Everyone
who has ever picked up a tennis racket and rocked out in front of the
mirror has dreamed of chucking in their day job to be a rock star
instead. And why not? The adoration, the freedom from the nine-to-five
grind, the potential for romantic entanglement – it sounds like a pretty
fun vocation. Well, the bad news is that not everyone gets to have a
career as a rock star, but the good news is that with a little hard work
and a lot of covering your bases, you may be able to still carve a
living out of six strings and a dream. One guitarist who has managed to
do just this is Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal.
Thal first made a name for himself in the mid-’90s with his wildly
creative solo albums and unorthodox techniques, and since 2006 he’s been
one of three guitarists in Guns N’ Roses, performing on every track of
2008’s Chinese Democracy and criss-crossing the world with Axl and Co.
While on tour with GN’R in Australia, Thal spoke exclusively to
Gibson.com about how to make a career out of music.
He says the key is diversity. “You have to be able to multitask and be
multi-faceted,” he says. “If you’re just going to be a guitar player
that plays in a band, your options are going to be very limited. If
you’re going to play in a band, you should also be able to teach what
you know. If you record yourself, then record other people as well and
get into the studio thing. If you’re taking care of a lot of the
business for your band, maybe start doing it for other bands as well and
get into that side of things.”
Thal advises being actively aware of the many different ways you can
apply your various skills, and the ways they feed into each other. “You
need to have as many avenues as you can at once, because while one thing
is going slow, another thing is going better, and you put it all
together and you can pay your bills,” he says. “Everything you do lends
some assistance or makes you better at everything else.”
One of Thal's earliest music-related jobs was as a teacher, and it’s a
career path he highly recommends. “I took lessons when I was a kid for a
good eight steady years of just weekly lessons, very academic,” he says.
“From there I started teaching out of the basement. Then I started
teaching at a music store, and then in my early 20s I set up the music
department at a private school. I was teaching music for children there,
I set up a jazz band, a choir, music history… a whole music program for
this private school. Right before that I was teaching at a music
institute that a chain of guitar stores in New York had. At some point I
worked my way up to teaching music production and guitar at an actual
legitimate college in New York State.”
Thal
believes that teaching others also can be an invaluable resource for
your own playing, vastly increasing your repertoire and forcing you to
think about the motives and outcomes of particular musical choices.
“What happens is that everything you’re teaching, you’re also learning,”
he says. “You’re learning songs that you can teach, so now suddenly you
have a great repertoire if you want to join a cover band. Everything
helps everything else.”
In fact, Thal says some of his solo tracks would not exist if not for
their origins in giving guitar lessons. “Someone wanted to get into
Latin chord progressions and I got into the whole I-II-V in harmonic
minor thing in certain rhythms, and next thing you know it’s like, ‘Wow,
this is a cool thing,’ and I ended up making a song out of it.”
When it comes time to work on a solo project, Thal pulls together all
these skills, and as the owner of a professional studio, he’s uniquely
placed to take advantage of the many luxuries this brings. “Having my
own studio, I can afford studio time, obviously, because it’s my studio,
and I can pay the bills of owning the studio by recording other people,”
he says. “So by being an engineer, that allows you to record your own
albums and gets you into production, and next thing you know, you’re a
producer and you’re collaborating with other people that come in.
Everything becomes this big web where everything is connected in some
way, and the more things you do, the more depth it lends to every other
aspect of what you do.”
The skills of deconstruction and adaptation that one develops as a
teacher can also blend with studio nous in interesting and unexpected
ways, including TV work. Thal explains: “There will be people for some
TV show who don’t want to license the real song for something, and
they’ll come to me and be like, ‘Can you make me a song that sounds like
Mötley Crüe?’ and in five minutes I’ll bust something out in the studio
and give it to them, and it’s an original song that's capturing the vibe
of some other artist, and that right there, that’s another way that the
studio and everything we’re talking about comes into play. And now you
also have an income stream from the performance royalties of that piece
of music. I did it for a sports team, I did it for some shows that have
been on MTV once in a while.”
Thal says session work today is much different to the glory days of the
’70s and ’80s. “I could be wrong but I think reading music is less
important now and it’s more about the ears,” he says, adding that
producers are more likely to simply e-mail an artist an mp3 and ask them
to come up with their own part, rather than provide sheet music or a
chord chart. “If it’s a jazz thing they will give you a chart, but if
it’s a rock thing they’ll just show you on the spot: ‘Alright, just go E
to A and back to E.’ And as far as session playing, you have to be able
to lock into a groove and have great timing. You have to have a good
memory and be able to recall arrangements, or jot down your own little
chart of weird hieroglyphics that only you understand, or you have to be
able to read other peoples’ hieroglyphics.”
Across his entire career as a professional
guitarist/teacher/songwriter/engineer/producer/composer, Thal has
observed a simple set of rules for making yourself employable. “Number
one, which will be funny coming from a guitarist in Guns N’ Roses, is
don't be late! That was always my cardinal rule for everything,” he
says. “In order to be on time you need to be early, then wait in your
car for 15 minutes and walk in two minutes before whatever time you’re
supposed to be there.
“Two: be someone that people want to work with, want to be in a room
with and spend 10 hours with. Be relaxed, be calm, don’t cause the
stressful vibe, just be cool and keep your intensity knob down a bit and
just roll with things.
“Three: be overly prepared. If you just need to know the guitar part,
make sure you know the other guitar part, too, and the vocals, and the
bass, and the drum rhythm and where the accents are. Really know the
song inside and out. Know more than you need to know, and be so prepared
that you can bring more than is asked of you, if asked. Those three
things matter the most: be on time, be cool, and be prepared. And that’s
for anything.”
Originally posted at:
http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Features/Six-Strings-and-Dream-1214/