You can also access my Facebook page to
see photo essays and posts from players and owners of my instruments.
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New updates to the See & Hear page.
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Waddy Wachtel Roberts BH-J45 presentation.
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Artist Endorser and Artists pages updated.
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New pages added for the Slope-shoulder dreadnought, The Modern, and the Buddy Holly J-45.
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I've been working with the Buddy Holly Foundation; here is some additional information.
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A new mini-documentary about me and my work is available here.
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The September 2011 issue of Guitar Player Magazine features an article on one of my Artist Endorsers, Kevin Kastning. The article is about the making of his latest release on Greydisc Records with British fusion guitar master Mark Wingfield, entitled I walked into the silver darkness. The Roberts 14-string Contraguitar is pictured in the article, and is Kevin's main instrument on the new album. You can see Kevin playing the Contraguitar during the recording sessions in the article's photo. Click here for a PDF of the article.
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As of September 1, 2011, I have moved into a new shop. The new Stringworks is almost triple the size of the old facility. New shop tour photos coming soon!
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Kevin Kastning recently completed recording sessions with Alex de Grassi for an upcoming duet album. Kevin used the Roberts 14-string Contraguitar as his primary instrument on the recording sessions.
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* The Holiday 2010 issue of Guitar Player Magazine included a feature article on one of my Artist Endorsers, Kevin Kastning.
Guitar Player Magazine; Holiday 2010
Kevin Kastning
by Barry Cleveland
KEVIN KASTNING HAD JUST RECEIVED HIS NEW “CONTRA guitar”— a 14-string
extended-range instrument co-designed and built by Dan Roberts, formerly of
Santa Cruz Guitar Company, now of Daniel Roberts Stringworks— the day before our
interview. The Contraguitar joins the Santa Cruz KK-Alto, DKK Extended Baritone,
and DKK-12 12-String Extended Baritone guitars in Kastning’s pantheon of unique
stringed instruments. Although Kastning studied classical and jazz composition
formally—including taking private lessons from Pat Metheny while attending the
Berklee College of Music—and is fluent in both traditions, the music he plays on
these guitars is as singular as the instruments.
Kastning’s
latest release, Returning [Greydisc], represents his fourth collaboration
with virtuoso Hungarian acoustic guitarist Sándor Szabó. As on the duo’s
previous albums (Parabola, Parallel Crossings, and Resonance), the
music is entirely improvised—though it nonetheless possesses such inherent
compositional integrity that one might reasonably question the spontaneity of
its origins. Szabó’s acoustic 12-string baritone guitar interweaves almost
supernaturally with Kastning’s extended-range instruments to create a sort of
impressionistic neoclassical folk music of such consistency and emotional depth
that it would still be astonishing even if it had been painstakingly composed
rather than manifesting mysteriously in the moment.
Besides channeling The Source in real time with Szabó, Kastning has composed
numerous piano sonatas, string quartets, and other classical works, as well as
collaborating with acoustic guitar innovator Siegfried on several recordings,
and contributing to 2008’s Unplugged & Unfretted: A Collection of the World's
Acoustic Fretless Guitarists (he also plays fretless acoustic). Kastning is
currently recording with legendary cellist David Darling, and a mostly
improvised album with English electric jazz guitarist Mark Wingfield is in the
offing for 2011.
The music on your albums with Sándor Szabó is entirely improvised, yet most
of it sounds composed. How is that possible?
I will tell you as much as I know about the
process. All of the albums were recorded in a single day. That’s how well we
play together. On the first album, we brought little sketches that were a couple
of bars long, but we abandoned that fairly quickly because we were thinking so
much alike and our interaction felt really natural. For example, pieces would
begin and end in unison. We might discuss some things ahead of time like, “I’m
going to begin this piece in 5/4, give me two bars up front,” or “You start in
that register and I’ll start in this register”—but that’s about it. And on some
pieces one of us would just begin playing without any discussion at all, and we
would go from there. A lot of people say they’re surprised when they find out
that those are all improvised pieces.
What does improvisation mean to you?
I don’t think of it so much as improvisation as I
do real-time composition. You pick up a score of music and there was a time when
that was improvisation. Written music is really just frozen improvisation. When
I’m playing solo pieces, I’m thinking about the form. But when I’m working with
Sándor, I’m just listening to him and getting a sense of where the composition
is going. After that, I just stay out of the way and let the music go where it
wants to go. I’m not thinking about scales or harmonic structures, I’m not
thinking about transitional moments or sections in the piece— I’m just sensing
the piece as a whole, letting it go where it wants to go, and giving it all the
space and nurturing it needs to do that.
You speak of the music almost as if it was an entity. How do you
conceptualize the source of creativity?
