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CHORD ALCHEMIST
Interview with ANDY SUMMERS by ANDREW DUBROCK
ANDY SUMMERS changed the sound of rock when he added his jazz-inflected chord palette to the Police
in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Having grown up playing the jazz of Mingus, Monk, and Miles, he pushes his own boundaries as a solo artist by collaborating with players from rock, classical, Brazilian, and avant-garde genres.
In this exclusive lesson, Summers explains his approach to composition, demonstrates his unique chord voicings and suggests techniques for solo phrasing and effective accompaniment.
Like the mystical sages of the past who explored the mysteries of philosophy, spirituality, and physics in search of new wonders, Andy Summers has spent a lifetime studying music in search of enlightened guitar expression. In his early teens, growing up in Bournemouth, England, Summers was already digesting the complex music and practicing the fluid lines of Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, and any other American jazz musicians whose recordings he could get his hands on. By the time he began six years of classical-guitar study at California State University, Northridge, he had already been a member of the Animals, Soft Machine, and Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band. After returning to England from Southern California, he traded licks in London clubs and studios with Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix and toured and recorded with the likes of Neil Sedaka, Joan Armatrading, David Essex, and Deep Purple's Jon Lord. And this was all before he joined a little trio called the Police.
In 1984, after the Police peroxide had faded from his hair, Summers went back to the music he loved as a kid: jazz. Only this time, he was informing his music with modern tones, textures, and melodic lines. In the years since, he has recorded with progressive-rocker Robert Fripp, toured in an acoustic jazz duo with guitarist John Etheridge, infused creative guitaristic elements—like open strings and distorted electric tones—into his covers of compositions by Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus, and reached for broader textures in his own jazz-oriented compositions.
At 62, Summers shows no signs of slowing down or losing enthusiasm for his many creative endeavors. Within the past year, he penned an autobiography (due out this fall from St. Martin’s Press), helped design a gorgeous signature-model Martin guitar, and played Ingram Marshall’s Balinese gamelan¬–inspired Concerto for Classical and Electric Guitars and Orchestra at Carnegie Hall with classical virtuoso Ben Verdery and the American Composers Orchestra.
I caught up with Summers on a cloudy, late-winter Friday afternoon at his beachfront studio in Venice, California, where we sipped tea and talked about his prolific career, his new signature Martin, and how he approaches playing and composing on the instrument by expanding chord voicings into complete pieces. Half a block from the studio, hip-hop artists worked the streets with CD players in hand, frantically trying to give away their music, slip headphones on unsuspecting passersby, and promote themselves toward superstardom—clearly oblivious to the fact that the guitarist from one of the biggest rock bands of the last century was woodshedding just around the corner.
What is involved in coming up with a signature-model Martin?
SUMMERS You go to the factory and they show you whatever style of guitar you want to start with. I told them, “I’ve done a lot of these acoustic concerts, and the amplification is always a problem, or the guitar is too light or too heavy, and I’d like to find something that deals with those problems.” We looked at the latest pickup stuff, the different qualities of spruce, the tuners. But what makes it into a signature model is how you change the decoration.
At the time, I was going to take this trip to a mountain in Tibet called Mt. Kailash. Buddhists come from all over Asia to circumambulate the mountain. It’s supposed to cleanse the karma of one’s past lives. At one point I thought I would call this guitar the Kailash, so I came up with this idea of doing the position markers on the fretboard with the Buddhist mudras [hand gestures], all of which have meanings—“peace,” “concentration,” and so on—that relate to different aspects of Buddhist practice.
What do the mudras mean to you as a musician?
SUMMERS It’s basically the idea of being very focused and in a place where, if you’re improvising, you might be reaching for the spirit, and you’re going to get in touch with something else. Any musician worth his salt will hopefully experience those moments when he’s “in the zone” and everything else fades away. So the mudras represent the idea of reaching for that in music. You can’t be in that state every time you pick up the instrument. Some days are more prosaic than other days. But in your best moments, I do think playing guitar is, in a way, like meditation.
From a playability standpoint, are there things that you couldn’t play on other acoustic guitars that you can on this guitar?
SUMMERS You can almost play this like a jazz guitar, and jazz chords [Example 1] are much tougher on regular steel-string acoustic guitars. I wanted to be able to keep the acoustic quality but be able to really move around. You’re always struggling a little with a steel-string after playing an electric or nylon-string, because it’s a tougher instrument to play. “Now I’m Free” was actually written like this [Example 2] on a [Gibson] Steve Howe ES-175 that I had just acquired. I played purely because of the sound I was getting out of that 175—no chorus, nothing, just straight guitar. But on the Martin it’s too hard to do that, so I do it this way [Example 3].
Is your writing process based on improvisation?
SUMMERS Yes. Sometimes I find a chord, then develop it out and see if I can turn it into a little progression [Example 4]. I tend to do chords first rather than single lines.
That doesn’t surprise me. I think you’ve put your stamp on music first and foremost with your cool chord sounds and chord clusters.
