Name: Marisa Anderson
Nationality: American
Occupation: Guitarist, composer, multi-instrumentalist
Recent release: Marisa Anderson's Still, Here is out via Thrill Jockey.

Tool of Creation: Guitar
Type of Tool: Fretted musical instrument
Country of origin: Most likely Spain / Italy. (For a more detailed history, see the interview)
Became available in: The modern guitar gradually developed between roughly 1200 and 1600.

If you enjoyed this interview with Marisa Anderson about the guitar and would like to explore her work in more depth and stay up to date with her live performances, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, and Facebook.

For another perspective on the guitar, read our interview with Oliver Darling.



What was your first encounter with the guitar? What was it about it that drew you in?

I first picked up the guitar because at age 10 I was resistant to an expectation that I would play the clarinet.

My dad had a guitar, and there was a guitar teacher in my little town and for whatever reason I caught on very easily to the instrument. It was fun and so I kept doing it.

Just like any other instrument, the guitar has a rich history. What are some of the key points from this history for you personally?

I love this question!

Key points in the history of the guitar …

• In the 8th century the Moors move into Spain, bringing the lute, which over the next several centuries evolved into the guitar.
• In the 1500s Spain invades the New World and the resulting slave trade / rum triangle / genocidal conquest unintentionally results in a cycle of music exchange that involves Africa, Europe and Indigenous Central / South America. Over the next few hundred years the guitar spreads across the Americas and new types of music are birthed as a result of this mixing of cultures and instruments.
• 1931 first electric guitar / invention of electromagnetic pickups
• 1939 Charlie Christian begins his tenure with the Benny Goodman orchestra and is the first to play lead melody lines on an electric guitar.
• 1940s solid body electric introduced and perfected by Les Paul, Leo Fender and others
• 1953 the Segovia scales are introduced (for better or worse) and the guitar is codified and accepted as a concert instrument.
• 1946 first guitar effects pedal; tremolo. Followed over the next two decades by fuzz and wah.

What, to you, are some of the most interesting guitar recordings and performances by other artists in terms of your personal development?

I don’t listen to a lot of guitar recordings. I’m more often inspired by music that doesn’t have the guitar in a central role, and the challenge of adapting or interpreting sounds from other instruments or ensembles.

When I listen to music that is guitar oriented, I am more often listening for the sound of how the guitar is recorded. I make my own records at home, and it’s been such a fun learning process on how to make the guitar sound the best way it can for the particular song, whether it’s mic placement, amp settings, pedals, etc.

When talking about electronic devices, we often think about their “features”. But the guitar is a complex device, too. What are some of its stand-out features from your point of view? How would you describe its sonic potential?

The guitar is such a resonant instrument, capable of so many overtones and harmonic layers. One of the reasons I play in D tunings is to take advantage of this capacity, and to enhance the sustain of any particular note.

A central aspect of my sound is getting a note to hang in the air and playing other notes against it. I’ve spent a lot of time perfecting my right hand technique to not touch strings while they are ringing.

The guitar is also capable of pitch bending, micro-tonal scales and glissando in a way that is reminiscent of the human voice. You can really make it sing!

Instrument design is an ongoing process. Are you interested in recent developments for the guitar in this respect?

I don’t much follow new developments in guitar design. I’m actually more interested in the opposite direction. I’ve been very lucky to get to visit a few different instrument builders in Mexico and own a couple of instruments that were made by hand using age old techniques and very simple tools.

I was introduced to a traditional builder who learned as a boy to make a jarana out of a single piece of wood using only a machete. To me that is much more amazing than any new technology.

Tell me about the process of learning to play the instrument and your own explorations with it.

I feel like I have learned to play the guitar 4 different times.

The first time was as a kid, taking guitar lessons and learning standard tuning and how to read the notes and play the songs written on the page. The second time was when I learned how to improvise, a process which started in my late teens / early twenties. I had already been playing classical guitar for about 8-10 years at that point.

The third time I learned how to play the guitar was in my early 30s when I made the switch to being primarily an electric guitar player. To me, the electric guitar is an entirely different instrument than a nylon string or steel string acoustic in terms of technique and tonal possibilities.

And the fourth time I learned how to play the guitar was in about 2010 when I started playing almost exclusively in open D or Dm tunings. I had to relearn scales and chords and fingering patterns, as well as develop new aspects of my right hand technique.

What are specific challenges in terms of playing the guitar?

I think it is very easy to overplay the guitar, to make lots of sound and noise but say very little.

What interests you about the guitar in terms of it contributing to your creative ideals? How do you see the relationship between your instrument and the music you make?

I have been playing guitar for so long that there is no separation between me / the instrument / the music I make. It is all the same thing.

All of my musical thoughts filter through a guitar. Do I have creative ideals? I’m not sure what that means. I get an itch to play and an idea arises and I chase it down. Whether or not it is a good idea is something I work out later.

Or I am having a strong emotional response to something in the world and playing the guitar is how I deal with that emotional response. Or I am envisioning a technical puzzle and want to figure out how to solve it using a guitar.

How would you describe your personal style of playing the guitar?

Emotional, intuitive, technique based, curious

What does playing your instrument feel like, what do you enjoy about it, what are your own physical limits and strengths?

Music is alchemy. My job is to use strings, wood and air to turn sound waves into emotion. When it works it’s an incredibly satisfying experience. It’s fun!

In terms of limits and strengths ... these are flip sides of the same coin. I like obstruction, I like definition, so the physical limitations become the parameters for all kinds of creation. For example, I have small hands, so I like to play in tight clusters rather than stretched out intervals. I’m not much of a harmonic thinker, I tend towards rhythm and phrasing to make my pieces.

Is that a strength or a limit? Our limits lead us to our strengths.

How, would you say, does the guitar interact with other instruments from ensembles / groups you're part of?

I play in a lot of different settings and it’s different in each one. With Jim White it is purely free improvisation / spontaneous composition. With William Tyler it is almost entirely composed. With Tara Jane O’Neil and in my solo work it vacillates between improvisation and composition.



The constant is tone and touch. I’m searching for the perfect sound to make in any of those situations, the voice of the guitar that will resonate with whatever song or structure I am playing within.

Are there other guitar players whose work with their instrument you find inspiring? What do you appreciate about their take on it?

I like Willie Nelson and Gabor Szabo for their phrasing and melodic sense. I like Antonio Bribiesca for the airiness and tone and sense of rhythm, for saying so much with the silence and space.



Ali Farka Toure is perhaps my favorite guitar player of all, just for the sheer beauty and economy of what he does.



I like David Rawlings in his playing with Gillian Welch for the harmonic intelligence in his lines and his use of dissonance.

Could you describe working with the guitar on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

There is a song called “Deep Gap”, which came out on a record in 2013 that was the direct result of a dream.



I had been searching for a particular sound that I could hear in my head but couldn’t figure out how to make and in my dream I had this intense colorful visual experience of F#m tuning. When I woke up I tuned my guitar to the tuning in my dream and the song I had been searching for came out.