Recording - May 2010 - 32

A guitar genius shares his thoughts on his newest project with our Brian Tarquin...

L AY I N G I T D O W N W I T H
By Brian Tarquin
The American iconic rock fusion guitar pioneer Steve Morse was born July 28, 1954 in Hamilton, Ohio. His father was a minister, his mother a classically trained pianist, which might explain Steve’s inherited musical genius. Like many budding musicians in the ‘70s, Steve attended the University of Miami where he met bass guitarist Andy West and formed the instrumental fusion group Dixie Dregs. Since than he has been acknowledged as one of the most articulate and impressive guitarists of his generation and was awarded Guitar Player magazine’s “Best Overall Guitarist” in their annual readers’ poll five consecutive years in a row—an honor shared only by guitarist Steve Howe of the progressive rock group Yes. I had the privilege of working with Steve on a special project last year entitled “Towers” and was blown away by his professionalism and great tone... which led me to sit down with him and ask him about Angelfire, his new collaboration with singer/songwriter Sarah Spencer.—BTQ The album Angelfire seems very different from your past projects. Did you approach this project differently when it came time to set up your guitar and amps? Steve Morse: I started with my normal Musicman electric, and then used a Buscarino acoustic/electric nylon string guitar, an Ovation steel-string, a Steinberger 12-string, a Musicman baritone guitar (tuned down to B), and a Line 6 Variax for a few parts, too. Amps... hmmm... not many amps at all. Everything I can think of at the moment was miked or direct. For my current projects, I’m enjoying the new signature amp that ENGL made for me, but there were a couple of electric solos on a stock ENGL classic tube amp that I was trying out at the time. Do you have your own studio or did you use an outside studio?
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RECORDING MAY 2010

STEVE MORSE!

I used my studio. It’s a very modest endeavor, built for space rather than sonic perfection. There are some concessions to recording ideas such as no parallel walls, slightly higher ceiling, and walls separated from the floor by foam—but it’s pretty simple compared to the professionally designed ones I’ve seen in some musicians’ homes. I’ve become attached to my old board, which is still wired to my old Studer 24-track, so everything went through the board on its way to being recorded by the computer. The old Urei compressors still work, and are used on all vocals and clean guitars. Do you find that you approach the guitar differently when you are working with a new artist? My approach is always the same—to try to create some sonic depth. With distorted guitar doing melody, such as on my SM band albums, that usually requires having lots of different sounds, if only for phrase reinforcement, or bringing out an underlying part. Partly why my guitar has 5 different sounds that I always switch between! With this album (Angelfire), I wanted to have no distortion at all when she was singing, since her voice is so perfect sounding, so that meant combining different sounds that were clean. For instance, while I’m playing a busy arpeggiated part on the nylon string, one time I might add 12-string to double only the notes that are on the 5th and 6th strings, to accentuate and slow down the apparent density of what sticks out to your ear. So instead of hearing a lot of equal volume notes, there is a constant harmonic backdrop of arpeggios with a sparser, ringing 12 strings, just loud enough to notice the difference. The material itself pushes you in a certain direction. For example, in the tune “Omnis Morse Aequat”, the clean guitars are being ‘wah’ed by rolling the tone control with my little finger instead of using a wah pedal. This gives the effect of unearthly brass and string accompaniment when it’s mixed right, which fits the stately nature of the tune. Another example, in “Get Away”, the riff was crying out to be played on the

Recording - May 2010

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