SUMMERS I’m very much into the cluster thing—that’s a good word to use for it. In the Police, I would do these kinds of chords [Example 5]. Dropping the third out of a chord makes it much hipper. For me, Cm is this [Example 6], not like this [Example 7]. [Example 7] sounds so 19th century—old fashioned—to me, while [Example 6] takes you to a much hipper place. It’s sort of ancient and modern at the same time.
You tend to spread your left hand out quite a bit. Do you have any exercises that you practice to build up your agility for those stretches?
SUMMERS I don’t know if these days I really assiduously practice. I probably got the most chops for the left hand when I studied classical for six years and had to play a bigger, heavier guitar and got into making those extended stretches. Then when I returned to the electric guitar, it was easy. You play something like “Every Breath You Take,” and it kills some guitarists. But to me, it’s a no-brainer. It’s almost classical the way I finger it, instead of playing it with barres [Example 8].
Some of your tunes, such as “The Diva Station,” use pretty chord clusters while also getting into fairly complex harmonic territory.
SUMMERS It’s a nice sequence to play on, very Coltrane-like. And the head is cool
because it starts in E minor but it ends on Bb minor, which I usually play as a suspension. So it’s a weird set of changes. The bridge ends on F minor, and the hip thing to do is to play the 13#11 chord a fourth above [Example 9]. That’s a harmonic trick.
Do you play in alternate tunings?
SUMMERS No, I don’t. My sort-of-insulting response to that is that I always thought all these alternate tunings were for people who don’t really know any chords. [Laughs.]
I grew up being a real jazz aficionado. That was my basis for guitar playing. I find that a lot of the open-tuning stuff is very pretty, but my ear gets tired of it. Some of the tunings are interesting, but to me they’re not as significant as real harmonic knowledge and real chord progressions on standard tuning. Standard tuning is absolutely infinite. My language is standard tuning. It takes a lifetime to learn it, and then you get there and you don’t really want to give it up.’
You sometimes switch from flatpicking to fingerpicking, and hold your pick between your index and middle fingers. When you do that, can you still play with the two fingers that are hiding the pick?
SUMMERS They’re still functioning. [To demonstrate, he wedges a pick between the first and second joints of his index and middle fingers.] I do it to pluck two-string groups, at least [Example 10]. I’m not doing arpeggios—that would be harder.
You also sometimes play solos with your thumb. Is there a reason you choose the thumb over the pick in those instances?
SUMMERS When you play with the thumb, you get a warmer sound. And I think you can phrase better [Example 11]. Of course, Wes Montgomery is the shining example. It’s weird, but it’s something about how your body is connected right to the string—it’s one step closer to the brain, and you seem to connect better. I could end up like John Abercrombie, who only plays with his thumb now. In my steel-string acoustic concerts, we play Gypsy-jazz songs, and I always do the solos with my thumb.
And you play the chords fingerstyle, rather than the “chunk-chunka” swing rhythm with a pick?
SUMMERS Yeah, the accompaniment is often much nicer that way when somebody’s soloing. A lot of guitarists just go [plays hacking strums with no nuance]. It should be like a snare drum [plays soft, nuanced backup] [Example 12].
Some of the coolest soloing I’ve seen you do was when you were floating over the beat. Essentially, you have to first learn the rules—learn to play in time—before you can break those rules. Do you have any thoughts about getting to that space?
SUMMERS Unquestionably, time is the be-all of music. It’s the most important thing. If you don’t get that, you’re never going to sound very good. And I’ve played with a lot of well-known guitar players whose time is not that bloody good. It kills me. The greatest players can take it all the way over the bar lines, but they always come back in at the right place. I also think it’s got to be born in you. I don’t know if you can learn it. You can, to an extent, by listening, but you’ve got to feel it pretty naturally. You should be able to float all over everything and then just come out in the right place. The playing I probably like the most is where the time is abstracted more rather than that dotted-quarter-note, ’30s-style rhythm. Miles is the great master. The horn players are the ones to really listen to.
When you perform music that was originally played on horns or other instruments, as you did on your Monk and Mingus albums, how do you adapt it to the guitar?
SUMMERS Taking these monster pieces by these absolutely giant musicians and having the audacity to try and play them on the guitar, I was confronted with this problem of being respectful yet putting my own signature on them. I studied all this stuff for months at a time. I would change keys and get some open strings to see if I could make the pieces sound more guitar-like. I did “Remember Rockefeller at Attica” as an incredibly fast samba because it has amazing chords, and I thought that Mingus must have been listening to Antonio Carlos Jobim—when you start getting down to the chords, they’re very Brazilian. I did “Tonight at Noon” in E minor and almost like a Hendrix thing in a fast 6/8. “Reincarnation of a Lovebird” was very difficult. I tried every different key, but I ended up doing it in F# minor, which I think is the key that Mingus does it in [Example 13]. These things really help you grow as a musician—not just as a guitarist.
