Laurence Juber Discusses How to Copyright Harmony

He's been a session player with countless countless albums UM and and just as knowledgeable about music as as anyone in the world. UM. More than just a guitarist, he's a musicologist and a historian of music. He basically sat here with a guitar in his lap for ninety minutes and illustrated various things throughout our conversation. And if you stick around for the podcast extras, you'll hear not only play three songs, but demonstrate pieces of UM various other songs.

I have a buddy who is a guitar aficionado sitting in the UM control room listening to the whole conversation, and I'm not going to be able to get the grin off his face for about six months, so, with no further ado, my session with l J. Lawrence Juber. My extra special guest this week is Lawrence Duber. Born and raised in London. He began playing guitar at age thirteen. He graduated university where he was immediately picked up as

a session guitarist with famed producer George Martin. Later, he's invited to play with Paul McCartney's band Wings for their nineteen seventies tour. He has been a studio musician on thousands of sessions, played for numerous television and film soundtracks. When you hear this theme to James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me, you're listening to Lawrence's work. Voted Guitarist of the Year, Top acoustic players of all time by numerous magazines. He has solo album since two and has

won two Grammys. No lesser guitarist than Pete Townsend has called him a master. Lawrence Duber, Welcome back to Bloomberg. Thank you, Barry One TV show that you won't be hearing my work on any longer is Roseanne? Yes? Was that your work on the show? Oh yeah, that's you on the original. I played on the original first six years of the original, and now then the reboot also, so I'm gonna guess that those uh royalties are going to stop coming in. Well, you don't get a lot

of royalties from that. There is a musicians Union fund that covers secondary markets on television and move so a very small percentage of the distributors gross goes into this fund, which then gets distributed amongst all the musicians that played on it. So I played on, for example, Polka Hunters. You know there were you know, hundreds of full orchestra. Yeah, it was like a t piece orchestra and all of

that stuff. So I'm gonna guess it's a little different for let's say, bare Naked Ladies playing the theme song to The Big Bang. That's different. I remember having a discussion with Danny Alfman because originally when Fox was simply syndicated and not a network, and that's when the Simpsons started, right that, Danny said that he was shocked when he

started getting royalties from Saturday morning cartoon shows. I forget what it was he'scored, but how much bigger those were from the network shows than he was getting from the Simpsons and because eventually the Simpsons became you know, a full on, full on network. Fox became a network, and then you know, that's a wall white thing. But that you know, that's as cap and b M I am

that those royalties come through that. For musicians, there's a sag After Fund that was set up recently that's picking up stuff from foreign markets and and um other areas. And then there is the Secondary Markets Fund, which is you know, so if you're a musician, if you're a violinist who plays on multiple movie scores, you know, once a year you get a reasonable check. I mean it all kind of you know, helps oil the wheels of being a in the gig economy. So so let's talk

a little bit about that. I was gonna discuss some of your early history, but we could circle back to that. How have things changed in terms of compensation from musicians And we should really discuss the possible changes in copyright rules since the last time you were here, there were a number of big cases decided and you pretty much predicted them all dead on Okay, different hats. Um let

me put on my father hat. My dad had because my daughter, Elsie is has become quite successful as a songwriter. She has a cut on Beyonce's album She had Shore Mendez Mercy that was a hit last year. She wrote that, UM a bunch of stuff and she's working with like the highest doesn't get much bigger than that. And where it affects her is the migration to streaming rather than physical sales has had an impact because the writer's share

coming from the mechanical royalties. You know that nine point one cents per track per album or singles, so that's sold that, Yeah, because those sales don't happen. The streaming revenue is quite different because the royalty structure on streaming is actually because of the digital millennium act from the that's tilted towards performers rather than the writers. So the performers. I get more money from my cover tunes being played on Pandora for example, then I do from my my

own stuff as a as a writer. Um, I don't get you know, it's a fractional royalty. Is that is that appropriate? Shouldn't we be rewarding the creators of content as a as a well, but but from a performer is a creator of content? I mean you go back to terrestrial radio. And still to this day, performers don't get any royalty from terrestrial radio. I mean, that's a big bone of contention, UM, whereas they do from streaming UM.

