World's Greatest Acoustic Guitarist? (Full Interview)

hey everybody i'm rick biato i have one of my old friends here mike dawes who's here visiting from uh parts unknown actually you'll hear his accent here g'day mates that's australian mike is actually english but uh uh and is he hails from bristol england now yes absolutely the land of blackbeard the pirate and massive attack and uh cider now i was in bristol england i uh in 1994 was the last time i was there yes i'm i'm still trying to uh i had this this cabbie that that wanted to charge me a ridiculous amount of money that sounds like bristol yeah and uh and i was like come on it's a joke right no that's real and you probably had a 90s dance rave music hangover from them yeah bristol i went to i went to there we go yeah that's what bristol is known for we have amazing electronic dancers it was it was a i really enjoyed it actually yeah anyway so mike's uh in town here hanging out at the studio he's a phenomenal guitar player one of my favorite guitar players all of you that watch my channel and watch instagram and watch youtube have seen mike play but if you haven't seen mike play mike tours all over the world and he's he uh tours with justin hayward from the moody blues right that's one of your yeah one obviously yeah it's a blessed session gig that i've had since about 2013. um it's a weird thing because i play sort of weird weirdo guitar hence my really long fingers and weird fingernails and you know he plays amazing amazing arrangements you can hear him do do some playing here oh that's very sweet but um but yeah but the justin hayward thing i picked up in 2013 um so i play in a way that kind of combines you know chords percussion [Music] melody [Music] etc etc and when i met justin in 2013 i got the gig with him opening the shows but also being his guitar player for a kind of stripped down moody blues type show in the states um that we've actually been doing ever since for the past eight years a couple of times a year and part of the reasons part of the reason that i got that gig was number one he didn't have to hire a percussion player as well so it was a kind of sensible way in using this kind of slightly unusual style but also um i'm tall and he's tall and he didn't want to look like is he talking she's tall yeah he's a little bit taller than me yeah so i told mike earlier that i'm a massive moody blues fan and so uh that was a surprise that was pleasant well i am uh i was born in the 60s district and moody blues has some phenomenal sense although they had a lot of they not only did they have hits in in the 70s in the 60s and 70s but also in the 80s too but i was really more of like a 60s 70s moody blues fan yeah well justin talks about that on stage actually this particular tour that we're on right now we're in atlanta at rick's place now we started um chicago candid ohio and east coast down we're going down to florida after this this particular tour there's a part of the show where he talks about that about having success again in the 80s at sort of age 39 or 40. like massive mainstream success with like you know uh your wildest dreams songs like that um whereas the initial stuff was like the nights and white satin stuff that was back in the 60s this was actually very rare to have success in the 80s that was really weird that they became popular again in the 80s yeah it must have been amazing he says the way he says it on stage is that he loves the 60s because but he's seen the photographs he's in them but he can't remember it because like i presumed there was some chemical alterations to people's memory back then whereas in the 80s he was present and could actually enjoy the success so that's kind of how he phrases it so we do some deep cuts on the tour from that era so it's more of like an 80s moody blues theme but then of course we we play the hits as well and i'm very privileged to be able to open the shows with my own weirdo guitar playing as well let's talk about some of your weirdo guitar playing so mike has some great great arrangements one of which is jump by van halen and um yeah one one year today one year today yeah the um well that let's talk about how you came up with that sure so how do you come up with these arrangements right so so first of all we have to say like eddie van halen as i'm sure anyone watching this channel will know is is such an inspiration and hero to so many including myself um that was some of the first stuff that i learned at school he talked about love you know panama all the riffs all the solos and stuff i started on electric guitar right and when eddie passed away during lockdown i wanted to kind of make this this kind of tribute thing but i didn't want to i didn't want to be one of those guys you know oh a celebrity has passed away let me do something and make some content that's kind of goes against the british code of conduct right um but uh my girlfriend at the time taught me into it and i i yeah busted through it in about three or four days and um i put it out there as a kind of a free download for it there's no monetization on it if anyone wants to check it out you can download the high quality wow for free on my bandcamp page uh but wolfgang actually reached out and said how much he enjoyed it so that kind of made the