Gayle Ellett Interview: A Diversely Creative Mind

By: Dr. Matt Warnock

Photos: Courtesy G. Ellett mgt.

In today’s modern world there are many paths an artist can take throughout their career. Some prefer to focus their attention solely on one genre, ensemble or solo project, while others stoke their creative fires by moving between projects, bands and jumping between the commercial and non-commercial worlds.

Gayle Ellett is just such an artist, one who not only has an established career as a film composer, but who also maintains several accomplished bands, including two that have recently released albums, Fernwood, Sangita, and DJam Karat, “The Heavy Soul Sessions.”

Each album makes different, yet highly engaging musical statements. Sangita is an acoustic, world-music inspired record that brings to light Ellett’s mellower side. While on the other side of the aisle, The Heavy Soul Sessions, is just that, heavy. This is jam band music at its hard-groovin’ best, with plenty of crunchy riffs and funky beats to satisfy even the most veteran fan of the genre.

It would be difficult for any musician to make an album of this caliber in one genre, but to do it in two completely separate musical worlds is a testament to the high-level of creativity and musicianship that Ellett possesses.

Guitar International caught up with Ellett to talk about Sangrita, The Heavy Soul Sessions and get his opinion on his musical balancing act.

Djam Karet In The Studio

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Matt Warnock: Can you talk about some of the various instruments you play on Sangita, and is it difficult moving between those different sounds when you get into the studio, from a thinking perspective?

Gayle Ellet: I ended up playing 15 different instruments on the album, and in general I’d say it’s fairly easy. The down-side is, when you spend all your practicing time playing many instruments, that’s time that you could have spent just playing only one. So it can be hard on your playing skills. But on the up-side, playing different instruments helps you see music more broadly.

When you only play guitar, you tend to see the world of music through the sound-hole of your guitar, like your head is inside looking out through that narrow hole. So when you listen to music, you tend to hear and think of it in terms of how you could add more guitar. But when you play many instruments, it helps to broaden your whole view of music, detached from the instrument you play, and that helps expand your view of what we as composers can do.

I would recommend to any guitar player that doesn’t know how to play keyboards that they learn. The linear fashion in which a keyboard is laid out helps you see music in a way that is different from when you just play a stringed instrument, although I’d take any stringed instrument, over any keyboard, any day of the week.

Matt: The album blends both old and contemporary sounds, is this a reflection of your personal musical tastes, or a blend of you and Todd once you get together in the studio?

Gayle: It’s both a reflection of who we are and where we live. Todd and I spent a lot of time discussing what we were going to do and where we wanted the recordings to go, well before we started them.

We’re of very like mind when it comes to music. We both listen to a lot of traditional World music, but also very modern music. Basically, we both have the same idea of what is “cool.” So, when we do actually hear “it,” we both agree.

Like most musicians, I suppose, Todd and I both play and listen to a wide range of music. We live in the Los Angeles-Malibu area, so it’s very global and multi-cultural here. But we also live away from the city, up in the mountains where it’s quiet and beautiful. So we’re very lucky!

Djam Karet

Matt: The music has a very descriptive atmosphere to it, did this come directly from your work in film scoring and if so, what elements of your scoring work have directly influenced your composing and vice versa?

Gayle: I’ve spent decades making instrumental music, and I think that’s what really helps. Without words, you really need to learn how to paint your picture with just tone and harmony. When I’m trying to make really beautiful music as an art form, as opposed to just doing commercial work, I can’t help but give it a cinematic quality. It’s needed in order to keep an instrumental composition from becoming boring.

Matt: You worked with Wayne Yentis on this record, what was it about Wayne’s background and work that drew you to include him on this project?

Gayle: I met Wayne years ago, because we both flew hang gliders off the same mountains in L.A. We’d fly our hang gliders around the sky for an hour or two, then come down and land in our club’s big grassy field. Then we’d drink beer and talk about music.

It turned out that years before he was the managing editor of Recording Engineer-Producer Magazine, and had also hand-built custom synths and controllers for a ton of famous bands like: Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, Supertramp, Toto, Herbie Hancock, Lee Ritenour, Joe Zawinul, George Duke, Patrick Moraz and Gary Wright. So obviously, he knew the tech-side of music.

And it turned out that he’s also a great musician himself, and has a cool home studio not far from where we flew our hang gliders. So, basically, he’s a nice and really talented guy. I’m lucky to work with him.

I crashed my hang glider a few years ago, and snapped both my arms in half. That was painful! I flew for a few years after that, but then I saw a friend get killed flying while we were in Mexico, and then a few more of my friends got killed flying too, I left, it just became too gruesome.

Gayle Ellett in Yosemite

Matt: Djam Karat has been around since 1984 and released 15 albums along the way, how have you managed to keep this project going long after many other bands that started alongside you 26 years ago have fallen by the wayside?

Gayle: Through unwavering maniacal determination, and because it’s fun! Both Djam Karet and the Fernwood projects are trying to make music as an art form. So when we feel like we’ve succeeded, as on Djam Karet’s The Heavy Soul Sessions, then we’re really happy.

