Why Julian Lage Uses the "Wrong" Guitar for Jazz

well I love the choice of the Telecaster thank you I know you play other guitars and uh what is it about the Telecaster they're very cool they're very cool I was a kid my dad I started playing guitar when I was five right but when I was four I'm the youngest of five uh in my family I have a brother and three sisters and I would have been out before my father started playing guitar he would have been in his 30s that point um and I just was like enamored with him and the guitar you know so it wasn't just a guitar and he knew this and I made was very vocal about like that's cool and somehow and I wish I could remember how this all added up but he someone my father worked with had a life-size poster Bruce Springsteen's Telecaster yes not dissimilar from this and uh my father brought it home and my father was a visual artist and uh he traced it on big Tracy this is cut out this post we put it trace it and then out of plywood he cut a Telecaster and painted it just like a you know single ply board and painted the pickguard on and painted all the stuff and he made one for me and my brother okay and it was this kind of like stop gap of like well you obviously like the guitar uh is this what you like about it just the artifact and I carried this thing around for a year and it was just we would change every few months my dad was let's paint it red now okay you know anything the strings on and that's pretty cool it was killer I fell out of my bunk bed one night I fell on it and I cracked in half and I was mortified and I think that could have been you know my brother was so sweet he loved it but he wasn't he's okay it's cool but you know uh it seems like it's your thing so all to say this romantic story was being built around the Telecaster for me and at the time it wasn't read as an affinity for that particular Model Guitar it's just Infinity for guitar and when I was five I got a guitar and it was a strat and my father had a Telecaster and that was my world for many years um at some point as an adult I I kind of remembered that and I also was finding that I was hitting a bit of a wall with getting what I was looking for on the guitar with Arch talk guitars and I I remember talking to Jim Hall about this where he would say you know remember Julian that an amplifier allows you to play quietly and that's its its job and and I thought well if I really want a sensitive lyrical thing I think I need to loosen my grip on the guitar and part of doing that is is delegating that this is the the controller this is where you touch it and that's where the sound comes out right and it's a dance that I continue to learn about but in seeing that picture get so clear I thought well I think a Telecaster is probably the most um I wouldn't say neutral but probably the most honest instrument for this this Pursuit I'm on you know it's it doesn't hype things terribly and I I think I had a lot of misnomers as about the Telecaster what's a bright guitar it's a trebley guitar and and then I'd find Jimmy Bryant you know kind of like the the birth of The Black Guard Telly and music culture and someone who's you know they're at the Inception of the guitar frankly with Leo Fender um I thought well that's the greatest jazz guitar tone I've ever heard and then you have you know a bicker and you have all these other people all these people and quickly I said okay well that's not the conundrum I know it can be dark but can It capture these overtones that I hear on acoustic guitar and then that sent me down the rabbit hole of you know a Telly is a different Telly with this is a dinosauric pickup from a kind of it's called an ellisonic by Ron Ellis but it's more in the family of like a Gretch yeah this sounds very different than a P90 than the original pickup than a humbucker um so I just thought this is great seems like there's no end in sight as far as what you can do let me kind of latch on to this so they're very cool and they're they're I just like I just like them I found me as a music producer I would the Telly was the most versatile guitar to do overdubs with isn't that interesting and no matter what the style of music of of a group I'd be working with or if it was a solo artist a lot of times I would reach for my Telly over other guitars just because it seemed to fit any style of music that's it and I think to me it seems like a very natural jazz guitar doesn't it though yeah I think it's I think it's completely I mean you look even it's ins when it was kind of conceived it was we're doing late 40s early 50s so it's kind of you know Bebop has occurred now we're going into um a cooler sound with jazz in some way but also rock and roll is being born so there's an electricity of the within the music that matches the guitar I have to say too Rick your perspective from as a producer is kind of warms my heart because I do think I try to think of it that way of the bird's eye view of it how are you going to put this in the mix you know how does this fit frequency wise in a band in an ensemble so I would just say resonates now of course that would be a go-to like it's just gonna slip in yeah it's gonna do the job