Surf bands with three lead guitarists. Too much or just right?

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Squid

Joined: Aug 22, 2010
Posts: 1013
Portland, Oregon with Insanitizers
18 News Pins

Posted on Mar 14 2017 11:35 AM

It all depends on the personalities of the guitarists. Two Prima Donnas in a band doesn't work, much less three.

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choice_of_meat

Joined: Oct 04, 2013
Posts: 42

Posted on Mar 18 2017 12:01 PM

IMHO - Three guitarist should be great if you can get the arrangements down. I always look to large bands for how to approach this (like afrobeat or big band or Tijuana brass or such) , and what I generally see is that if you have 12 musicians, everyone has to find their part etc... like everyone has stated here. I see this need not just with three guitarists but in general if people come from playing solo, or in a trio, then they have to "relearn" to not overplay, i.e. not just always fill the space with chords etc.. etc..
Running with these examples here's a few things I find useful in arrangement of large ensembles:
Afrobeat - everyone finds their "simple small rhythmic part" - is one of your guitarist's ok just being the guitar "shaker" through a whole song? Good practice to remain humble and contribute a small but important part of the overall beat. I remember reading one article where the guitarist trying out for a funk band had to just play a E7th for like 2-3 hours... and they picked him because he could just stay in the pocket for that long and not complain. I've seen very skilled reggae guitarists struggle with this as well... it's tough when your ego constantly gets bored with what the music "asks for" - LOL

Big Bands - Tons of arrangement lessons from the big bands for instrumental music. IMHO the surf guys were just coming out of the 50's big band era, and so the same arrangement concepts were in their heads (consciously or not, whatever...) and it was just that with amplification, etc.. you could cop a big sound with fewer people. (Miles Davis really brought in the concept of a small instrumental groups). This is a good genre for inspiration on "trading leads" etc..

Tijuana Brass type sounds - I picked this one because of the strong horn arrangements - which fuzz guitars can cop a bit... so with many guitars you have an opportunity to stack up guitars in the same way you would stack up horns in an arrangement. This is similar to the big band stuff a bit, but moving to a smaller band size format, so it's a good way to look at how they approached it.

Well YMMV good luck with it!

Last edited: Mar 18, 2017 12:31:02

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