whole thing tied up in a nice little bow and i've you know lost the uh the potential guilt of covering a song so soon after someone's passing but um that disclaimer aside the actual process starts with the tuning okay so um the tuning i'm in right now is is dadgab tuning [Music] load high d-a-d-g-a-d and uh jump as we know is in c it's not in d but i wanted to actually transcribe it and play it in the key of d because it works so well in this tuning when i'm trying to create this thing i i'm usually looking for a few features of the tuning i love to have a power chord in the bass so i love to have a root and a five yeah because that means that with one finger you can get some some quite heavy accompaniment i also like to to have resonant strings as say fifths or fourths or or roots octaves things like that because when you do these little moves you're trying to fill some space yeah you can use the open strings to your advantage so i wanted to do it in d because the string tensions work better like that to use an open tuning in d on this guitar it worked better so i did it all in d major instead of c major but the actual harmony behind it was relatively straightforward for that song you know because you've got just got uh d g and a really which are all included in the tuning um but the hard part was david roth right because david lee roth blessing the recently retired david lee roth yes sometimes doesn't sing what you and i would call like notes right he just does now okay i'm going to say this i love singing oh yeah yeah yeah 100 but yes i know it says these wow it's like what do you do with that you know what i'm saying so there were some some moments where it was like okay let's try and create the uh the kind of the alive the vibe of it exactly one hard part was the pre-chorus where he does that whole i'm trying to get that going in the vocals [Music] i can't even imagine how you would coordinate that do that right well that i start with this concept of hammering yes right so i'm hammering this rough uh vocal melody which is kind of what he's doing it's not a straight you know tone apart thing but then with this hand i can get the same notes here on different strings exactly the same notes right [Music] yeah but mike you're doing the bass notes with your thumb too yeah and your finger on the top and the tab but that's because i have weird long spider hands but but the fact that you're using that you're using the open uh i guess it would be the open a string there in the middle of that which is very very awkward that yeah no that's that sucks that's that's where the thumbnail comes in so um for anyone that's not familiar with fingerstyle guitar uh sometimes when you see players uh you know just out and about uh and they have a really long thumbnail and they look like werewolves yes um or they're using it as a cr ac k spoon or something you know um it's it's not the most social way to pay for drinks at a bar for example sometimes they recoil in horror or they know you're a fingerstyle guitar player and that's what that's for you get a little bit of that edge in there just to get it to bite you know yeah i i love playing with this two-handed stuff where you know the guitar is a wonderful instrument unlike a keyboard or a piano you can get the same note in the same octave in different positions okay but what about the tapping part there that that element of it when you're talking like why how do you decide where to put the rhythmic element also in that section for example yeah um so in that that as an example obviously i'm trying to get the syncopated percussion part because that's what alex van gaal is i i don't have enough hands to keep the full drum thing going so i imply the important bits which is that [Music] it's all about what hand is available at what point right and then here i'm getting the melody again underneath um so things like that it's the way i like to think of it is a drum roll yeah you know it's all about economy of movement so i i'd much rather do this than than this right right and then you think vertically and in the tuning like dadgad you can do that because you have multiple roots and multiple fifths so you can get the same chord you know in multiple different kind of inversions really right yeah so so it does allow for some flexibility dadgads are pretty basic tuning for this style so if anyone's interested in getting into this style i would recommend starting with dadgad um and just play some songs in the key of d minor or d major it's very very easy to facilitate that but then from there you can branch out and and that's what i've done and i've been exploring some more unusual michael hedges johnny mitchell s kind of tunings um but yeah so so to go back to your initial question um having a root and a fifth at the bottom is very helpful um not always necessary um i do an arrangement of somebody that i used to know where actually i have to drop [Music] that down to c so when i'm playing [Music] i get that low c in the chorus and it adds some so i don't have a power chord but that's the only way i could facilitate that and sometimes i'll tune the guitar just to sound colorful and sound sounds nice and it can inspire composition as well when you have resonant strings that are say running up an interesting scale