Guitars and Gear Vol. 37 - Bill Kelliher Interview at GearFest '13

hi I'm Mitch Gallagher welcome to Sweetwater's guitars and gear we are at gear fest 2013 and I in joined by Bill Kelleher from Mastodon hey Mitch how do you do great thanks for coming in thanks for having appreciate your being here at gear Fest you were doing a workshop I did just now it's a very first one is that right yeah no you wouldn't know it it was great I know I acted like a profession you were a pro up there oh you were playing there was a lots of heads lots of heads banging out in the questions I was very nervous but it went really well and I was I was surprised by the attendance yeah people actually start around they didn't leave no you did but yeah it's great yeah cool you were talking about your a signature guitar which I want to get into a little bit okay but let's talk a little bit about I was watching you play and listening to the records and I call them records still yeah me too and one thing I was noticing is noticing your technique you're very relaxed when you play even though you're playing complex rhythms time signatures fast things is that something you consciously work to develop or is that how you have to play those those type of things ah I don't know I never really noticed yeah i mean i i i I never took any lessons that's the thing and like people are always trying to give me tips like oh you know I used to be just a pretty much always down picking right always down picking and then you know people like you need to and you're like you know relax and when you write music like and I struggle with this as well it's like when you write a piece of music you know it should flow mm-hmm like naturally with you where your hands go and feel natural right like it a lot of times I would write songs in my hand would really be struggling to to get to the next part here comes mark you know so I I do I guess I do consciously try to lay back and just let it kind of come out because a lot of times I notice has a player if I can't hear myself well enough onstage if like my monitors aren't real loud or something's lacking with the guitar I tend to press way harder and I play harder to to make up to Conor I say forces to try to force it and I walk away with a 10-9 it's kind of fear it's not good so I try to breathe deep almost like you know Taichi or something right just kind of let it flow because if it's not you you just get you know I also I've played those songs 100 times thousand times so it's like kind of Governator kind of got it down but you know it's definitely something I tend to try to work on to get to just become a better player by the flow of your of the motion of your hands mm-hmm it's part of that being able to flow in that comfort of playing those riffs it's part of that why you do the tuning so you guys you just three different tunings correct yeah so you have the well there's certain you know there's certain things that just sound better with a lower tuning or an open tuning where you want to borrow something they just there's a certain certain things that just sound better I think you know a lot of times we struggle with when we're writing a song and like say for instance our drummer he writes a lot of stuff and he'll come up with it in his head and we'll he'll hum it to me like you know and I'll be like okay and I'll play it and I'll and I'll get his exact tuning that he's humming it in and I'll play it to that and then I'll drop the tuning down to see and I'll play it in that tuning and we talked about it and then I'll drop it even lower and we'll talk about it again like does that sound is that the kind of song that needs to be dropped all the way to a and then we kind of we say I think it sounds good in the drop a tuning and it will change the whole structure of the song so you know it depends on what kind of riff it is if it sounds like a little more upbeat melodic riff we'll probably up to tune it up but if it sounds like a real dark and deep and it depends on like if the the next the next riff after the the main riff because you know we'll write it in the low tuning but the next riff how that feels rubbing up against the low open a or whatever so in all the grounds you know right right now using those tunings you drop the guitar down to D and then you do a drop C below that and a drop a you're using the same gauge strings for all those tunings there yeah I'm stage to use different guitars were you played all on one I use different guitars for each tuning that way just the this guitar always stays in a that guitar always stays and see that guitar always stays in D and I usually have like one or two backups mm-hm but yeah I use 11 through 52 okay size strings and I don't ever have a problem a lot of people say oh how do you tune solo with that get light gauge string mm-hm and to me I don't know I don't have a problem with them right I just don't strike them as you strike it too hard you're gonna you're gonna you know stretch the string and it's gonna bounce it so it's a left hand touch tooth to be squeezed too hard witness when it's tuned all the way down to a you're gonna easily bend it into into a higher tuning mm-hmm so but that that intonation precision and the rhythmic precision are two things that I think are really hallmarks of your style again is that something you really tried to work on to get those rhythms really precise and tight oh yeah of course I'm I'm a very anal I guess when it comes to like I'd use a better word but yeah when it comes to being precise I like to be very precise um because I play a lot of rhythm I'm not really a lead player I mean I I do play leads once in a while when I do you know they got to be perfect my delay is gotta be perfect and everything's gotta the stars have to align I'm very particular about playing is is tight tightly as possible you know nothing like a sloppy player it's nothing you know I don't want to be sloppy if I can't you know and there are there are things that Macedon plays that I'm not the best at playing that's something that the other guitar player might have written you know we're not the same players you know it's it's hard to mimic the exact style and all that stuff so right but I try my hardest you know so you came kind of out of a punk tradition though which is more the not so worried about precision exactly and you've talked about how Metallica kind of was your inspiration to to move into some of those other directions is that there yeah yeah to me I mean it was it's a very big leap but because Metallica is like classical music with Distortion me it was like bak it was like wow this is this is really pretty and precise and all the guitar harmonies and melodies that are going on really piqued my interest it was just like you know the punk rock stuff was great you know but at the time you know I'm just I'm evolving as a player as a human you know it's just like I'm getting older so yeah the punk rock stuff I always go back to those records and I enjoy them and sure what they are but for me as a player I was like I'm getting better than than that I can play better than that now and I can I can actually start to notice and I was starting to kind of come out of that she'll of just playing