If we wanted to make more commercial music, we’d get a singer and make our tunes shorter than 10 minutes. But instead, we get to try to make epic, large-form musical compositions, that move all around like a shifting dream.

Djam Karet is a vehicle for our self-indulgence, where we get to make music exactly the way we want to hear it, with no regard for its commercial potential. Also, we don’t fight over the money, for the obvious reasons.

Matt: Why did you decide to record the album with no overdubs or computer manipulation?

Gayle: When you make records all of the time, like I do, you want to mix it up from time to time, and do something different. And even though most of our 15 CDs have been created using overdubs, having been built from the drums up, one track at a time, we thought that we’d make this CD without overdubs to better capture our new live-band sound, since we’ve added a new guitar player, my neighbor Mike Murray.

By adding him to our band, now a five piece, we’re getting a much fuller and driving live sound. Plus we’d just got back form headlining a 3-day festival in France called the Crescendo Festival, so making a document, recording seemed like a good idea. Later, I mixed it all down at my house.

I tried adding in compression, but I just didn’t like the damage it does to the sound-quality. Compression, besides compressing, also messes with the sound’s EQ, usually making the music duller and less bass-punchy. So then producers want to then add corrective treble and bass EQ boosts to fix it. I just couldn’t get happy with adding it in, so I didn’t.

What we have now is a CD that is damn punchy, slaps your face hard, and kicks ass mightily! I’m really glad I didn’t compress it. Also, the Fernwood CD has no compression on it either. We tried it for hours, but it kept sounding lame and dull, so we didn’t use any. What’s the point of all of these mastering techniques if they don’t really make the music sound any better than it did before you tried to master it?

Gayle Ellett

Matt: How do you meld your sound on the keyboards into a band with two guitarists, is it tricky to find just the right spot to play without stepping on each other’s harmonic toes?

Gayle: It’s easier, because I play with really good players, who know that we all need to spread out harmonically, rhythmically, etc. I’ve also played guitar in that band for 26 years myself, just not on this CD, so I know what’s happening.

With a twin-guitar band, you usually do the obvious stuff. If someone is playing low and slow, then you strum high and quickly. And if you listen to our CDs, you can hear that happening most of the time. On this CD, like many of our others, I’m playing organ a lot of the time. And so I’m creating sustaining tones, under their dynamic choppy rhythm playing and blazing solos.

Also, at other times, I’m playing leads on the Mimi-Moog in unison with the guitar lines. I’m playing four keyboards on every tune, organ, Mini-Moog, Mellotron, digital-synth, often two at a time, so it’s difficult. I have to read charts to keep from getting lost, even on tunes I wrote myself. But it does sounds really cool.

Matt: The band is currently working on a new album for 2011, can you give us a preview of what to expect from this new recording?

Gayle: I’m not really sure, but I think it’ll be somewhat like the current CD, in that we’ll try to make a powerful and driving album that combines both complex musical interplay, but also long jamming sections and spacey Electronic moments.

It’s fun and quite a challenge to make the music that we do. I’d bet that we’ll use a blended approach where some of the band is record live in-studio, and then we’ll overdub a little on top of it too. We’ll see.

Because of all of the groups I play in, and the studio work I do, I played on 14 CDs last year, I’m really busy. So I’m hoping to spend at least that much time recording again this year on various projects.

One of those projects is called Herd of Instinct, with Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson, XTC), Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel) and Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree) on drums, Dave Street and Mark Cook on Warr guitars, and I play Greek bouzouki, electric guitar and keyboards. It’s going to be released in a few months by my own label, H C Productions.

Matt: How do you manage to divide your creative mind between these two ensembles, and all the other work that you do?

Gayle: By being schizophrenic. I think you should divide your music into at least two areas, bands and styles. Actually, Djam Karet and Fernwood are, to me, very similar, they just sound different.

They are both “Pro” bands that happen to make Art-Music, that are all about getting results. Trying to make great CDs, getting radio play, and getting reviews in all of the big magazines.

But I also play in a few Party bands. These bands are about getting out of the house, drinking a beer, and playing some fun easy 3-chord music, usually really loud.
So I recommend that all musicians play in at least two bands, one “pro”, and one “party.” And keep them separate. That’s the key idea. Trying to achieve both of those goals in one band won’t work.

Matt: Do you compartmentalize each group or do you let all of this music just blend together over time?

Gayle: I always have in mind what the goal is. What type of CD are we trying to make etc. So I try to compartmentalize the music ideas and only use the ones that are appropriate. When I make music for a TV show, I’m masking music as a craft. And my goal is to make the director happy, not me. His needs need to be met, not mine. So I’ll make music that is simpler, less jumpy and weird, more mainstream, more appropriate for voice-over, that sort of thing. I’ll try to make it more like smooth wallpaper.

But when I’m making my own music, as an art form, I’ll do whatever I want, with no regard for its sellability, accessibility or anything. All in all, it ends up being really nice, to be able to make music in these two conceptually different ways, for varying purposes. And keeping them all separate in your mind is what helps me do it well. It’s fun!