you can start writing a piece like that you know and it's just inspiring um okay so wait let's go back to this this pre-chorus part into the chorus how you transition i'm not gonna let you to get away from it away from the van halen thing okay so after that we'll do a little mini guitar lesson so we've got the little bass line thing and then the little van halen uh lick i'm doing in the lower register so david roth can occupy the higher register because that's another thing consistency is really important when arranging for fingerstyle guitar if your vocal is on the top string and in that top register you know um [Music] it needs to stay there otherwise it's not going to sound consistent that's right so van halen and he takes the lower register there okay so um [Music] a nice little suspended chord and then this part is pretty straightforward because you're just playing the triads [Music] underneath d which is the open bass string [Music] and live we have a lighting engineer going on the audience might as well jump and i do a little david lee roth high kick and it's pretty cool i should have won spandex because i actually ripped my pants two shows ago i'm not joking i did a daily rock high kick and ripped out the crotch uh during the gig so yeah sorry uh to the front row balls um but yeah that's that but something that's also worth talking about is how to incorporate the percussive element yeah because that's something that a lot of people do but people do it very differently and the way i've always liked to do it and actually i have a bunch of stuff on my website that teach it um i have this jam play master course that goes through it and tap books and all that kind of stuff but um it's all about integrating the percussive elements with this hand so it's all right hand so you know how can you get a kick drum how can you get a bass note how can you get the bass note and a kick drum so it's these little micro movements right and when they become natural [Music] you can integrate them dense with improvisation amazing thanks rick bjordo do that do that part again of the song again okay okay so now i'm listening for the kick drum listening for the kick drum okay now interestingly uh when i was arranging is there a slight flam when you do that so not if you practice it enough okay so usually when i teach that to people billy's laughing off camera here so sometimes when you start attempting something like this i put people into two camps the twangers and the flammers okay the twangers will do this yes because they'll be too aggressive with that bottom string it'll catch and it'll hit the fret wire you might want that you know i have songs where you use that as part of the composition yep or the flammers like you say the idea with this particular technique is to treat it like you're riding a motorbike and you're revving that throttle right and the thumb is just sticking out a little bit the thumb with the maximum surface area is touching that bottom string and if you if you have the biggest surface area possible on your thumb you're less likely to twang it because you're not kind of pinching it you know bigger surface well then that then it's like well why would you have the long nail then if you're gonna do this well i'm not even using the nail on that that's just all okay so okay now my guitar's action is very low as well so i'm gonna be more likely to twang it that's awesome i love that you know and equally you can then do the same thing with a kind of flea slap based technique so with the thumb pointed down instead of like this same thing that's like a snare and a note so we can get bass notes sorry bass drums with notes yep snare drums with notes [Music] you know it's cool and on a very basic level you can start to integrate some percussion into your playing now what i'm doing with it is just applying it to other things like arpeggios if i'm arpeggiating a chord i'll add the kick to that top note [Music] you really are the whole internet i love that i think it sounds beautiful thanks man mike said to me that his playing is actually very quiet it really is it's not that quiet i'm sitting well of course i'm sitting two feet from him but i can hear the resonance of the bass because your guitar is reinforced right there right yes and for that exact reason or not yeah well okay so this this guitar has quite a rude name did i tell you what this guitar is called so this guitar is made by so it's my signature guitar um but it's made by a man in a shed okay so it makes like 12 guitars a year so they're very hard to get however because of the pandemic you can jump the waiting list because obviously a lot of orders went off during the pandemic so this is made by a luthier in germany named andreas kuntz c u n t z doesn't sell many guitars in america won't change his name because he's a very proud german man these guys are trying not to laugh behind the camera okay rick's trying not to love his serious youtube channel so this is my microns and it's an absolutely unbelievable workhorse of a machine i love it to be it's it's completely to my spec the neck is based off my very first tailor guitar uh back when i got when i was 17 a 214e guitar the string spacing is slightly what kind of a neck is there is a mahogany neck uh i believe so yes yeah