Whereas on terrestrial the writers get a significant the writers and publishers get a significant share, but the performance don't. So that was why performers started putting their names on compositions. You know, El This didn't write Heartbreak Hotel. He just you know, his manager made sure that his name was on there. So let's talk about the shrinking of the

creative spaces as you've described it. Some of the new copyright rules that haven't passed legislation in the US yet, as well as some of the court cases have really hemmed in what creators can do. And going back to i'l see my daughter, I mean, she won't listen to top forty radio because she doesn't want to be influenced

by what her peers are currently writing. So she's, you know, she's listening to she's listening to old is stuff and you know, like legacy stuff, because you have to be very careful not to subconsciously reproduce something that's you know, currently in in out there is it easy to get something stuck in your head and have it just it's what it is easy and you don't realize it sometimes that stuff is creeping in, well, that Tom Petty case with us Sam, but well, but that you know, and

that's where the creative space shrinks to the extent that there are certain formulas, there are certain melodic formulas that so give us an example, well, that's an example, the Tom Petty one with with Sam Smith that it was. You can go to that space very easily without realizing that you're stepping on somebody else's copy. Right. That's where the legal system kind of is an equalizer with that.

Where it becomes a problem, and a very very dangerous step is when you start talking about groove, when you start talking about rhythm, Yeah, because that's it. And there's very mystifying stuff about the Bloodlines case because it was based on the sheet music and yet the decisions were made on the basis of of the groove, which is not contained in the sheet right as part of it anyway, And it's understandable, but but not in the strict copyright sense.

But but when you go in history, one thing that you you really cannot copyright is harmonic sequences because you can go back to the Renaissance and find chord sequences that are still in use today. An example of that being there's a a sequence called the pasi mezzo moderno pasmetzo, being a dance move. It's like a step and a half and the that sequence is like it's one four one five one four one five one. Now that in Elizabethan,

England became known as the Gregory Walker. Interesting story. Thomas Morley, who was a composer, referred to it as such because Gregory was was actually a barbershop. It was a slang expression for a barbershop. And if you walked into a barbershop, there will be instruments hanging on the wall, and you know, so you're waiting instead of reading a magazine because they didn't have they didn't have the guitar. You well, git turn or loot or whatever. And that was the court

sequence that will be played. So if you walked into a Gregory that's what you would hear. It was so common. It was like the twelve bar blues of the Renaissance era that's still being used. I mean, they're going to put me in the movies they're going to make a big star out of me. You know, it's that sequence. Even I saw her standing there is basically that sequence when the Saints go marching in and and there are

certain sequences that are used. I mean, there's a bunch of Australian guys that put together all the songs that use one particular sequence that has been on hit records for the last fifty years. And and so when you start dealing with harmony, then you're really in trouble because there's only so many harmonic moves. And it's like trying to copyright grammar. It's like saying, well, wait a minute, you wrote a novel and it's full of sentences, therefore

we own that copyright. That's you don't have the right to do that. I mean, it's that basic. And that's kind of where it was going with Um with the Stairway to Heaven, was that that particular sequence was a fairly generic sequence that you could actually track back to

the early Baroque. We were discussing some of the copyright issues that have come up, and you referenced the risk when we start copyrighting the equivalent of grammar in music and mentioned some of the earlier baroque um chords that everybody seems to use kind of hard to copyright. Well, yeah, you can't copyright that, and the same reason you can't copyright groove. It's just it's it's too it's too generic, it's too much part of the fabric of music. You know.

I'm wearing my music college just because I I when I went to college, I studied music and musicology. I didn't actually study guitar. I didn't do like a conservatory route. I was always self taught on guitar. I just really wanted to learn music, a music history, and just the whole context of it. So, so when you look at some of the copyright cases that have been around, how often do you see something and say, oh, yeah, that's from the fires or is that overstating it? Well, that's

overstating it a little bit. I mean, most of the copyright cases that have gained the copyright cases that have gained news recently really are just in that kind of blurredline, stairway to Heaven kind of realm. Now, it didn't help with with Zeppelin that they have a history of ploining other people's compositions and over the years they've had to start giving, you know, giving credit to the people that

they borrowed from. Now you go back to before there was copyright, and it was just perfectly common for composers to take particular melodic phrases or um I mean, Bark would borrow German folk songs or drinking songs all the time he was writing a cantata for the Sunday morning service. He wanted a melody that the congregation would instantly recognize, not have to compose something from from scratch. So a drinking song shows up in church, is that what he

could be? Very much so it could be the peasant cantata, you know, that's that's that kind of approach. And there are certain generic sequences that were always used because they were familiar. In the Baroque era, there was a sequence called the Folia. That is, that particular sequence was well used all the way through to Beethoven. Rachmaninoff used it. I mean, it was just it was a standard sequence

with its own melody attached. And then you get the the what was known as the the Andalusian cadence, which is and if you think of the number of tunes, like you know, walk Don't Run and Run Away and all these songs that use that sequence. There's no copyright on that. You's got a very cinematic feel. You could see it just before a sword fight or something like that. Yeah, I mean it's it's got that Spanish thing to it.

