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The
following article appeared in the November 2002 issue of Classical
Guitar magazine. The The author was Therese Wassily Saba. (Special
thanks to Gitte.)
Classical
Miller...
Many people know Dominic Miller as the guitarist in Sting's band but
probably few have heard of his classical guitar beginnings.
Dominic Miller: I started playing guitar when I was about eleven or
twelve, My sister taught me how to play some bossa nova tunes. I was
brought up in Argentina, and in the 60s there was a bossa nova
revolution. I was a kid in those days, so I was lured into that style
before I did anything else.
What sort of records did you have at that time?
I had Baden Powell, the Jobim classics, Toquinho, and Vinicius de
Moraes. I used to play those records to death, and of course some more
pop Brazilian music, Gilberto Gil when he was really young, and the
Beatles and the Stones.
When you really first began playing, were you just on a classical
style guitar?
Oh yes, a Spanish guitar. My father played guitar, he was always
playing tangos at home. I was always playing fingerstyle. With bossa
nova the bass is always moving and the chords are moving in a
different rhythm to the bass, so I was playing quite dexterous
right-hand stuff. I went from playing for a half an hour a day to two
or three hours. Then at the age of twelve we moved to America, to
Wisconsin, because my dad had a job there. I carried on playing this
South American stuff, but then at 14 or 15 we moved back to England. I
was going through a little rock phase, wanting to emulate Jeff Beck
and Jimi Hendrix, but then I started listening to Segovia playing Bach
and Spanish music. I thought it was really amazing, and I felt driven
to learn it. So my dad got me a classical guitar teacher, David Bisset,
who said I should do grade 5 guitar. I had no idea what that meant,
but I learned three Grade 5 pieces and I really, really liked it.
I got through the exam very well and then I did Grade 6 a few months
later. I did a Villa-Lobos Prelude No. l, and I did a Poulenc
Sarabande, quite simple, but with great chords; I loved the harmony.
When I was 16, I met Felicia Galletta a composer and a piano teacher
who was at the Royal Academy. She couldn't play guitar but she became
my music teacher, so I got into composing pieces in the same mode as
the ones I was learning. I could hear, of course the Brazilian
influence of Villa-Lobos, and I tried to play some of those tunes in a
more bossa nova style just because I was young and wanted to change
the world. In the second section of Villa-Lobos Prelude No.3, I used
to play with a samba rhythm, and it sounded fantastic. She taught me
how composers like Poulenc and Dowland structured the music, so then I
took music theory Grades 5, 6, 7 and then Grade 8. I was interested in
the mathematics of music and the way it worked. She took me through
Grade 8 guitar, but being a non-guitarist, she was teaching me how to
play as a musician. I did Grade 8 because I had to get it to go to the
Guildhall.
We moved back to the States when I was 16 or 17, and I found a guitar
teacher there, an Armenian guy called James Yogouriyan. I was two
years away from going to the Guildhall but I kept my chops up learning
Bach. I said I just want to learn Bach. I was interested in the music
more, the key changes and the harmony. That's when I got the Bach bug,
which I've had ever since. Just before I went to Guildhall I got a
top-up from Hector Quine. He was great. I was very serious, but I
wasn't very good, that was the problem. So I went to him for about
eight sessions over a two-month period.
Were you playing with nails?
I was playing with nails, but actually I prefer the sound of flesh
now. Flesh can sound naily; it gives a much better tone for me when I
play nylon, which is my main acoustic sound. So then I started at
Guildhall, which is where the classical guitar thing all fell apart. I
thought it was very stuffy. My composition teacher at Guildhall was
Buxton Orr, who was a great teacher; he was hands-on helping me to
develop my own style, which is a mixture of different influences: the
Bach, the bossa nova, Hendrix, and Spanish music. But I was at a cross
roads, so when I had been at Guildhall for about a year I left,
because I started getting work playing in bars. I started playing
bossa novas and to sing a bit. I wanted to be a Professional and to
make some money. I did it for three or four nights a week and I had
cash in my pocket.
