This time on Wong Notes, Cory is joined by his Vulfpeck and Fearless Flyers copilot Joe Dart. Wong doesn’t waste any time, diving in by asking Dart, by now renowned as a modern bass wizard with flawless fundamentals, how he developed he signature “voice” on the bass. As Dart explains, it came from listening to players who had their own distinct “voice,” who sound like “they’re singing a part within the song,” he says. These “philosophers of the low-end,” like Flea, imprinted the value of total intention and feeling in every note, as if any single one could be your last.Dart throws it back to his first bass—a Samick—and remembers how it’s ridiculously high action was like weight training for the rest of his career. He still likes his strings suspended up higher than most, which allows his “brute force” slapping. Wong and Dart trade notes on practice regimes, and Dart offers advice for young players: Learn your scales, sure, but most importantly, “play with as many different people as you can.” Plus, Dart breaks down his differing approaches to instrumental and vocal tracks.Later on, the bandmates ponder the mental trap of the social media comparison game, and wonder at how algorithms impact which music rises to the top of the heap. What does Dart hope to remembered for? With any luck, he’ll have works as iconic as his grandfather’s, Israel Baker, whose violin playing you’ll recognize not just from collabs with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, but some of the most famous film scores and TV show theme songs.Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/WongNotesGet 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongVisit Joe Dart: Hit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: http://premierguitar.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/wongnotespodIG: <a...

Multi-instrumentalist Louis Cato has had a lot on his plate since taking over as bandleader for Jon Batiste on&nbsp;The Late Show with Stephen Colbert&nbsp;in late 2022, but has been enjoying every minute of it. "I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, with exactly the people I'm supposed to be there with," he tells Cory on this episode of&nbsp;Wong Notes. Of course, given his role there is a fulltime gig, the release of his second solo album,&nbsp;Reflections, last August was kind of a big deal. Its music was largely inspired by things Cato was forced to confront when the pandemic hit, including "self-analysis, putting on the mask, the egotistical parts of attraction and love songs, and things of that nature," he shares.Early on in the conversation, Louis answers Cory's question about how his approach to chord voicings is so different from the norm. A lot of it comes from his childhood influence of Ron Kenoly's praise and worship music, featuring Abe Laboriel Sr. on bass. His first guitar was from a yard sale and had just four strings, and his experience learning Laboriel's bass lines on it still informs how he approaches voice leading on the guitar today. There was also his mother, the pianist, from whom he absorbed into his guitar methods the piano style of playing octaves in the left hand and triads in the right.After Louis shares about what makes his creativity tick as a multi-instrumentalist, he and Cory get into the meat of the biggest mistakes a guitar player can make. A lot of it, for Cato, has to do a lack of dynamics and inflection, or playing 10 notes where you should just play two, he says. Towards the end of the ep, Louis hops on a drumset in the room to illustrate how drummers can also create a "jerky" beat if they don't stick with just straight or just swingin'. Listen to the full ep to get a deep dive into the mind of the&nbsp;Late Show&nbsp;bandleader.Visit Louis Cato: https://louiscato.com/Get 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongHit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: http://premierguitar.comTwitter: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&amp;redir_token=QUFFLUhqbE4zUWVYZWpQSHBlY20yM2plak1kanE2Sk9rZ3xBQ3Jtc0tsRS1TRmRNTEs1WWpQOHMxWG5aMENSd2hMaTZvMUl5Vm5BSEFvb3AxbThEcGI4d2ExaFc3NEN4Uk5Md2pmRnptLXhMQ1JMUVVOdm01dkxsdzZGOU4wemcxUW9VUHpxajlVNWJRekV2Q2w1emlEWVBKMA&amp;q=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fwongnotespod" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

Session drum ace Aaron Sterling might have fusion roots, but his bread-and-butter work lives at the top of the charts, where’s he’s featured on tracks by artists such as John Mayer, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, and Lana Del Rey. He tells Cory what brought him to Los Angeles, why he’s “meant to be in the studio” instead of the stage, and he shares the surreal story of playing with EVH in a florist’s parking lot for Tracy Morgan.Sterling defines his approach to recording in his studio as a “pedalboard approach” and explains:“When guitar players started getting more pedals, in the old days, and then they started getting a pedalboard. And then there’s the rack. This was this evolution where you guys started controlling more and more of your sound and it was less waiting for a mixer to do interesting things later. And you were just like, ‘Here’s the sound.’ You have your own plugin, you have all this stuff that you’re doing to control your sound so that there’s less work later.I got inspired by that concept when I started recording, even before I had my own studio, to give an engineer the most amount of stuff that’s done. So that when I started recording myself, my philosophy was always the pedalboard philosophy, which is I’ll give you the sounds, I’m not just gonna play the drums and let you do stuff later. I don’t wanna think of myself as a drummer. I’ll think of myself as a creator using drums to give you sounds that hopefully are the right thing for the song.”Stick around for the drummer’s opinion of the Beatles’ “Now and Then” and learn why he prefers large cymbals.Get 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongVisit Aaron Sterling: https://aaronsterling.com/Hit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: http://premierguitar.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/wongnotespodIG: <a...