and then we have quilted maple bindings ebony fingerboard as you can tell but the body itself is interesting um for the reason you mentioned there's a bit of reinforcement here okay so naturally there's not much of a thumb with this kind of kick sound on other guitars say like a martin d28 you get a real thump and i have that on other guitars but this is a live guitar so it's reinforced so i can really wail on it live but i've got a pickup under here as well right which gives it which actually gives you a nice fat but it's like godzilla house when you're live on stage and you've got that going to the subs and you can feel it on stage if it were more if you didn't have the reinforcement that would get boomy and could feed back probably right that's that's i'm so glad you picked up on that because no one really picks up on that that's it it's minimizing i said we love bass with acoustic guitars live we love bass but we hate feedback yeah and it's a real problem so i actually have a microphone inside the guitar as well which picks up someone in fact you know what you might be able to hear if i crank the mic you can hear it yes your feedback but i have it at a very low level yeah the reason for that is um we don't want much of it you just want enough to pick up the little edge stuff and this is like a scratch pad kind of there or yeah so the story of this is interesting um so there's a lot of people doing this now so this was um created by nick benjamin in the uk who makes made guitars for um newton faulkner eric roche players like that and he used it as a repair for someone's guitar that they'd worn away and it's just a piece of spruce with a with with grain on it and what happens is the more that you scratch it the more the soft bit the wood gets worn away and the grain stays there and it becomes like aguero right so i can use it as an effect you know cool whatever you want to do [Music] you know it's just silly things right but it works live and it's a lot of fun and we call it a scratch pad nick wanted to call it a scratch patch but i thought that sounded like a anti-smoking aid or something like that you know some weird thing you're getting a sweet packet from a corner shop now with free scratch patch yeah okay so you have the area for tapping for your bit you get your bass drum here yeah so the kick drum's here right but but with the percussion thing you know there's a lot of people playing and they go all over the place and i'm i'm a victim of that as well i like to go you play over here yeah yeah all of this stuff yeah yeah at the core philosophy is the songwriting yeah and and with that it's about uh playing with the music not in between the beats yeah it's not a case of here's a beat here's the thing you know like you'll see a lot of people do it's integrating the right hand with the notes so what i like to do is if i'm playing a chord i find a way to strum with the kick strum with the snare right different things here [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay then i'm talking about the left hand tap also so that was the left so you also incorporate the left hand tap rhythmically yes as part of the whole drum kit yes so it goes back to what i was saying about the economy of movement and thinking like a a drum roll kind of thing if this hand's busy doing something this hand's free to do stuff and one of the things that i like to do with the left hand is try and enhance my my bass line a little bit and that can be as simple i did this a lot in just justin's show as well something as simple as just a hammer on [Music] simple things like that because i feel like if you have a more creative bass line it adds to the one-man band illusion a bit more yeah you know uh there's a there's a song on my second album um called purr and sway which has a very very simple harmony to it the harmony is just you know three chords song but i made the bass line a bit more interesting [Music] and then when you fill out the chords it just sounds a lot more complete you know what i mean yeah it sounds a bit [Music] add the percussion after that you know that's incredibly cleanly played though thanks rick piatto mike you're a great great guitar player but i need to get him to actually play a song here oh poop so we just built this rig for mike to play through since he doesn't have any of his stuff here yeah all my stuff's in the in the trailer of the old little bus so i just came here with a guitar and uh rick just said please play something and i thought okay well um we're in rick's studio so please can we have one of everything he needs a different reverb and every amplifier he doesn't need it actually like mike can play egg this is wild we have we have three amps going right now we do have three amps what are they uh we have a dark glass uh alpha omega 900. the piezo and microphone are running into there and getting compressed and we're running through a universal audio golden reverberator which is a beautiful new reverb pedal and then we have a fender deluxe back there that is doing i'm not sure what so that's the magnetic pickup the sound i'll pick up we were like let's run that through a kind of electric guitar around because it's you know picking up the strings and then i have an old solid state ampeg that's that's uh old amp i