But but I mean I found examples of that going back to, you know, the mid fifteen hundreds, I've been transcribing loop pieces for I'm doing a folio on the evolution of finger style guitar for for how Leonard and I've gone back to The earliest piece I have is fifteen oh seven. Attempt to play it right now. So from learning, how do you get from loot to a modern guitar? What are the intervening steps? You're dealing with the basic concept of an instrument with a long neck

and frets and strings. I mean, that's that's a kind of generic instrument. It's in organology, which is a study of instruments, is that's a long necked loot, even if it's not actually like the bowl backed loot of the Renaissance. So there are various other instruments that kind of developed parallel with it. The earliest guitar you get is the earliest illustration is about four five that far back well, and they go back earlier, but they're not specifically guitar.

There gitterns and citterns and similar instruments. But in the Renaissance, the loot was the dominant instrument, except in Spain, which had the vihuela, which looked like a guitar but was actually strung like a loot, and and all you have to do change one string and you're in you're in lute tuning, whereas you know that's guitar tuning. I mean it's it's so you can play those kinds of pieces. It evolved from the Renaissance, which was small instrument, almost

like a ukulele. The Baroque guitar added an extra string, so you went from four strings or four courses because they were double strategy, to five, and then roundabout sevent eighty you get to the six string guitar. So the modern guitar really dates from there. But but you can track the history of fretted instruments that were played with

the fingers going back even to the medieval ere. I mean, there's there was a john the looter was was on the royal roles in England getting four shillings a week in like twelve eighty five. I mean it goes back that far. The professional looter, the professional from the from the royal court. That that's fascinating. So you mentioned earlier that the space for creators of all types is getting hemmed in and shrinking a little bit. How are we

seeing that manifest itself in minor times. Well, the main manifestation of it is the way that sampling has has kind of created this collaborative, collective environment for writing it, which is why you might see a dozen writers on a song, because sometimes the songs are just created in a very um fractional way where somebody will write the hook, and then somebody else will write the verse, and and maybe a producer or two will come up with beats, and it's you know, so all those elements are now

embedded in the copyright. It used to be that it was simply melody and lyrics, and that's still what the law says. But the convention since hip hop, really the convention is that if you contribute to the the actual track, that that gives you a writer share. But a lot

of the people that are doing that aren't musicians. They know how to manipulate sounds, but they're not necessarily musical producers, engineers, anyone who's well engineers typically don't get part of that, but they will be in the Music Modernization Act, they're going to create a royalty for producers and for engineers. But if it's anything like what the musicians get from the sound Exchange side of it. As a session musician, there's five is devoted to the background people as opposed

to to the record label to the performer. But the way that that gets tracked is very difficult because sound exchange you can only learn it from either the meta information that goes in the spreadsheet that's submitted with the recording, or they get it from the Musicians Union, from the musicians Union contracts, but very few records go through the union. You know, the union is much stronger on the TV a movie side of things than it is on the

record side of things. Why do you think that is having it's well, it's part of it is the nature of the way records are made. And part of it is if you're going to put together they're an orchestra to play on a movie, you really need to have

the union involved in that. Because there are scales, there's you know, which is why producers have been going to Prague and to Budapest and to you know, Seattle to do stuff nonunion, because they don't then have to deal with the other ramification of it, which is what I mentioned earlier, which is the secondary markets fund, where they resent having to give this minute portion to the musicians.

Even though the teams just get their share and you know, the other unions get their share, the musicians have always been kind of backled off to the side. Yeah, that that's fascinating. But but in terms of the creative space, I just think that there are certain generic sequences that are built into music making, and at some point if you start to to make those copyrightable, then you really

limit what can be done. Let's talk a little bit about some of the unusual tunings that you do that allow you to play things that a regular guitar really can't play. And during the break you moved over to dad gad tuning. What does dad gad do that the regular standard guitar tuning doesn't allow. Well, this is dad goad, which gives me three D strings and to a strings energy string, which means that for one thing. I have the kind of sound of octaves that is like a

twelve almost like a twelve string. And then because there are two adjacent scale tones, a G and an A, that gives me the opportunity to do these kind of cascading patterns, which actually, interestingly enough, it is one of the things that's characteristic of baroque guitar because on the barroke guitar, like on a ukulele, the bottom two strings were often tuned up an octave, so you get this kind of cross fingering where where like things can sustain