Cory Wong sits down with indie-rock bandleader Margaret Glaspy for an in-depth dialogue on artistry, celebrity, and the wisdom of Bruce Lee.Glaspy shares how she cut her latest record,&nbsp;Echo The Diamond, live off the floor, with most of the “homework” happening beforehand and studio performances happening in-the-moment. “It really felt like air blew through the studio and then the record was made,” she says. “What you’re hearing is mostly what happening.” The songs are like photographs of a particular moment, rather than an essential, unchanging thing; Glaspy says she values the “dying art” of taking risks in music.Glaspy runs down how she and husband Julian Lage work on each other’s projects, and highlights one of their key criteria in assessing performances: are you your best guitar player right now? “Would you hire yourself or fire yourself?” poses Glaspy.The conversation turns to Glaspy’s rig on the record—she played through a Magic Amps rendition of a black-panel Fender Princeton, plus a Fender Champ combo—before revealing that these days, she’s bypassing her tuner pedal and letting the audience hear the process between songs. “Let’s not hide what’s needed to make this actually go,” she laughs.Wong and Glaspy swap notes on Bruce Lee’s winning combo of talent and work ethic (and how one of his quotes inspired Glaspy’s record) before finishing with a fascinating philosophical dissection of artistry, pop culture, and celebrity. “The business of celebrity intertwines them in a way that’s hard to escape,” says Glaspy, who sees a clash between surface-level fantasy and bone-deep darkness in pop culture.Tune in to the episode to learn all the gems from&nbsp;Echo The Diamond.Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/WongNotesGet 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongVisit Margaret Glaspy: https://margaretglaspy.com/Hit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: http://premierguitar.comTwitter: <a...

"I don't consider myself a jazz musician," says guitarist Charlie Hunter on this episode of Wong Notes—essentially refuting how he's known in the music world. "I am maybe jazz adjacent." Most listeners probably wouldn't agree, but if nothing else, Hunter is experimental. He's known for playing a guitar that's strung with both bass and electric guitar strings, that has two pickups—one for bass and one for guitar—and two input jacks, which go to separate amps for the respective sounds.As the conversation unfolds, Charlie shares with Cory about the importance of interdependence, especially in jamming. "All I want to do is be a part of an extension of [the drummer's] beat," he explains. "Everything has to take a backseat to that." He compares the level of resources he had with young musicians today—back then, for better or for worse, all he had was a metronome and the discipline exemplified by the older musicians he played with. Something else that shapes modern musical culture, he says, is globalization: Having access to every genre and the music of every guitar player can make it harder for people learning to pick a specialty.Charlie goes on to share about how he got his stripes largely from his time performing as a street musician in Europe. "I would not trade those three, four years of being a street musician for anything," he says, describing the experience as a kind of boot camp. His first lessons were in playing 12 hours a day on an unfamiliar instrument at the time—acoustic bass—on the streets of Zurich.Towards the end of the interview, Charlie and Cory reflect together on the values of bonding with your musical community in person, something that's more of a challenge with the rise of internet culture. However, Charlie has lately been using Instagram as a vehicle to share the music of Blind Blake, someone who he thinks is "literally better than any of us [on guitar]."Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/WongNotesGet 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongVisit Charlie Hunter: http://charliehunter.comHit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&amp;redir_token=QUFFLUhqbDdydmxPMGc4RWFVbmVLelpSMm1IclNvenU5d3xBQ3Jtc0tuYUVjV3Y1MFdKeWxUUDVnTEdVbGtndTgzNG5EMVZFQjRGOTlEYUdaVEJTYkgxRTBEUmI1dGVQWjZ0YWllNlNUa1AzcnV3NF9xN21zdUV2alZTQm94MmlXQnJCcXlwRTUtMDlEOE9scDJrSHVOS01JZw&amp;q=http%3A%2F%2Fpremierguitar.com" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

Cory’s cast is off and he’s here to tell you to “go get hip” to Bruno Major! The soulful, jazzy British singer-songwriter shares why he prefers to record in his bedroom than a studio to create his “relatively lo-fi” music. “It’s far more important to be transmitting a privacy than an audio quality,” Major says. But he’s quick to point out that you can get good audio quality recording at home and discloses his gear of choice—shoutout to the Shure SM7B. Together, they discuss the state of record labels and streaming in 2023—“if you’re making good music,” Major says, “it’ll find a home”—working with other artists—“I think what I bring to the table is probably harmonic knowledge and an ability with words…. I can’t really do it on cue”—and mental health.On his journey from his early days as a shred-head—“I just wanted to play really fast all the time”—into classical and jazz playing, and eventually to becoming a singer and songwriter, Major elaborates:“If you look at something like Grant Green. Grant Green is basically playing glorified blues licks over a jazz aesthetic. He’s doing very simple stuff but it’s still incredible jazz guitar because he has his own thing. He has his own voice. And crucially, he has incredible time. I kind of found my voice as a guitar player through the medium of songwriting in a strange way. Because my guitar playing on my songs is what makes my guitar playing.”Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/WongNotesGet 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongVisit Bruno Major: https://www.brunomajor.com/Hit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: http://premierguitar.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/wongnotespodIG: <a...

