Guthrie Govan, Mattias Eklundh and Andy Wood @ RMA Report

Spotted over on truthinshredding from the petrucci forum a great day-by-day report of the recent clinics at the RMA from Guthrie Govan, Mattias Eklundh and Andy Wood:

12:30 Orientation
Tuesday morning was an interesting one. Like an itty bitty kid before Christmas, I was hardly able to sleep out of excitement. I got there with my friend Jeff (who goes by MetalHeadd here) at the very beginning of orientation. Paul and Addie (sp?) were handing out the badges with our names and the event on them at the door to greet everyone. There were a lot of different age groups represented. People as young as 13 or so, and there were plenty of people on the opposite end of the spectrum. The environment was pretty good – a lot of jetlag and exhaustion circled the room, but it still was a very positive environment.

1:00 Guitar Tech Class – Robert Horne
Robert is someone who any guitar player can look up to – and very easily. He’s an exceptional blues player with stage presence for days, and the most incredible feel I’ve ever heard. He went over a lot of really important things like intonation, truss rod adjustment, how to set action, etc. The class was a little shorter than expected, but nobody really asked any questions. Not a whole lot of interaction for this portion – I think it had a lot to do with everyone’s trips here.

2:00 Guitar technique primer – Chris Ptacek
Chris, you’re the coolest thing since sliced bread. Except for maybe a steel fork. Those are pretty, erm. Metal. The intention of this class was to give a brief overview of any techniques. There were going to be a lot of technical words thrown around for the rest of the week, so Chris wanted to make sure no one was left in the dark. He explained a multitude of things – sweep picking, hybrid picking, legato, casting spells at your guitar, etc. It went by pretty well, and definitely helped. It’s something that should be added every year from now on, it was a great idea.

2:30 Music Theory for Guitar 101 – Chris Ptacek
Besides having technical difficulties (lol c wut I did thar?) with a white board, marker, and paper towel, Chris did a really good job of teaching this class. Regardless of how high and mighty anyone’s music theory knowledge is, Chris can explain it in such a way that it makes even more sense than it did before – a very useful class for everyone, not just the people who never have studied it.

3:30 Freak Harmonics & Sounds – Mattias IA Eklundh
Mattias is truly a mad man, and only in the best way possible. He’s a very unique person, and just as unique in his playing. I was thrilled to meet him and get to spend a lot of time with him. He started the class by telling a story about how his left ball grew to a million times the size of the other one, and then… well, I doubt he wants that all on the internet The class portion was awesome, his character really made it great. He showed a few ideas for harmonics, and made a point of visiting everyone at their chair, and offering advice on a certain technique. Tip-top guy

7:30 Chickin Pickin 101 – Andy Wood
Andy Wood, my brother. Assuming the majority of you haven’t met Andy, he’s someone you should definitely try and meet. He’s a really positive spirit, very outspoken, and absolutely hilarious. Total redneck, but I’ll forgive him just this once He showed us quite a few cool licks. There’s certainly a lot for us to work on, and this class got us used to using the right hand’s fingers to pluck strings as well. Definitely a whole new realm of playing – Andy, I plan on keeping in touch with this stuff. You’ve got to keep me in shape, man!

Wednesday 15th

1:00 Blues Guitar – Robert Horne
I already mentioned how ridiculous of a player Robert is, so I’m not going to re-iterate myself. He went over the general idea of figuring out chord tones, and making your own voices for them. Basically, he wanted to stay away from the average barre chords, and get something a little more interesting sounding. He had quite a few different grooves and progressions, with the help of Hugh and Abdala (both great players and people) as a backing band. I believe everyone attending got up and played, and it was really cool. Had a few mistakes myself, but it’s a learning environment, and that’s the idea.

2:30 Freak Sweeping & Tapping – Mattias IA Eklundh
Mattias taught us quite a bit of this stuff. Many, many tapping licks, and just as many sweeping licks. In my opinion, regardless of how good you were at either, he was going to find a way to trip you up and make you think about what you were doing. Very unconventional sweeping patterns (no 5 string major arpeggios) and the tapping stuff had a very precise rhythm. Both were really, really great exercises, and made complete sense when he explained them. He’s a really solid teacher.

3:45 Legato Guitar – Guthrie Govan
Guthrie. I don’t know how much else there is to say. Arguably the best guitarist in existence was mere feet away from all of us. Regardless of how intimidating it may have seemed, his calm, British sensibility was more than enough to make it a relaxed environment. In the book Paul gave us, all of the teachers, aside from Guthrie made extensive handouts for us to use. Guthrie’s was blank He started the class by ultimately saying “we’re slotted to learn about legato, but I don’t think I’m going to teach you that.” A little concerning at first for me, but he gave an INCREDIBLE lecture about things like tone, technique, and how he didn’t care for the words “feel” and “emotion” in the general sense of the word. It was a very insightful class, quite possibly my favorite of the whole week.

7:30 Songwriting – Guthrie Govan and Mattias IA Eklundh
This class was also a really cool one. No guitars were really needed – this was purely for the sake of education. It was really cool to pick the minds of these guys, their view on everything was very different and very much the same in a lot of ways. Mattias showed us a bit of the new Freak Kitchen as examples of his songwriting technique. I believe we were the listening party, if you will. Very cool stuff! We got Guthrie and Mattias to “write” a song on the spot, and it really sounded as if it were written before. The two of them are musical geniuses, I was shocked at how fluid it was.

Thursday 16th

1:00 Changing gears (mixing note values, building intensity, dynamics) – Guthrie Govan
Guthrie’s classes are really difficult to write much about. He never really followed the course description, but answered everyone’s question in a really easy to understand manner. His classes were almost information overload – he knows sooooo much, and nearly everyone had a question for him. I believe this is the class where he mostly went over chords. At one point he played “happy birthday” and managed to throw a lot of triads and interesting chord voicings in, which prompted the question. I enjoyed this class a lot, as well. This made me want to do some exploring of the fretboard, if you will.

2:30 Music Theory for Guitar 102 – Chris Ptacek
Modes! The most controversial subject of this lovely forum Chris also did a great job of teaching this one. He got a couple of students to go up on stage – had one play G major, and the other move the root note around, and vice versa to demonstrate how modes work in creating a different sound. This class ended up being a little shorter than it should have been, but it still was explained very well.

3:45 Expanding your tapping – Guthrie Govan and Mattias IA Eklundh
This class was also quite fun to have both teachers on stage. A good portion of this class was spent showing different general ideas the two of them used. The general consensus was that they wanted people to be more original than the typical EVH tapping phrase – adding tuplets, moving frets, adding bends, and anything else you can imagine one of them doing. It really opened up a lot of doors for me, and my terrible tapping, so that was pretty cool.

7:30 Mattias IA Eklundh – performance clinic
He knows how to put on a show. Kept us laughing the whole time, and when he performed, kept our jaws on the floor. He did a good job of explaining what he was playing before he actually did, so it helped make a little more sense of what is “strange and Swedish” music.

I’m so jealous, it hurts.