stretch guitaristically . They are as dynamic and as hard-hitting as anything I ’ ve ever done in the studio , but I think they work with the rest of the album even though other parts are very soft .
Did you play and sing at the same time when you were recording ? Some of it is recorded pretty much live , some is overdubbed , and on some tracks the vocals were repaired . It was quite different from the Pale Horses album , which was recorded in three days . This was an ongoing process for about two months . I wanted to experiment and see what the studio would give me if I produced myself and went to extremes . I didn ’ t have any rules .
I think we can agree you don ’ t play a lot of chords and notes . Where do you get the pitch for singing ? [ Laughs .] That ’ s a really good question . I don ’ t know if you have this phrase in English : “ Which came first , the chicken or the egg ?” If those vocal lines weren ’ t already there , I wouldn ’ t be playing what I am playing . I have the pitch in my head and don ’ t need to spell it out on the guitar , and I sing from there .
Would you say because you are not playing pitches it doesn ’ t have to correspond as directly as in typical pop music ? Right , and this was one of the things I was excited about . My guitar playing is this instant thing . I ’ ve done years and years of improvised music , and now I want to sing and try to link those things together . The main objective with this kind of project was to link singing to the same sort of immediate response as my guitar playing . When I play this material live it ’ s really free and stretched out , but , on a good day , it holds together .
Was the interaction between your guitar and voice inspired at all by the gigs with Sidsel Endresen ? Absolutely , and I have also played with other singers in Norway for the last 10 to 15 years . A lot of Norwegian singers have been doing avant-garde stuff with pop
premierguitar . com PREMIER GUITAR SEPTEMBER 2016 113