it can really occupy so many there's so many different possibilities with the Telecaster absolutely and uh there's the the tuning part of it's very incredibly stable guitar I hardly ever had to get my telecasters completely set up with your sound too there's a uh a bloom with the notes a fatness with it and it's it's your personal style it's also I think with the flat Lounge playing flat ones guitar gives it a a there's a Clarity yeah that you have with it and uh it's true which I think is part of your personal touch too though but Tellies are are great at reproducing it's probably the pickup you don't Pro I imagine you only use the front pickups I I've had a lot many friends try to get me back here and I and I love it it's a this is I did a whole tour once just to kind of um almost settle a bit uh was the let's see if I can do a whole tour on the bridge pickup with my Trio and the Knights one and two I was like I go back to the room my ears would be ringing and I thought this is a terrible you know no one asked me to do this it's kind of a little bit messed up but but then there's a with after the first couple days I I I became obsessed and because all the overtones were coming through these backline amplifiers and it felt raw and it felt beautiful and I kind of built up some nerve around it where I thought this is great and then I I took whatever I was on tour for a little bit and when I came back I couldn't muster I couldn't like I couldn't jump off the diving board again I thought well I did it I proved to myself I could do it I think I'm gonna live here where I have just a little more versatility um but but what you say about the bloom I think I I think it has a lot to do in my experience with the amp yeah I come I years ago I started playing these old Tweed champs yeah yeah you know from the late 50s and they especially in partnership with the Telecaster do paint a very compelling picture yeah you know they were both they're kind of from the same era it comes from the same ethos of Leo Fender um and they're also there's a lot of compression in these little ants yes so there you can play very delicately and if especially if you don't want grit too much grit you have to play very lightly to keep it from overdriving and I think it has this um like like a there's just a volatility between with the the guitar and the amp share that to me is the Bedrock of what I hear with the Telecaster though I use like today we're in a newer Fender amp and I use a deluxe style amp I that's for volume that's for volume it's a little bit to play with drums and things like that you know what's funny about the though Rick and it's it's kind of yes and no I The Champ for me was the perfect volume for bass syndromes okay for for a long time because I don't I don't play terribly loud and those are though you don't what you don't what you lose in decibel level you gain and just um directness of mid-range yeah so you can be quiet on a champ in the person in the back room can hear it loud like through it almost too much yeah it's almost like a frequency you can't not hear um but what I started to notice was that there's when the aperture is that small with an eight inch speaker yeah and you're in certain rooms that are bigger [Music] um there's a honkiness an oink to the thing sure that we all know and you can wrestle it out but I just kind of thought well you know Deluxe style lamp especially a black panel Deluxe that just opens the aperture so any record I've made in the last few years what you're hearing if you were to listen to those records I guess is um a deluxe and a champ at the same time so The champ is more the forward sound and then there's just a little bit of width from a deluxe which I think is the best of all the worlds wide aperture compression from a champ that's all that's what that is do you find that certain types of voicings like and I want to say it's on the newest record maybe it's on the first track there's a voicing that you play that's like it's like an F major but you have the open B string and you have G sharp on the top that sounds right yeah right and and a voicing like that you're playing you're playing FC a yeah g sharp with open B okay when I hear a voicing like that and it's so clear and there's no weird beating or anything like that I think having it having a larger speaker helps those I think you're right where where those things have space to move those those when you have that Major Seventh in there and it absolutely and but and you have the fullness with that spread dry it on the bottom and it just sounds beautiful oh Rick that's so hip that you I mean this is that cord you're talking yes right you have something like that yes and it sounds it sounds perfect yeah like how does it congeal like this yes it beats me and I think but I do think there's an it's an aperture is it on the new record probably the first try missing voices it's on

Channel: Rick Beato 2

Views: 316,355

Keywords: Rick Beato, julian lage, jazz guitar, telecaster, music theory, rick beato music, julian lage interview, fender telecaster

Id: opoBI8ANgk0

Length: 10min 4sec (604 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2023