 When a Guitar Solo
is not [Legally] a Guitar Solo
An Interview with avant rock musician,
Jeremy Boyle
By Gail Worley
The mere mention
of 70’s arena rock conjures images of every
musical cliche imaginable: A cowbell on the drums
and scarves adorning the mike stand; an ocean of
lighters waving above the crowd and, oh yeah, the
requisite guitar solo -- an icon unto itself.
Fans of Kiss, AC/DC or Led Zeppelin could identify the
signature guitar solo from any one of those
band’s classic hits while
blindfolded-...until now. Songs From the
Guitar Solos, the brainchild of Chicago
musician, Jeremy Boyle, is a mind-warping
collection of ambient soundscapes, created
entirely from manipulated snippets of
70’s-era rock guitar solos. Boyle, who also
performs with the Chicago art-rock band, Joan of
Arc, ("I build these little electronic
instruments and I play them") got the idea
after "seeing all these decade CDs [like] Greatest
Heavy Metal Hits of the 70's or Rock Hits
of the 80's. I had all of this guitar rock
stuff stuck in my head and I started to think
about [how] there's so much meaning tagged onto
the guitar solo. I thought it would be
interesting to take that sound and pull it out,
so that it became something else."
The interesting
point to consider is that Boyle, 24, doesn’t
consider himself a fan 70's arena rock or even
hard rock in general. Rather, it is his parents
who were the headbangers of the household.
"While I was growing up, driving around with
my Mom or Dad, rock radio was always on in
the car and they listened to rock records when I
was little." The moral of the story:
Children of parents who listen to Led Zeppelin will grow up to rebel by
making ambient records. It kind of makes you
wonder.
Boyle’s
amazing journey of metal metamorphosis has
created a hard rock equivalent to Music for
Airports. This is how he did it.
**********
Did you have
this experimental streak from the time you were a
child?
Yeah. When I was
little I would take apart everything I owned and
break everything (laughs) trying to put it back
together. Then I started playing music, playing
guitar and got into effects pedals and everything
else. The first thing I ever did with sound
electronics was that I had an effects pedal that
was broken and I tried to fix it. I broke it
worse but now, instead of it being something that
you process the sound through, it became a source
of sound. When you would plug a chord into it, it
would make sound. All the knobs that would have
controlled the tone of the guitar would control
the sound the pedal was making. That was my
introduction into electronics in music.
Once you had
the idea for the record, what's the first step in
the process of putting it together?
I had to go out
and find these guitar solos. I went to the
library for a lot of it because they have a big
vinyl collection. I wanted to take everything
from an analog source - either tape or vinyl. My
comment here is, regarding the way records are
tagged -- as AAD or ADD in the way they are
recorded, analog-analog-digital or whatever -- I
wanted to make a record that took this one step
further. I wanted THIS to be
analog-analog-analog-digital-digital-digital. All
of the source material was AAA and my process was
all digital - recorded digitally into my
computer, mastered digitally, and [meant] to end
up in a digital format -- CD.
I just wanted to
find my material and start working on the record.
I went to the library, I borrowed records from
friends and bought a few. I was listening for
places that I could find the guitar solos. One
thing that was important to me was that I was
able to just get the guitar, with no drums, bass,
or anything else behind it. That was my intent -
it seemed really important for it to be pure
guitar. That ended up being quite a hassle
because there are plenty of guitar solos but they
always had drums and bass behind them.
Through this
[process], I ended up with a very, very limited
amount of source material. In a lot of cases, I
had well less than a second from the band to
start with. I'd start with this sound that was so
short that you could not even identify what it
was when it was played. Then I would start by
stretching it out until it was really long, maybe
stretch it out to be five seconds. Then I'd
listen to that, and in that five seconds there
might be this one second part that was
interesting. Then I'd start working with that,
making it more substantial. In doing that I'd
find another little piece there and I'd stretch
it out and add things to it. Eventually I would
create a voice. I would put that aside, and go
through that whole process again. Slowly, I would
have these little parts that I could start
overlapping as multiple instruments.
It sounds
very tedious.
The process
involved was very tedious. It just kept
going on and on. I was sick of doing it by the
time I'd finished a song or two (laughs). Often
times, if I counted the number of tracks that
were mixed down to the final track, it would be
like 300 layers. I could kind of get lost in it
after awhile. The majority of the time I was
actually physically working on it at the
computer, trying to make this music, I wasn't
thinking about "Oh, this came from this
solo." I'd forget about the source and
everything else - everything that was my
motivation for doing it in the first place.
Did you
conceive of the finished product in the way it
turned out? Did you think it would be ambient or
did you think of it more as an instrumental work?
I had the idea
of it being pretty in a sense. When I initially
started, I was thinking of the way a guitar
sounds. The guitar sound itself, as it is, has a
nice, pure sound and that I thought I could make
a simple, pretty music from. But, since I was
unable to isolate that [sound] in itself, I
started with almost nothing and then tried to
make something from that. The end result wasn't
how I had imagined, although the effect of it
functions in the [same] way.
So, the end
result was more a product of the means used to
create it.
Exactly. It
functions in a similar way to what I had planned,
but in terms of sound or the way I had imagined
it would sound, it’s very different.
