lot of percussion and external stuff,
07:52I have a thumb wheel and I dial in just a little bit of that microphone.
07:55So those are the first two pickups and arguably the main pickups
07:58if someone's interested in playing
08:01with a little bit of percussion and things like that.
08:04The third pickup,
08:06if I isolate that by itself,
08:08it's at quite a low level,
08:09but it's a magnetic pickup.
08:15And you can see it's very warm-sounding.
08:17It's something that I made with DiMazio.
08:20It's called the Black Angel,
08:21which sounds like a kind of bad Marvel hero or something.
08:27But it's a great pickup.
08:28And the reason it's a great pickup
08:30is because, first of all, it's passive,
08:32which means that it doesn't need a battery.
08:35So I've got it plugged straight in
08:37and I can run everything on this guitar
08:39on one nine volt battery,
08:40which is very important.
08:41But there's a phase switch on it.
08:48And by inverting the phase of the pickup,
08:50when in conjunction with everything else,
08:52I get the biggest sound possible.
08:54And it's also a nice little hack
08:55when you're on stage and getting feedback
08:56to just quickly invert the phase of a pickup
08:58and it can fix a lot of problems.
09:00So you can hear that that's lower level in the mix,
09:03but it adds this warmth.
09:05And there's another reason I have this pickup,
09:07which we'll get to in a bit.
09:08So that's the magnetic,
09:09and this is the piezzo and microphone.
09:13So I feel like I've got my acoustic guitar,
09:16my percussion,
09:17and my electric guitar
09:19in the form of the magnetic pickup.
09:20The fourth pickup,
09:22which I'll solo here,
09:24is just here.
09:25And it's my kick drum pickup.
09:28And what I do is I use the palm of my hand
09:30and I make an action like I'm revving a motorbike,
09:33like this.
09:34And that action of the wrist kicking back
09:36whilst playing the guitar...
09:39creates this kind of thump.
09:51And you can kind of put that through the subs of the gig
09:54and it just sounds so huge and so cool, you know?
09:57But if the top wasn't reinforced the way it was,
10:01I don't know if I'd need that.
10:02So this is like the bonus pickup,
10:05which I think a lot of people won't need
10:06unless their guitar has this kind of reinforcement,
10:08because typically the piezzo would pick that up
10:10through the wood kind of flexing.
10:12I know I'm getting really nerdy here
10:13and I'm sure this is probably interesting
10:15to maybe two people,
10:16both names like Dave,
10:18you know?
10:19Exactly.
10:20There we go.
10:20One of them is right here.
10:21So that's the four pickups.
10:22We've got the kick drum,
10:23we've got the magnetic,
10:26and then we've got the piezzo and the microphone.
10:29And all together it sounds like that.
10:30So those are the four pickups
10:31and then they go into this rig of glory,
10:34which Lee Anderton calls my shiteboard.
10:38Right now I'm in kind of a tuning which I use a lot.
10:44This is Dadgad tuning, okay?
10:46I've used Dadgad tuning for a very long time
10:49since I discovered the music of Pierre Ben-Susan.
10:54That's not Pierre Ben-Susan.
10:56But I discovered Pierre Ben-Susan
10:58when I was a lot younger
10:59because my godfather actually designed his tab books.
11:02He's a graphic designer.
11:03So I would get these tab books
11:05for Christmas and birthdays
11:06and things like that.
11:08And so at school I'd be learning
11:09The Trooper by Iron Maiden
11:10and at home I'd be learning, you know,
11:13Silent Passenger by Pierre Ben-Susan.
11:15And I know I'm pronouncing his name wrong.
11:17English people have a horrific time
11:18saying French names.
11:20It's a well-documented fact.
11:23So that's kind of become the tuning that I went to,
11:25especially when I discovered Eric Roche
11:27and started getting into his music.
11:29He was using Dadgad a lot.
11:31But throughout my kind of first album,
11:34second album, live album,
11:35and now this new album,
11:36the tuning vocabulary has grown quite a lot.
11:40And there's a lot of tunings
11:41that I've investigated rather thoroughly.
11:45One of them is a kind of open C-sharp minor nine chord.
11:49Another one is Dadgad,
11:51but with a low C and a low G.
11:52I find that gets some really nice kind of sounds.
11:55It's a very kind of message in a bottle,
11:57nine chord kind of extensions to it.
12:01And getting more into standard tuning
12:03has been quite nice,
12:04kind of going back
12:05and trying to fill in some of that vocabulary.
12:07But I'd say like my standard tuning is Dadgad.
12:10I actually got into it
12:12when my guitar was damaged.
12:15When I was first...
12:16Before you could even afford an acoustic guitar,
12:17I had a Les Paul.
12:19And you know Les Paul's break, don't they?
12:21They have that break at the headstock.
12:23It was lying on the dining room table
12:24being glued together.
12:26And, you know,
12:27don't play the guitar,
12:28it's being fixed.
12:29Well, yes,
12:29when you're a teenager,
12:30you want to play the guitar.
12:31So I tuned it to Dadgad
12:32and realized
12:33you could get these kind of arpeggios like this.
12:36You know,
12:36your root,
12:37your five,
12:37and your third
12:38or minor third.
12:39And I started playing around like that,
12:43you know.
12:49And just by experimenting
12:50with those kind of things vertically,
12:53when I then picked it up like this,
12:56it just helped me visualize
12:57the fretboard a bit more,
12:58you know,
12:59visualized it like the left hand of the piano
13:01doing the chords
13:02and the right hand
13:02doing the melodies.
13:04And that's where a lot of the kind of
13:05tapping-y
13:08kind of stuff comes from.
13:10It comes from looking at it
13:11like this,
13:12you know.
13:12So yeah,
13:13Dadgad.
13:15Do it.
13:32Dadgad.
13:33Dadgad.
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