I went to see John McLaughlin, Paco de Lucia and Al di Meola in the
Albert Hall around that time and so I started doing more things like
that, more jazzy, kind of fun, exciting music, and flamenco. I
listened to Chick Corea and Weather Report, and I really got into
improvising. I was in a duo with Dylan Fowler and that was going well,
but I wanted to learn about other music, so I started playing electric
in bands.
Was
it hard to switch?
Not at all, because I wanted to get into that rock world. I used a
pick and fingers. I was listening to a lot of Jeff Beck and Jimi
Hendrix and I thought rock guitar looked like a much more interesting
job. The first band I joined was World Party in 1987. They had a minor
hit in America, so suddenly I was in a bus touring America and Europe.
I developed a style as an electric guitar player. But the reason I got
the job in the first place is because basically I could play anything
they wanted me to play. That is something I would say to any young
guitarist: you've got to broaden your mind musically by listening to
other styles. You owe it to yourself as a musician to really listen to
music and to really study music. I'm still studying now. I was
fortunate because technically I could play anything, which is thank
you to my classical background, and to all these great teachers I had.
Then I joined a really heavy rock band called King Swamp and got into
that whole heavy rock thing. My hair was long and I wore tight
trousers and cowboy boots.
What was it like being on stage with all that kit on?
It was such fun, and to be a guitarist in a band is a major role. So,
I was finally living the dream. I became known as the top of the B
list session players. I was doing sessions with lots of different
bands, playing electric mainly, but then I thought, why don't I
utilize this new style of playing jazzier, more improvisational rock,
but do it on a nylon string guitar? It wasn't really something that
had been done at all in the studio - electric guitar with a Spanish
style or vice versa. So I started playing nylon string a lot around
1988, and I became known for doing that. The first album I did with
Julia Fordham Porcelain was a good album for me because people heard
what I could do on a nylon guitar. The big transition was when her
producer Hugh Padgham got me involved in Phil Collins's album, where I
played the biggest hit he's ever had: 'Another Day in Paradise' on a
nylon string guitar. That was it really, that was the end of the
struggle. I was working all the time after that.
You've been with Sting's band for 13 years now. What is it like? Do
you all work intensely together?
We don't work intensely together but I go down there, either to his
place in Italy or in Wiltshire and we get together and I help him out
with arrangements. Sometimes I get my songs on his albums, which is
great. It's a good working relationship we have. I am like a sparring
partner. He's the older brother with the success and the fame and I'm
the younger brother with some some stuff for him, mainly harmonic
ideas, which he is interested in, not really guitar playing. We're the
same. We don't care about the Instrument.
You
mean it's more the harmonic progressions, which you are exploring?
Yeah, he loves quirky changes and I've learned so much by working with
him and I'd like to think he's learned something from working with me.
I have just got into playing Bach again in the last two years. At the
beginning of the last tour with Sting, which lasted two years, I got
so bored and Sting gave me the Bach violin Partitas. I had been
working on some other Bach pieces which I was hiding in my guitar
case. I became obsessed with it again, probably playing Bach for three
or four hours a day; before I would go on stage to play with Sting, I
would be playing Bach in the dressing room and in the hotel room.
Is
it your fault that Sting plays Bach every morning then?
I'll tell you how the bug started really; it was when we were doing
one of the albums. Sometimes there's a lot of waiting around, so I
learned Lauro's piece 'El Marabino' and Sting saw me learning it. My
reading is appalling but I worked it out.
Is
your reading really appalling?
Yes, absolutely; but I can work it out, and my memory is very good. So
I learned that piece and then Sting tried to learn it. Then it became
a sort of race. I learned a Bach piece and Sting thought that was
really good, so then he learned some Bach that I didn't know and it
became a bit of a competition to see who had the best tunes. He does
it every morning. I do it for hours. I've just recorded one tune on
its own for my next album: the first movement of the Bach Partita.
It's all such good stuff, but I don't want to play it in the Wigmore
Hall. I'd rather play Bach in a club like where we are now, in Pizza
Express, and get the punters to listen to it that way, with clanging
glasses.
© Classical Guitar
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