Daniel Aronowitz — What we can all learn from Chris Buck
At times it can feel like the guitar world is caught in a never-ending arms race for players to show off new unobtainable levels of technical skill. You painstakingly figure out how to play a Satriani solo and then Guthrie Govan comes along and blows your mind playing things you’d never thought possible. On and on it goes; there’s no peak to mountain of guitar mastery. In this landscape, it’s deeply refreshing to find players like Chris Buck that are masters of simplicity. Chris has a penchant for playing extremely straightforward lines beautifully. After transcribing a couple of his solos, I came away with a couple of observations that I’m working on adding to my own playing:
1. Simplicity is key. Chris finds beautiful singable melodies and allows the notes to speak for themselves without distracting the audience with a ton of embellishment. He has solos where he holds a single note for 4 bars and, contrary to expectation, you don’t get bored. In fact, that single note builds so much suspense that you’re captivated to hear what comes next.
That’s all well and good you might say but how do I know which note to use and how can I possibly get my simple melodies to have the same kind of staying power?
2. Thirds are the heart of his melodies. In breaking down Chris’ solos I noticed a recurring pattern. Time and time again, when he’s building a simple melody, he’ll just play either the root note or the third of the chord. Check out the solo at the start of this video: 1958 Gibson Flying V | Friday Fretworks (youtube.com). One of my favorite parts comes in at 00:45. This line is literally just bouncing back and forth between the root and the third of the chords. Super simple but it works so effectively! When he’s ready to introduce a little more variety, he plays a classic blues lick for bar (max 2 bars) but then he’s right back to melody building around thirds. In the words of Guthrie Govan, “when the producer asks you to play more melodically, what they mean is play more thirds.”
3. Start with tone. To get in the habit of playing like Chris, you really need to set up a rig capable of producing the kind of sustain and clarity that characterizes his tone. Without sustain, you’ll never be able to play those 4 bar notes that he uses to build suspense, and, without clarity, you’ll never get that seamless transition between chordal playing and leads. He provides an excellent rundown of his home guitar rig setup here that I highly recommend checking out: Guitar Rig/Recording Setup Rundown | Friday Fretworks (youtube.com)
4. Repetition, Repetition. Chris has mastered the art of repetition. He takes simple ideas and, resisting the urge that seems to carry away every other guitar player, he repeats them without embellishment 2 or 3 times until they stick in the listeners ear. Take this solo for instance: https://youtu.be/NYSwGzqscDE?si=BPQJFGV9361u1Ov6&t=58. He repeats the line at 0:58 4 times across different octaves! I think the tendency for the average guitar player is to come up with an idea and then move onto the next. But Chris seems to have supreme confidence in what he plays to the point that he’ll repeat himself 4 times just to hammer home the point. This goes deeper than individual solos too. Chris has favorite licks that he works into nearly everything he plays. You’d think that it would make his playing sound repetitive but instead it reinforces his unique voice.
5. If it sounds good, it’s right. I spent days banging my head against the wall learning one of Chris’ licks. It’s not that the lick itself was all that complicated, just a fairly standard blues lick. The difficult part was his picking. Chris picks the lick completely backwards to how I would intuitively play it. I really wanted to get into his head so I was attempting to play his solos *exactly* as he would but for whatever reason, this lick was impossible for me to get down. Upstrokes should have been downstrokes and visa versa. After a good long practice session with minimal progress, I realized that Chris’s whole playing style is idiosyncratic. There’s not a music teacher alive that would instruct you to do what he does so maybe this topsy turvy picking is just a biproduct of his unique approach to the instrument. At the end of the day, that’s the core of Chris’ whole sound — the technique isn’t perfect, but the execution is perfect… if that makes sense. My takeaway for my own playing was to be less obsessive about technique and more focused on the final product. As long as it sounds good, it’s right. — Daniel Aronowitz
