Soren Reiff: The Miss You Interview

By: Dr. Mattthew Warnock
Photos By: Henrik Delfer

In the jazz world, the term Smooth Jazz is often used to put down someone’s style of playing, stating that it is too commercial or too “smooth” to be considered hip. But, in using this term for many years, people have come to associate all smooth jazz with Kenny G and the rest of the elevator music crowd, often discounted great players along the way who get shuffled into this genre with little regards to the quality and validity of their music.

Danish guitarist Soren Reiff is just such a player. While he may lean towards more pop-oriented jazz, one would be far stretched to say that his playing and writing can’t stand up to the best “traditional” jazz players around today. Actually, though some might deem his music Smooth Jazz, the energy and technical ability that Reiff displays on his latest record Miss You is much closer to the jazz fusion realm than anything else.

Perhaps, mostly due to highly-skilled players like Reiff, there needs to be a chance in how we label pop-jazz, leaving the Smooth Jazz moniker for elevator music, and using Pop-Jazz Fusion for music that is played at a world-class level, but that appeals to a broader audience than most post ‘50s jazz does. This might just allow people to drop their preconceptions and allow themselves to enjoy many great musicians that they might not have given a chance on previous occasions.

Regardless of what genre Reiff’s music is lumped in, his playing speaks for itself. A highly-skilled improviser, as well as writer and arranger, Reiff’s music is high-energy, modern jazz at its very best. While his writing style may not to appeal to every jazz fan, and really, what composer’s music does, fans of any genre can enjoy his guitar work as he weaves through the chord changes on any of his well-written tunes.

Guitar International recently sat down with Soren Reiff to talk about his new record, get his thoughts on Smooth Jazz and hear about his new DVD that’s in the works.

Soren Reiff

******

Matt Warnock: You’ve worked as musical director for some of the biggest names in the business, including Chaka Khan and David Sanborn, as well as built your career as a solo artist. Do you have a preference for working with another artist or on your own and if so why?

Soren Reiff It’s a privilege to make a living writing and playing music. My work has given me so many wonderful experiences and I’m grateful every time I work with great artists, those experiences will always have a special place in my heart.

Working as a Musical Director, hired session player or solo artist all have different challenges and also provide various types of gratification. The diversity of it all has helped me to develop my musical personality, and I feel I learn something every time I work, but the key to it all is maintaining balance.

When I work as a producer or MD my focus is on getting the soloist to shine as much as possible, getting each musician to feel comfortable and get the band to play their best. In addition, everything on the production should sound great, and I’m trying to keep an efficient work flow, and of course nailing my guitar part. It’s exciting and challenging at the same time, so I just need to be calm and let things flow.

But when you hear my job description as MD, it’s apparent that my job as the guitar player is just one part of all my responsibilities, and still I should play as great as if I was a hired session-player for that job.

When I work as a solo artist, my main focus is on the guitar and on my own playing. I can use all the experiences I’ve accumulated as a MD and producer and allow myself to focus on my own playing, and hopefully only on that.

Matt: Have you ever had to work on maintaining our own personal musical voice after working as musical director with these and other artists over the years?

Soren: You’ll always mature as a musician when you’re playing with great musicians and artists. The better musicians and artists you get to play with, the more you have the opportunity to grow, but it’ll always be your own responsibility to practice and explore the material that people around you introduce you to.

I believe that you subconsciously select from all the musical impressions you get every day and keep the ones that naturally develop your style. I never felt it was a problem maintaining my own musical voice. I get incredibly inspired by the people I work with, and often find myself wanting to practice when I return to the hotel after a great show.

My problem is, as I mentioned earlier, that a job as MD takes a lot of time in my schedule, because of the various responsibilities, therefore it’s a challenge to find time to practice and develop as a player. That’s also one of the main reasons why I’ve worked less as a MD recenctly on TV and for other artists, and focused more on my own music, so I can develop that way as well.

Matt: Do you prefer to write songs at home and then record once they’ve been rehearsed, or do you like to go into the studio with basic sketches and see where things take you?

Soren: Usually I get inspiration for new songs when I chill out and pick up my guitar for the fun of it. If a riff, groove or bass line appears, I record the basic idea on my phone and then I leave it for the moment. This sequence lasts a couple of minutes.

If I still like the idea when I listen to it a couple of days later, I begin to arrange a little, program some basic drums, invent a bass line if it wasn’t already a part of the original idea, and maybe play and record some basic piano. Then I record a quick guitar part and save the file. This part of the process takes somewhere between 20 minutes and a couple of hours.

If I still think there’s something in the idea, when I listen to the demo several days later, I start to focus more on the details and will work more with the various parts, without planning too much. Back in the day when I started to play seriously, I also took bass, drums, piano and saxophone lessons, and even borrowed a trumpet just to get the basic knowledge of each instrument. Now I appreciate those lessons when I sit in my studio writing or arranging music.

The fact that I know my way around different instruments helps me a lot, but a skilled bass player is always better to optimize a bass line, and a groovy and tasty drummer will know where it’s right to add different details and what to do to interact the best way with the bass line. I’m just trying to make an inspiring demo that shows where I want to go, while maintaining room for each musician’s personal touch.

When I bring it to the studio, the musicians normally know what to do when they hear my demo and get the lead sheets. That way we can focus on minor adjustments, dynamics and energy, the fact that you can feel the music is the most important to me. It’s very rare for me to go unprepared into the studio with other musicians. In fact, it’s only happened when we recorded for the TV series Studiojams.