like three chord punk rock kind of stuff you know and right but there is something to be said about like pop songs I mean there's a lot of pop in Punk just like the three core you only got three chords you better make it memorable right you know so like bands like Weezer like early like the first Weezer record like I mean I get goosebumps alright let's not record I love it it's heavy the guitars are super heavy but there's a lot of melodic harm vocal harmonies and you can tell that like you know he grew up on like heavy metal and punk rock but he's writing these like pop songs that are an inch away from like Britney Spears but they're they sound great they just sound so with the heavy guitars I mean I love it the kind of stuff that I live for you know like Mastodon is not quite that band but we're getting there we're getting to the point where it's like we're starting to not be so technical and more about the groove and a more about like drawing the the riff back cuz I'm you know I'm a riff master I like to just write crazy riffs that that really catch your attention and really rock and groove and kind of get into some kind of something that really clicks in your head and that's you know Queens of Stone Age I mean they're these guys are incredible riff masters every song every every record every riff you know that's like so you know we're always climbing that ladder to try to to get to the next little point a next level you know right how do you establish that groove feel on a riff when you're working in odd time signatures because there's a tendency for those they can get kind of stilted they can get yeah well that's it yeah you have to keep on playing it add a note take away a note add two notes take away you know it's like okay where's the happy medium that's just how you do it I mean I like to listen to a click track and play the riff a couple times and I do a lot of Pro Tools stuff on my laptop you know in between gigs and shows and in my hotel room stuff like that I'll I'll put it to a click track and I'll and I'll just sit there and play it until it until it works until it fits and sounds like it where it belongs you can't force an off time signature this doesn't sound good right I've done it I've tried it I'm like this sucks I don't like this let's change it right right right absolutely so let's talk a little extra tar here this is a new signature model from Gibson mm-hmm and how did the guitar come about how did you get the signature well lots of persistence with me calling Gibson like every day and emailing them and just like where's my guitar I want a guitar I really and even said hey your persistence really paid off because you got the attention of the right people you know it's not every day that you get a signature model of your favorite guitar company you know so I'm very excited I love the guitar came out great I'm a big fan of old Gibson's mostly Les Paul customs and old e to Explorers so when when they made this one they sent me a prototype but it was like more of the 90s with the real sharp points okay I said no that's not me I'm not a 90s man I'm a 70s man I want I want you to get the old blueprints out from the old etudes I want to be more round more sexy right just rounder like the earlier models you know I don't want it to look modern I wants to look have a classic feel classic look thin tapered neck you know I was gonna go with a silver burst because I play a lot of silver burst Les Paul's but Brendon smalls beat me to it [Laughter] yeah I said you know what I've always wanted a gold top so I was gonna do it gold just all gold mm-hmm but I think I saw a picture of someone with with one I think was the girl from hellström Lizzy Lizzy Hale right I think she had a gold when I said I can't do that I want to be original stop how about a gold burst uh-huh so they made the gold burst and I had to you know they sent me a couple prototypes and I had to keep sending him back I was like no it's got to be a little more a little more of a of a you know the the what he called the transition the transition the dissolving of the colors transitioned from black or brown to gold it wasn't quite right so we went back and forth a couple times but when they finally got it right I mean look at it it's beautiful yeah it's incredible absolutely and they even try to talk me out of the cream-colored pickguard yeah I said no way cream they're like god it's gonna be so ugly no way it's gonna be great it's gonna look awesome all right the binding I mean this is all the stuff that makes a Volkswagen a rolls-royce not that this is a Volkswagen but it's like you know let's put the trapezoid inlays in there let's put the binding on it I mean it looks very classy it just looks you know it's pretty blinged out but uh looks like you know gold yeah you've you've gone with a master volume master tone and yeah the pickup selector I did it used to used to go up here and I figured you know instead of like playing and trying to reach across your strings and turn this for whatever reason not that I ever really do but I know a lot of people use this as an on/off switch mm-hmm I don't but uh I just thought it'd be make more sense being down here and somewhere in this area and you know you got your volume I put the volume here because on traditional explorers the volume is in the middle there's another knob here right and the volume is in the middle which I don't they never understood why I'd be in the middle so you know you're playing you want to scoop the super volume you got to go in the middle so today put that put that in the front because it's with the Les Paul's it's in the front right put that here so you got a volume and tone for your bridge position and if you want your neck position is volume and tone you're right there it's easy and then this also switches to a single coil pickup case here in whatever you're in the studio you're doing something clean or acoustic and you want to have a little different tone you don't want so much heavy humbucker feel you pull that up right there and you switch that to a single coil right and there you go right so it adds that extra versatility yeah do the guitar very cool the guitar sounds great thank you and obviously it suits your playing perfectly I love it so wonderful well thanks for coming in such a pleasure to have you here it's an honor to have you graced our stage in our theater and give the workshop a really a saw mind-link wonderful appreciate it very much right ah Mitch I'm Mitch Gallagher thanks for joining me for Sweetwater's guitars in gear you

Channel: Sweetwater

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Rating: 4.9688716 out of 5

Keywords: mastodon, Bill Kelliher (Musical Artist), bill kelliher, Mastodon (Musical Group), sweetwater sound, gibson thunderhorse explorer, mastodon interview, brent hinds, mastodon 2013, mastodon interview 2013, mastodon gear, bill kelliher interview, brent hinds interview, mastodon guitar cover, mastodon rig rundown, gibson golden axe, mastodon studio, bill kelliher guitar, mastodon live 2013, bill kelliher esp, bill kelliher explorer, gibson explorer, bill kelliher guitar lesson

Id: qIoY_yuD13k

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 22 2013