TECK TALK

TECK TALK

IN TUNE WITH RY COODER by Billy Cioffi

by Billy Cioffi

Ry Cooder hates the term archivist, although—when discussing his work—it’s hard not to use the term simply because Cooder has done so much in terms of preserving music that might otherwise have been lost. Certainly Cooder feels it’s his duty, if not one of his missions in life, to see to it that the precious, regional music of this century is not lost. But he is no preservationist in the sense of Alan Lomax; he sees and understands clearly that what makes music of any kind survive is playing and performing it.

For a guy who has never had a hit record or even a huge selling LP, Cooder has respect and an audience that far outweigh the sales numbers. Musicians in particular tend to look upon the guitarist with a reverence that embarrasses him. If you look real close, there is a bit of boyish rascality in his character that allows Cooder to gain the respect and admiration of every musician from road dog to rocker. The guy is just plain good and his sensitive guitar playing is...well, transcendental, man.

Cooder’s greatest commercial successes have come with his marvelous film scores. Southern Comfort, Crossroads and Paris, Texas were all enhanced by Cooder’s sensitive yet ballsy musical ideas. In Crossroads, Cooder played an astonishing duet/duel on the soundtrack with guitarist Steve Vai.

Ry Cooder plays guitar in many different tunings. Hence, if you listen to any of his records, you’ll notice an unusual richness in the recorded sound of his guitars. This is because the strings are open tuned to a chord, rather .than the traditional E-A-D-GB-E. (I guess tradition is not quite the right word, because the tunings Cooder uses are traditional, as well.)

Here’s an example of an open tuning that’s easy to work and will give you an idea of what we’re talking about. Take both the E strings and tune them to D (D-A-D-GB-D). This is called “drop D”; while it’s simple, it really sounds different and will change the way you approach playing. Obviously the fingerings change as well, but not enough to prevent you from playing something that sounds musical.

Ry Cooder: “I tune down low and that broadens the harmonics. It is tuned open so the open strings are working to give you twice, three times as many overtones as a chromatic tuning gives you. I don’t like chromatic tuning for that reason.

“My favorite stuff is the things I have done for movies. I like Blue City a lot. Of course, most of the movies I’ve liked have not been records. I have cassettes of the scores; that’s about all. Things like Southern Comfort.”

What types of tunings do you favor?

“I don’t play drop D too much unless I’m playing acoustic. But there are tons. I have C tunings, a straight D chord with a 6th tuned down and many others. What happened in Paris, Texas, for instance, was interesting. The guitar fell over and it was out of tune. When I picked it up it was in some sort of Major 7th that seemed to suit the movie better than what I was doing. Now I purposely don’t try to figure out what’s going on. I just play what that tuning is and hope I will hear something. I think that’s how a lot of tunings were arrived at—they were just messing around.”

More recently, Cooder worked on John Hiatt’s LP. The inexpensively-produced album was both a labor of love and one of the fastest-made records in recent history.

“When you have accompaniment and the voice of a writer, as you have with John, you have a whole different situation. Singlemindedness is apparent everywhere, because the reason you are there is because he wrote the songs. We came to accompany him. He is sitting there screaming into a mike and playing his acoustic guitar as hard as he can and it’s almost Elvis-like. We recorded the thing in three days and it’s very immediate. So it is sort of ’60ish, kind of like old rock ’n’ roll.”