How did you
choose the bands?
That was really
modeled after those decade CDs. I thought it was
funny because you can take Jimi Hendrix and Kiss and glop them into the
same category and it was alright. Those decisions
were all very arbitrary, choosing some of the
icons [of the decade], that sort of thing.
Can you
reveal any of the songs that were used?
At this point
I'd have a hard time even remembering. For a lot
of them I would really, honestly, never be able
to tell you. A lot of the time, when I was taking
samples, I wouldn't even listen to the whole
song. I was just going through, looking for a
spot that looked like it had a guitar solo and
listening to that. The Van Halen song, I think
that one could be figured out because it is the
one that I had plenty of guitar solo to work
from. But all the others, I don't know what most
of them are anymore.
Using as an
example, the Black Sabbath cut, coming in at over
eleven minutes, could you venture a guess at how
many songs you listened to to pull out 11 minutes
of manipulated guitar sound?
To be honest, it
probably came from one or two samples from one or
two songs. My source material is maybe a second
and just that one second was manipulated and
processed enough that it became eleven minutes. I
was really interested in the idea that you have
this little teeny bit of sound and when you
listen to it in itself, it's so short you can't
even really identify what it is. So the sample
starts as unidentifiable and you can work from
that one second until it becomes eleven minutes.
Would you say
that making the record was difficult work?
The process
wasn't necessarily difficult in the beginning. It
was just so tedious and time consuming. One of
the hardest parts [occurred] when I was almost
done. [The recording] almost sounded how I
wanted it to, and I could imagine how it
was supposed to sound, but it wasn't really there
yet. Trying to gear it in certain directions was
really difficult. Also, the mastering type work
at the end was difficult. But one of the hardest
things for me to do was to get together the final
mix of these songs. As you mentioned, the Black
Sabbath song is eleven minutes long. At the time
I was working on it, I was really busy and
extremely exhausted. I'd be sitting there trying
to listen to the song for eleven minutes
straight, so I could decide how it all sounded,
but I couldn't stay awake that long.
Because you
were so exhausted or because the ambient sound
lulled you out?
A combination of
the two (laughs), because I was looking for that
sound to put me right to sleep - it was exactly
what I needed at that moment.
What kind of
software did you use?
The editing was
all done in Protools and the processing happened
with various plug- ins. I did a lot with Peak and
things like SFX machine within Peak. I had just
gotten a lot of that software and, in the process
of recording, I had a lot of stuff given to me.
It was a good chance to really try out everything
and start playing with all this stuff. A lot of
this record was learning how a lot of stuff
works. It was all done on a Mac.
It sounds
like it was really a multi-level experience.
It was very
involving, yes. I worked on it for a pretty long
time. I think I started it sometime in September
[of 1998] and finished it in April [of 1999]. But
that was pretty solid working.
Is there any
kind of copyright thing involved with using the
samples from all these bands? Are you afraid Gene Simmons is going to come
after you for his $10?
That was
certainly something I had in mind when I was
talking to Southern (Records) about
putting this out. That was obviously a concern
that they had and I did investigate the Fair Use
law. Basically I feel that I'm not even pushing
it. In that law, they set up guidelines as to
what is acceptable. It's all vague and there are
no concrete definitions of fair use. First off,
the name of the band can't be copyrighted, the
words. Actually that's where I was most concerned
as far as copyright infringement -- taking these
band names. But as far as the music goes, the
Fair Use law states that as long as you can
justify that the material you're taking is
necessary in order for you to make a new
expression and that you're not taking more than
you need, it's justifiable. It's justifiable all
the way to the point where you could take
something in its entirety and use it again in
its entirety, but the way that you use it --
although you didn't change it physically
-- changes its meaning. When I was doing the
research, I kept finding that all the precedents
were primarily rap bands like 2 Live Crew and
their version of "Pretty Woman," where
they used practically the whole song. I decided
if they were able to take that much [of a song]
and it was ok, I had nothing to worry about. Also
the fact that it states that a term of judgement
is that you're not taking more than is
necessary...
And it's one
second...
I think I'd be
allowed to take a little more than I did.
What did you
personally get or take away from doing this
project?
It occurred to
me that, since I was starting from nearly ground
zero without a broad source of sound, I was
constantly making aesthetic decisions based upon
my aesthetic taste now. So, going through
the whole thing, when I was all done, I realized
that what I had done is to make this record of
music that was along the lines of what I would
like to hear. So, I learned something about
myself. I defined for myself what draws me to
certain music, formally and structurally. I
thought a lot about that; what I like about [this
record] and the way the music functions.
Has this
experience made you now a fan of Led Zeppelin?
I've definitely
thought about them a whole lot more than I ever
would have. Out of everything I used, I'd have to
say they are the band that I am somewhat of a fan
of. I haven't found myself listening to more
classic rock since I've done this, but maybe now
I have more of a relationship with it.
Do you think
you might meet some of these guys in Kiss or Black Sabbath now
that you've mutated their guitar solos?
Going back to
talking about copyrights, I was thinking about
how it would almost be worth it to have Eddie Van
Halen come and personally try to shut me down.
Email Gail Worley
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