LIEBERT OTTMAR E LUNA NEGRA, BORRASCA. TABLATURE
Series: Creative Concepts Publishing
Publisher: Creative Concepts TAB
Artist: Ottmar Liebert
On your early releases you overdubbed rhythm and lead parts. When
you began to tour, did you hire additional players for those parts?
I just did it by myself and kind of faked it. I also had a new percussionist
who was really hot, so it kind of worked. This year, to celebrate seven years
of Luna Negra [Ottmar's group], we plan to tour with a nine piece band that
will consist of three guitar players, three drummers, a horn section, and a
bass player. There are a lot of tunes from Borrasca [Lieben's sophomore
effort] that feature Rhumbas that shouldn't be faked.
You have a pretty respectable speed with your picking. Do you use a
pick, or is it always i,m (index and middle finger alternating)?
It is always i,m. The tremolo is i,m,a, with the first note of the triplets
starting with the a and the thumb. I only use a pick when I play live on the
electric; it is a pick made out of stone. I also use a sterling silver pick I
found at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas when we played there.
What did you do to build up speed and develop a smooth tremolo?
Well, the tremolo was more about reclaiming lost territory. When I was
a kid I spent countless hours reading and doing a tremolo at the same time.
The picato (i,a rest strokes) was just a matter of practicing. The picato was
easier than the rasqueados [the flamenco strums] because they are very
unnatural motions for the hands to make. I worked on them every day for a
couple of years. I recently had a studio musician in New York tell me about
several recordings by famous classical guitarists of Rodrigo's Concierto De
Aranjuez. These guitarists would keep a pick near their guitar for the passages
requiring the rasqueados, because they didn't have the technique. The first
time that Concierto was recorded correctly rhythmically was when Paco De
Lucia recorded it a few years ago. The slow movements are not as beautiful
as, say, Julian Bream's. I think this is because Flamenco players are not as
used to setting the note perfectly with an orchestra; the guitar tone is dead so
quickly. I think Paco's rendition is so beautiful; it has never been performed
like that before. I think he blurred the line between Classical and Flamenco.
Do you still maintain a practice routine?
If I don't practice for an hour or two every day I get edgy, physically
weird. My wife will tell me to go into the studio and practice. I am kind of
a high-strung, scattered person, and I am very unorganized. 1 get distracted
by my computer, phone calls, etc. Some of the practice is just physical, and
you need to practice like a runner. Sometimes, however, I will spend time
just playing around with melodies-not practicing technique, but practicing
musIc.
It sounds like you play what you hear, not what you find on the guitar.
Yes, I hear the next note or I don't play it.
How do you care for your nails?
I apply a little bit of Crazy Glue, then I add baking soda to it. This
combination creates an instantly hard shell. I try to take it off once a year to
let my nails breathe and rest.
What sort of ampl ijication do you use?
I hate'pickups, I've always played into a microphone. It used to be a
AKGC460 with a 63 capsule. Now it's a C480, which is a wonderful new
mic with a higher output and an incredible range. Live, I need to use a
pickup, depending on the size of the venue. I use an Acoustech, which is a
mic-pickup combination; it helps on the low end.
Tell me about your guitars.
My flamenco guitars are made by Keith Vizcarra, of Santa Fe, and are
Negras [cedar top/rosewood back and sides]. They are fitted with
revolutionary V-pegs that Vizcarra designed. The idea behind them is that
normal machine heads don't have the connection to the wood that friction
pegs have. Because of this, Vizcarra invented geared friction pegs, which
have a geared ratio with material that looks like wood and has wood on the
end. They contain the best of both worlds. You get the sound of friction and
the reliability of geared heads. They are absolutely brilliant.
Ottmar Liebert's phenomenal success in the last decade has been matched
by only a few mainstream pop/rock acts. That he is an instrumental guitarist
makes his story all the more unbelievable -not the stuff of gold and platinum
success. Not normally. Liebert is a self-described "mutt" born of Chinese
and German heritage and raised in Europe as a boy. His journey brought him to
America, where he followed his pop/rock muse through many frustrating
years. Looking for a change of pace, Liebert began playing nylon string
acoustic guitar in restaurants in his home town (eleven years to date) of Santa
Fe, New Mexico. A local artist funded a vanity pressing of 1,000 copies of
what turned out to be Nouveau Flamenco. When radio got a hold of this
unique hybrid of flamenco/pop instrumental tunes, a genre was born. Even
though the public readily took to Liebert's quasi-flamenco stylings, some
purists were, and still are, outraged. I met with Liebert after he had just
finished mixing his newest project, Leaning Into The Night, for Sony Classical.
When I heard your first CD, "Nouveau Flamenco," it seemed like a very
pop,oriented treatment of Flamenco styles. There is a lot of repetition and
musical hooks.
I had been playing mostly in rock bands, so I am one of those people
eho thinks in terms of verse/chorus/verse.
Even though you have released a half dozen records since, the first one
is still popular.
Higher Octave [the record label] is still working that first album; I only
did, three with them before signing with Sony. That album is now platinum in
the U.S., Canada, ew Zealand, and Australia. It is an amazing little record.
your experience with Flamenco wasn't all that great when you recorded
that fisrt record in Santa Fe.
A couple of years from the time I arrived, after taking a bunch of Flamenco
lessons and picking material off of records, I was developing the material for
Nouveau Flamenco. When I recorded that album I had only been playing
Flamenco for about a year, so I had very rudimentary technique. It was
interesting, because calling it Nouveau Flamenco was kind of a joke. If I had
pretended to be Spanish I would have called it "Nuevo Flamenco." My title
was suppoed to be funny, like "Nouvelle Cuisine." I kind of stepped right
into a hornet's nest with that title. I found myself thinking, "where is
everybody's sense of humor?" Here I was just starting out with a style I was
interested in, applying it to what I had already, and these guys were getting so
upset. Actually decided to keep it going, because it was becoming funny to
me. The people that are the most stern about "tradition" are not the players,
they are the critics-the people removed from it. Their attitude is, "this is
mine, I found it. I can't play it, but I know what it's supposed to be." You
have to take it with a sense of humor. I take some of the traditional meters
and apply them. In the beginning, to show people where I got them from, I
would write underneath [Buleria], and by no means is it a Buleria with regard
to key and chord sequence, but it is a Buleria rhythm. One time my guitar
builder made me aware of an Email newsletter. I got involved, which was
funny because they didn't believe it was me writing back. They had been
writing about me forever; one faction was saying "Ottmar sucks," and the
other group was saying, "He's introduced so many people to Flamenco, etc."
they had never checked the meter of the song. They just thought that it
wasn't a true Buleria because of a very narrow idea of what Flamenco is. It
is like saying Chuck Berry is Rock 'n Roll, but King Crimson isn't. To me
it's humorous but it is really a non-issue.
I have heard you say that you prefer instrumentals because the listener
is not being told what to think about. Can you elaborate?
Well, I think that instrumental music somehow involves the listener;
without that involvement it is just background. Instrumental music is very
much like a relationship: what you get out of it depends on how much you
put into it. A song format seems to say, "Check me out, I've got something to
say ! " The Iistener is just receiving, as opposed to being involved. The better
lyricists i will involve you, but some of the pop-schlock is not involving at all.
it is fine for me if omeone wants to refer to instrumental music as background.
Because I think it is beautiful that music can have those different levels.
Matching folio to the album, including: August Moon - Baja La Luna Mix - Borrasca - Bullfighter's Dream - Driving 2 Madrid - In the Hands of Love - The Storm Sings, and more.
112 pages
Italiano
English