Soren Reiff

Matt: Miss You falls into what people refer to as the Smooth Jazz category. A lot of “legit” jazz musicians tend to look down on this genre, but you can’t argue with the integrity of the music if it’s played well. Have you ever felt that smooth jazz is looked down up by other musicians, especially those who don’t really give the genre a chance?

Soren: When I did my first album “Funky Flavas,” I wasn’t aware of any specific genre, I just wrote and recorded my music, you know some funky grooves, melodic themes that you can remember and sing-a-long to, and some exciting chord changes that were fun to solo over. I love R’n’B, Soul and what some call “legit” jazz, and I’m a guitar player who loves to practice and do fun stuff on the guitar as well.

I just combined everything I liked musically. When the album was released I started to get comments concerning how groovy and smooth it was. To me that will always be a compliment. If other people avoid Smooth Jazz music just because of the genre title, I think they’re miss something.

Whichever genre you listen to, there will always be some who carry it fantastically, both technically and with warmth, soul and presence, while others may not have enough technical chops or personality in their music, but that isn’t determined by the genre.

It’s easy to look down on something that’s different from what you’re used to or normally listen to, but you shouldn’t dislike something just because it’s out of your comfort zone. You can get judicious and constructive feedback from people who aren’t enamored by a particular genre, but who knows the norm of the genre. This sort of feedback, I will always relate to.

But feedback, from people who don’t know the essential values of a particular style, I think shouldn’t be taken into account and hopefully it’ll quickly be forgotten. If a hardcore old school jazz critic lacks variety and life in a smooth and funky groove, it’s thankfully not against the law for him to delete the track from his MP3 player. This way he’ll never encounter it again and hopefully he’ll start to smile a little, meanwhile I’ll forget the comment and tap my foot to the groove.

I was once told that “If you point your finger at others, there will always be three fingers pointing at yourself.” If I catch myself pointing at someone or something, I always consider if I’m giving careful and constructive feedback or if I’m pointing fingers at myself, because that’ll mean that I have something I must work on.

Matt: What guitars did you use on Miss You and are you a guy who likes playing on one guitar or having a room full of guitars to choose from when you head into the studio?

Soren: I’m very loyal as a person when it comes to guitars. For more than 10 years I’ve used a custom built Washburn Strat-like guitar for 90% of what I play. It’s super versatile, and together with my rig it covers almost everything I need.

But some years ago, during one of my visits to L.A., Paul Jackson Jr. showed me his Gibson ES-346 and it really appealed to me. It took me some time to find one, since they’d gone out of production. Eventually I found a red one on E-Bay, and for the first time in my life I bought a guitar without trying it beforehand.

When I received it, I instantly fell in love with it and started reading more about the model and learned that they were pretty difficult to get your hands on. Less than 14 days after, I found a brown one on E-Bay too. However, it was listed as a completely different model, and the seller thought it was made of other sorts of woods. But the seller assured me that the guitar he was selling was the guitar from the pictures, so I took the chance and bought it.

He sent it by regular postal service from the U.S. to Scandinavia in a thin nylon gig-bag and nothing else, and it survived. It was an ES-346 almost identically to the red one, except for the color. It just needed some love and serious adjustments. [Laughs]

The red one is set up with 0.11’s for a more round and jazzy tone, while the brown has 0.10’s for more bluesy stuff. Almost all the rhythm guitar parts on Miss you are recorded with the Washburn, while most of the themes and solos are tracked with the 346’s.

Soren Reiff

Matt: What amps and effects did you use on the album and does your studio rig differ at all from what you bring on stage in a live show?

Soren: The setup I used on the album is the same as my live rig. It’s build around a Mesa Boogie Triaxis preamp. That preamp sounds great and the ability to save presets makes it ideal for all the style switching you may encounter when you’re working on a lot of different sessions and television productions. Along with it I have couple of different digital multi-effects for stereo chorus, delay, reverb and a Mesa Boogie 2:Ninety stereo tube power amp.

For jobs at larger venues, I have 2 Roadready Mesa Boogie cabinets with 2×12 in each, one celestion and one EV in each cabinet. The cabinet is open behind Celestion and closed behind the EV. For medium size jobs, I use the same rig but with 2 smaller Roadready Mesa Boogie closed cabinets, each with 1×12 EV.

I’ve used the rack-setup for more than 15 years but after I played some gigs sitting in with Russel Ferrante, Jimmy Haslip, Jeff Richman and Henrik Engqvist, I realized it was a bit overkill to bring a guitar-tech and my stereo rig, so I bought a Mesa Boogie Mark IV and a myriad of pedals I can bring for smaller jobs, clinics, jam sessions. For those who want even more details I’ll keep my site updated with the stuff I play around with.

Matt: You’ve written a series of 3 instructional books in Danish that have all gotten great reviews and positive feedback from readers. Are there any plans to translate these books into English or write a new book in English for your fans who can’t speak Danish?

Soren: Actually, these days I’m about to complete my fourth guitar book. Today there are unfortunately no specific plans for translation. But after Miss You was released many people ask me about my books, so I hope the publisher will consider getting them translated.

However, I’ve recently been asked if I want to make an instructional DVD, and would love to do that, but right now I don’t know when it’s going to happen, and once again it’s a matter of finding time in a tight schedule.