PAUL GILBERT

One of the modern-rock greats

1) A technique-based ‘I wish’

“I had all kinds of strange technical ‘mistakes’, but they all turned out to be beneficial. The first two years I played guitar, I only did upstrokes. But I got really good at upstrokes! I also held the pick with too many fingers and at a backwards angle. This turned out to give me a larger palette of tones and textures I still use all the time. My fingering for an open G chord is also really odd. I didn’t know I was doing it ‘wrong’ until a few years ago. I may switch to the world-standard G chord, as it’s a little easier on my wrist, but my old weird one sounds good for a lot of things!”

2) A theory-based ‘I wish’

“Melodies often drop from the root, directly to the lower 5th, without playing the 6th or 7th. This can be a bit of tangle to do on the guitar, especially if you’ve trained your hand to play every note of the scale… which I certainly did! My recent experiments in leaving these notes out has been such a great melodic discovery. I certainly wish I had left out the ‘Crazy

Train note’ [the 6] a bit earlier.”

3) One music-related thing I wish I had done earlier

“When I set up my monitors on stage these days, I just need to hear my guitar, my voice and some snare drum. I used to want all kinds of things like ride cymbals and hi-hats and a pretty blend of everyone’s voices. That made for some long and ultimately impractical soundchecks. The Beatles didn’t have any monitors when then played stadiums in the 60s. Simpler is often better. And always wear earplugs!”