You’ve obviously influenced other players. Are there any current guitarists that influence you?
SUMMERS People say, “You must be listening to music all day long.” No, I can’t stand listening to music. Do you know why? Because I’ve heard it all. And that’s not being jaded, it’s just that your taste becomes finer. My taste is very esoteric. If I were to listen to music, it’d be some jazz, but it might be the Bulgarian Women’s Choir or Indian music or African music or Brazilian music.
I like to feel that I’m still innocent enough that I can be influenced, but I’m not into copying licks anymore. Everybody does it; you’ve got to do it at some point to create some kind of vocabulary. Then, hopefully, you will start to find your own voice—something with the instrument that becomes your signature.
Maybe the word “influenced” is not quite right, because I think what you get from other people is a field of energy that inspires you. I’m not looking for attitude, I’m looking for some really great music. When I hear a Ben Monder record and think, “OK, this guy has really taken it somewhere,” that’s inspiring to me. That’s what I’m looking for: something that makes me go, “I want to write something now!”
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Andy Summers’ Favorite Unsung Guitarists
AUGUSTIN BARRIOS “Absolutely one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived. He played classical, but with a steel-string guitar. And he had an elastic band wrapped around the top, which dampened the strings. There’s a three-CD set of his music that is really incredible.”
PHILIP CATHERINE “Philip’s a real genius. When John [Etheridge] and I were doing stuff we were very much influenced by the Larry Coryell/Philip Catherine model. They were essentially jazz players, but they’d write real modern compositions.”
BEN MONDER “A lot of people play well, but what stops me is if somebody’s got a musical concept that’s different. Ben Monder is a jazz guitarist, but he’s not playing any bebop phrasing at all. He’s made an album that reflects wide musical thinking and ability, and incorporated music from other places to create his own world. He’s got a very good right hand.”
BEN VERDERY “He’s doing some fantastic compositions, he’s a great player, and he’s really trying to open up the concept of the nylon-string instrument to put it into another place. Rather than playing through the somewhat tired classical repertoire, Ben plays pieces by Prince and Hendrix, has transcribed the Blue Danube waltz, and has refingered J.S. Bach’s Chaconne to suit his own methods.”
How to Cover the Police
Whether he’s playing a Telecaster in a rock band or a Martin in a jazz trio, Andy Summers fits the tool to the job. So how would he play a Police song on acoustic? “It’s more difficult,” he says. “You can play the same chords, but in the Police I would’ve been doing it with an Echoplex and a whammy bar and little weird electronic stuff to make it sing like a cloud.” So for an unplugged version of a song like “Tea in the Sahara,” where single chords ring out with the sustain of all those effects, Summers says he would take the chord shapes and move them around, playing more chords in the same amount of space to get a similarly expansive effect.
Police songs have been covered by everyone from Alanis Morissette and Anthrax to UB40 and Frank Zappa. “Recently I got this album, Policia,” (The Militia Group, www.themilitiagroup.com <http://www.themilitiagroup.com> ) Summers says. “It has about 12 different bands doing Police covers. My one criticism of the record is that it gets too heavy, so all the subtlety and all the little weird stuff we did gets lost in this massive, sheet-of-sound modern production. But there’s a version of ‘Every Breath You Take’ on there [by an English band called, ironically, Copeland] that is really fantastic. They do it slowly, like a ballad, and they’ve completely reharmonized it. It’s a knockout. I might actually write to these guys and say, ‘Congratulations.’”
WHAT HE PLAYS
* Acoustic Guitars: Martin Andy Summers signature model 000C-28; 1925 Martin 000; Fleta and Fritz Ober nylon-strings.
* Electric Guitars: 1960 Gibson ES-335 with PAF humbuckers (the guitar was the basis for Summers’ 2002 signature model); Klein headless guitar with Bartolini and EMG pickups; 1963 Fender Custom Telecaster (to be replicated as a signature model in 2007).
* Amplification: Fishman Ellipse blend (Martin); Mesa Boogie/Simul-Class 2:Ninety power amp, Triaxis preamp, and sealed-back Rectifier cabinets (electrics).
* Effects: Ernie Ball volume pedal; Lexicon PCM70 reverb; Eventide Eclipse multieffects processor; T.C. Electronic 1210 TC; Klon Centaur overdrive; Menatone Red Snapper overdrive; Fulltone Ultimate Octave.
* Strings: D’Addario phosphor-bronze medium gauge (acoustic steel-string); D’Addario normal tension (nylon-string); D’Addario custom gauge: .012, .015, .018, .028, .038, .049 (electric).
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Used by kind permission of Acoustic Guitar, July 2006, issue 163, © 2006 String Letter Publishing, David A. Lusterman, Publisher. All rights reserved. For more information on Acoustic Guitar, contact String Letter Publishing, Inc., 255 West End Ave., San Rafael, CA 94901; telephone (415) 485-6946; fax (415) 485-0831
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