Ten Questions For Jazz Guitarist Ted Gibbons at the Waterloo Jazz Room May 24, 2013

The Waterloo Jazz Room presents a truly accomplished guitarist who plays with a harmonic depth you will love to hear!  Come see Ted Gibbons playing this Friday May 24, 2013 from 8:30 to 11:30pm.

For those of you who don’t know Ted, he is a hidden gem in this Region and a real musician’s musician.  Ted’s playing reminds me of a combination of Ed Bikert’s chordal solos with a Jim Hall approach to finding just the right note a the right time.  Hope to see you there!!!

1. What guitars and amps do you own?

I own a home-made telecaster called the Tedecaster. I also own a Roland Cube 60 and an Evens.

2. What will be your set up this weekend?

A quartet featuring some of my favourite musicians:

Piano – Andriy Tykhinov
Bass – Kilian Bamberg
Drums – Howie Southwood

Because these guys are so great I am doing something special for this gig. In each set I will feature one of the players in a solo performance. In the first set Andriy will take the stage by himself and play a solo piece. We will open the second set with just Kilian doing a solo bass performance, and in the third set Howie will do a solo drum piece.

3. How do you believe you achieve your tone?(strings, pick, hands,
effects, etc)

The guitar is what it is, so I don’t think about that too much. I use as much subtlety as I can muster to yield a warm but lively sound.

4. Tell us about your original music?

I play standards mostly. I have written many tunes but I rarely play them.

5.  Tell us about your approach to playing standards?

I pay respect to the original melody and harmony structure, then I try to use this as a platform of inspiration to embellish melodically and harmonically and to improvise interesting ideas from that landscape that hopefully are entertaining and meaningful.

6.  What are your favourite songs to play?

There is a long list of course, but a few of my favourites are:

I Thought About You
In Walked Bud
Down
Line For Lyons
Autumn Leaves
There Is No Greater Love
Stella By Starlight
Footprints
All The Things You Are
All Of Me
Just Squeeze Me
The Flinstones
Tangerine
When Sunny Gets Blue
Blues tunes

Many many many more…

7.  Do you have a favourite scale or lick that you play?  Or what was
the jazz scale that really changed your playing?

I use a combination of a knowledge of Tertian Harmony, tonal centre analysis, licks, melody, and so on, but of course I use the major scale, the diminished scale and the whole tone scale, which in themselves combine in wonderful ways to create most of the scales I ever use. There is also tonal centre analysis of the harmonic minor scale.

8. What guitarist, song or album inspires you?

I am the greatest fan on Earth of Ed Bickert, having seen him live about four or five hundred times, and I also bow to all the greats living and past.

9.  What do you do to practice technique? (one or two things)

I love to improvise chords. I could just play chords for the rest of my life and I would be happy.

I also love to dig deep and find the logic behind songs, like all the deceptive cadences in Stella By Starlight, or the fact that the melody for All The Things You Are is based on putting the third on top of ever chord in the song. These discoveries are gems for me.

10. What can the audience expect to hear next Friday?

Some wonderfully fun swing music peppered with a bit of Latin and a ballad or two. And there will be the unique situation of solo performances by each player (except me) that will highlight each set.

Stephen Zurakowsky

Artistic Director