used to use it's a big sky reaver with the keely compressor on it yeah and uh thanks for setting that up this is so much fun what are you gonna play well rick was just like play a song and i was thinking well what should i play because there's lots of videos of me playing a whole lot a bunch of stuff online and i figured hey we're on rick's youtube channel let's do something brand new and also unfinished so we're going to keep it super real and super like hey i just wrote this yesterday just start stop whenever you whenever you want exactly yeah we'll do so take 20. okay so this is this is i got really into michael hedges again during the lockdown michael hedges was the kind of jimi hendrix of acoustic guitar coming up with a lot of these kind of techniques a real a real true innovator and he does a great singer songwriter version he died suddenly um oh geez 30 years ago now yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah on the way back from a show which is is a terrifying story for any any tall people but he was a real game changer and he he also sang and he did a version of um a jimi hendrix version of the bob dylan song called all along the watchtower and i got really into that song uh you know just three chords and seeing what i can do origin the truth three chords and the truth man exactly but i don't sing so i'm gonna mess around with it it's gonna be a bit improvised a little bit weird it's something that i started doing on this tour and there's a lot of audience participation there's no audience here but let's try and participate yeah exactly [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] rigbiado youtube channel 2021 [Music] this is usually the part where i'll tell the audience like oh my god live music i was in nashville last night and was like how great is it to be a live music gig again and everyone was just like we never close dude what's up but then obviously the song [Music] so do some kind of build up now [Music] a [Music] there must be [Music] [Applause] big distortions [Music] [Applause] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] who said acoustic guitars can't be metal [Music] [Applause] thank you and the crowd go mild the crowd go mild there we go mike fantastic thank you so much thank you sir thanks for the ring that was unbelievable oh thanks man that's really sweet mike what's the thing that you're using before your tone would amp right it's funny you should ask so yeah at the start of the video when i was noodling you might have heard that there was reverb coming out of the guitar which doesn't naturally happen reverb doesn't naturally come out of the guitar but this little device was made by some friends of mine in arizona it's called the tonewood amp and it sticks magnetically to the back of the guitar and basically reverb comes out of the sound hole of your guitar so it's something i carry around with me everywhere and use it to to write and to self-accompany and stuff like that so follow mike on social media check them out on instagram where else yeah so on instagram i'm there and um uh my guitar tech recently got a tattoo of my fingers on his leg which i just posted so there's premium content like that up there facebook youtube i'll be uploading a lot more music videos soon um i've actually got a patreon page as well where the hardcore fans hang out and we talk about guitar a lot which is just forward slash mic doors on there and uh can i just say that uh next in january and february i'll be in the states with tommy emmanuel on tour and tommy and you guys are going to come by here then right i hope so that will be amazing yeah we're going to be uh colorado and then all down the west coast oh that's close yeah that's close to atlanta right but then i'm going to be on the east coast with uh yasmin williams for some shows and trevor gordon hall for some shows and doing some kind of more like club vibe shows there and just it's great to be playing live music again man thanks for the opportunity to come on to your channel and talk to your people and i'm looking forward to reading all the comments of just like stop banging on your guitar um you guys are the best so yeah lots of love thanks mike pleasure that's all for now don't forget to subscribe ring the bell and leave a comment check out my new quick lessons pro guitar course that just came out also the biato book if you want to learn about music theory that's how you do it and check out my beato ear training course at beautiertraining.com and don't forget if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the biato club thanks so much for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rick Beato 2

Views: 267,276

Keywords: acoustic guitar, tommy emmanuel, acoustic cover, acoustic guitar songs, acoustic guitar instrumental, acoustic guitar solo, acoustic guitar cover, acoustic guitar type beat, acoustic guitar riffs, Mike Dawes, Mike Dawes Jump, Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen, Interview, all along the watchtower, mike dawes guitar, mike dawes live, Best Guitar Player, mike dawes somebody that i used to know, How to play Guitar, Acoustic Guitarist, Guitar Lesson, Moody Blues, Andy Mckee, Marcin

Id: JhjIoE5eub4

Length: 30min 24sec (1824 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021