I feel that music comes from somewhere else.
I don’t pretend to create it. I just allow it to come through. A lot of times
I’ll listen back to a recording and there will be a tremendous amount of stuff
that I don’t remember playing or even recognize as me. It sounds like a very
spiritual thing to some people, and maybe it is, but I think it’s something
that’s not really of this physical plane. That source could be God, or something
so deep within the artist that they’re not even aware of it, or it could be
nature. And it is also partly the chemistry between two or more people. It’s a
big question, and I’m not that smart of a guy [laughs].
Talk a little bit about your primary instruments and tunings.
Nothing that I’m doing now involves a 6-string
guitar in standard tuning. I do a lot of practicing on classical guitar, but I
don’t record with one, and I do most of my composing on piano. I have three main
instruments, and a fourth arrived yesterday. The first three are the Kevin
Kastning series instruments that I developed with Santa Cruz, specifically with
Dan Roberts when he was there. Dan and [Santa Cruz Guitar Company founder]
Richard Hoover really made these things happen for me. The DKK Extended Baritone
has a 28.5"-scale and is tuned to F#, in other words a whole step above a bass,
though for the Retuning album it was tuned to E. The instrument I consider my
main guitar is the DKK-12 12-String Extended Baritone, which is a 12-string
version of the same instrument, also tuned to F# . Most baritone guitars are
maybe one or two whole steps below concert pitch, but these are a full 7th
below. The third guitar is the KK-Alto, which is another 12-string instrument
that’s tuned to A, a fourth above standard tuning.
The fourth instrument is the Contraguitar?
Yes. I wanted an instrument that could go down to
E without being a bass, and also go well into the alto range on the top—that
sort of upper cello register sound. I also wanted to have more than six courses
of strings, and the final instrument has seven, for a total of 14 strings. Dan
and I worked out the details over a tremendously long time, so that by the time
we had nailed down what it was going to be, he had started his own company,
Daniel Roberts String Works. The Contraguitar has a 30" scale length and the nut
is 3.25" wide. Right now I have it set up in octave tuning from E to A. I’ll
start using some of my personal tunings with it once I get acclimated to playing
it. The voicing and textures are orchestral in scope.
Describe your picking technique.
Recently I’ve been playing almost entirely with
my fingers, using what is essentially classical technique, which partly came out
of frustration with the pick. First of all there’s something between you and the
string. Also, when you play a chord on a piano, you’re hearing all the notes at
once, and on the guitar you don’t always, because you tend to strum bass to
treble across the strings. That has always bothered me. With my fingers, if I’m
playing a four-note chord voicing I can grab all four notes at once and it
sounds like a complete harmonic structure. Also, a lot of my lines are angular,
with leaps of an octave or more inside of a line or a phrase. While I can do
that with a pick, it happens much more instantaneously and cleanly with my
fingers.
When I do play with a pick, my technique tends to confound other guitarists—and
I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way [laughs]. I hold the pick backwards
using the rounded edge, and at a 45-degree angle rather than parallel to the
strings, so I’m not picking with a direct attack. Also, I hold the pick between
my thumb and first two fingers, and I just brush the strings instead of pounding
the sound out, which makes it tend to sound more like fingers than a pick
anyway.
Is your left-hand technique also rooted in classical playing?
While I was in high school I would watch cello
players. Cellists keep their thumb in the middle of the back of the neck at all
times, which provides tremendous reach with their fingers, and opens up a whole
world of chord voicings that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Of course, the
technique is common with classical guitarists, but I didn’t know that at the
time. That approach doesn’t work with the Contaguitar, however, as the neck is
so wide (nut width = 3.25 inches) that I wind up placing my thumb more under the
treble strings than in the middle, and to reach the bass strings it comes out
from behind the neck entirely, at which point I use it more like an additional
finger.
What are the most important things you took away from studying with Pat
Metheny?
The first had to do with my time. I had already
been playing professionally when I began studying with Pat, and nobody had ever
suggested that I needed to work on my time. But in a very genuine way he told me
my time was inexcusable, which really got me thinking about time and rhythm in
ways that I never had, and that had a tremendous impact on me. The second really
good thing was more spiritual and emotional. It was early in my first semester,
and I was depressed because I felt like all of the teachers and students were
these killer musicians, and I was just kind of hiding behind the furniture
wondering when I was going to be found out. Pat must have picked up on it
because at the end of the first lesson he said, “You probably hear a lot of guys
with great chops at Berklee, but I want you to completely ignore them, because
they’re not your competition. I’m your competition. You just worry about me.” I
felt a lot better after that, because rather than comparing myself to others I
could focus on what really mattered.
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