your question:

4/18/2024

Hi Trevor. I love this website and your music. Seances is an album I tend to come back to a lot. Are you happy with the reception of it? Do you care at all? I am a self taught guitarist, and while not a master musician, I am quite proud that I can comfortably create and move between genres, using various scales and so on. But with jazz I hit the wall. The more avantgarde, free and awesome it gets, the more random the notes seem (in the right way!). I don't "see" them on a fretboard. I can't follow them. Is that kind of music too much for an amateur without formal education? Any tips, any scales to play around? Much love man.

my answer:

I always feel like the reception could be better with my more avant-garde projects, but that’s just the nature of the game. There’s a reason it’s not popular. Of course I care, but I mostly have to accept my own pride in the outcome and continue to grow and move on.
I would certainly say educate yourself. Expand the limits of your ear by doing some ear training. A lot of avant-garde and “free” music is less random than you think. There is a lot of forethought and systems behind it. I suggest figuring out what those things are that you like. Eventually you will be able to see them on the fretboard. Learn all the modes of the melodic minor scale. Make up your own scales and learn them up and down the fretboard. Check out the book Modus Novus by Lars Edlund. Get in there. You can’t fake it.