"When you switch the gear of what you're operating on from the memorized information to the gear of intuitive, faithful response, it's a whole different frequency that's emitted from the hands and from the soul," country shredder Daniel Donato expresses on this episode of Wong Notes. He's talking about what makes for powerful improvisation, and if you know anything about the guitarist, you know this insight around the topic is coming from someone who's a master on their instrument.Throughout his conversation with Cory, Donato shares his uniquely intellectual philosophies about music, explaining what it means to exploit versus explore creatively, how lessons in faith and trust of his bandmates came to supersede his knowledge around music, and how "listening and alignment" of one vision is most important when jamming with others. He also sheds light on his experiences working with producers Robben Ford and Vance Powell, and the different collaborative dynamics he had with both.Following an emphatic statement from Cory that he has always, always been loyal to Dave Matthews Band, and a comment from Daniel on how a drummer really is at the core of a successful jam, Daniel elaborates: "The song is a vehicle for a spirit." He says Carter Beauford's performance on "Ants Marching" on DMB's first live album, Remember Two Things, which features an extended 2 and 4 pattern in the intro, perfectly serves the song. "I need players that are very spiritually and emotionally vulnerable," says Donato, "and willing to do things that are abstract and left-field that wouldn't be intuitive."Clearly an admirer of Cory's work, Daniel has some questions for him towards the end of the interview. Then, Cory quizzes Daniel on gear that he finds essential. His response? Whatever feels like the right pick to you, Mogami cables, and, if money isn't an object, a Fender black-panel. Tune in for the full Donato experience.Listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/WongNotesGet 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongVisit Daniel Donato: https://danieldonato.com/Hit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&amp;redir_token=QUFFLUhqbDdydmxPMGc4RWFVbmVLelpSMm1IclNvenU5d3xBQ3Jtc0tuYUVjV3Y1MFdKeWxUUDVnTEdVbGtndTgzNG5EMVZFQjRGOTlEYUdaVEJTYkgxRTBEUmI1dGVQWjZ0YWllNlNUa1AzcnV3NF9xN21zdUV2alZTQm94MmlXQnJCcXlwRTUtMDlEOE9scDJrSHVOS01JZw&amp;q=http%3A%2F%2Fpremierguitar.com" rel="noopener noreferrer"...

Wolfgang Van Halen joins Cory for the season 7 premiere of&nbsp;Wong Notes! Chatting before the release of&nbsp;Mammoth II, the duo discuss guitar trios, 5150 studios, cloning, touring with Metallica, plus: Who’s that playing wah on the record? What’s WVH’s rig? And much more.On his new record, WVH has lots to share. When it comes to writing and recording rhythm tracks, he’s says, “It’s all groove.” Later, he adds, “I’ve always championed myself as more of a rhythm player than anything.”And on what’s next for EVH gear, he promises that there’s much more in store.But the most profound thoughts come when the pair go deep on music. WVH shares his soloing philosophy, which he learned from his father: “Something I follow … when I write guitar solos that my dad taught me … is you can shred all you want, but if you can’t sing the solo, then it’s usually not working. There’s always a moment … that you can do the wankery of a shreddy solo, but it’s important to be able to hum the melody, you know? That usually, with the way that I write solos … is really deliberate in the way that I write … I’m a pretty poor off-the-cuff soloist, I like to really plan things out and have it be this nice piece. It kind of forms up with a melody, then it crescendos, then by the end it wraps up with … maybe a tapping section or a shreddy sort of passage. Basically, the main thing is you should be able to hum it. The melody should be in your head.”Get 30% off your first year of DistroKid by going here: http://distrokid.com/vip/corywongVisit Wolfgang Van Halen: https://mammothwvh.com/Hit us up: wongnotes@premierguitar.comVisit Cory: https://www.corywongmusic.comVisit Premier Guitar: http://premierguitar.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/wongnotespodIG: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&amp;redir_token=QUFFLUhqbnRlQUJYQmxvU25kenB4RWR3R0hQc0JqbmVuZ3xBQ3Jtc0traC01d3Q2LWV4N2lNMnJGRWoycWtUTHRtUTIwbFFxTVZQeVlSR2hlTHlNTGNVOTZLeE83cm5vdFlTVk15Tnp2eDBtcmdVUEp2cjdlUjJfNDYtZDYtd0NQUTJHNmdRNUdTaGQxU2pMWGFjRVdSLWVaWQ&amp;q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fwongnotespod" rel="noopener noreferrer"...