so instead of gives it a different kind of texture. But I just found that it's great for articulating pop songs. Really, you want me to play something I mentioned earlier, I mentioned Runaway as being an example of the Andalusian cadence. That's that's wonderful. And for people who are just listening to this and not viewing it, you're simultaneously playing the melody, the vocals, and the background with them all at the same time. There's no overdubs. This is live. You just

basically pulled the guitar out and started playing that. We're not we're not running multiple loops around, which is what finger style guitar is. It's the reality to play all the parts because you're using the sum and you know, typically through the three principal right hand fingers, and then being in that tuning also gives me the capability of of allowing some of the middle the inner parts to work more more resonantly than they than they would in

standard tuning. And that's because you have the three G it's part of it, it's part of it. It's just it's and it's a suspended tuning, whereas standard tuning is actually kind of an E minor tuning, so it kind of is more self defining. Whereas with that gadded there's there. You don't have a major third in the tuning. That's the beauty of standard tuning is it does have that third in it, which makes major chords actually flow in

a very interesting fashion. And you go back again to the Baroque and they had a system where they laid out all the chords and you could learn how to play rhythm guitar strung guitar just by following this what they called alphabeto system and you learn the shapes, and Dad add it's not really about shapes for me, it's it's that's the discovery mechanism used to find the inner workings of the song within that tune. You've described it

as a vertical approach as opposed to a horizontal approach. Yeah, because the I'm looking at what's happening on every particular beat rather than a very like a more linear kind of approach. So because I'm trying to developed like a richness, bring out the scenarity of the guitar so that it doesn't the sound doesn't die, but keeps going, so that

it has its own internal life. So how does that compare with other instruments such as a piano, where you pretty much have every note right there in front of there you go, you know, it's the the whole spectrum is right there in front of you on the piano. On the guitar, you have to have kind of a virtual piano in your head at least the spectrum that

you know the spectrum instruments. And this is something that I try and encourage music teachers to understand is that their guitar players are actually more musically cognizant then than the piano players. Maybe because on the guitar you really have to understand. If you really want to advance with it, you have to understand how the notes relate to each other. Whereas on the piano you can pretty much just look

at the fingering patterns and just follow that. Um. But if you want to really do something original on the guitar, then it's understanding it's musical capabilities. Um. You said something earlier I have to circle back to because it was it was so fascinating on streaming. I believe it was. When you're doing a cover song, you get paid more than the original composition, not It depends on how much it gets played. For example, this week, my number one play on Pandora is stand by Me. Um, and you

know usually it's my Christmas music. Yeah, Um, but I did a cover of it. In fact, got used in a Dabers Diamond commercial some times ago, which was kind of a nice license fee for that. So the commercial license fees are more well that's yeah, that's a whole different piece of business. But but what I mean by the fact is that cover tunes tend to get more attention.

I mean, and also Christmas stuff because that's of the entire music market is really that's astonishing, and people listen to that stuff all year round too, And I was very lucky in so far as my early stuff got into the Pandora ecosystem. Now it's much harder to get in um, but you know, stuff creeps in. But but it's it's only in terms of I mean, the amount that one makes for the play as a performer doesn't

matter whether it's original or a cover tune. And and the amount that I make as a writer on the original stuff is not of any great consequence compared with what I make as a performer. But cover tunes the same thing with iTunes. Cover tunes just get more attention so they'll capture. And you know that's fascinating because I have a pet theory about cover songs, and it's simply

a note for note. Cover song, especially for something we know as well as the Beatles, is pointless because why do I need to hear the identical version someone else has done. On the other hand, most of the ones that are really far out in right field, it doesn't even sound like the original song. Maybe Joe Cocker's get By with Little Help from My Friend is is the

the outlier there. But what I've always loved about your cover work is it's immediately recognizable as the underlying song, but it's such a different version of it that it makes it fresh and interesting. So I would imagine your cover songs would do really well on on iTunes. Well,

that's the art of it really is. For me, it's it's to take the familiar and do something slightly unfamiliar with and that's where you know, using these alter tunings and just bringing my sensibility to it on the guitar. And there are plenty of tunes that I won't do because I don't feel that I can make enough of

a difference with to justify doing that. So they end up, you know, they have to be there has to be something special about them, and there's always in the process, Like when I was doing Strawberry Fields Forever, and it was just the fact that um and just get that scenarity. You know, it works espec she You can't do that in standards, you but the way that it works on the guitar just puts it into its own creative space. And that's what I'm looking for as an artist is

can I make a contribution. Can I do something that gives people maybe a different perspective on a familiar company. Well that was my experience with as a look. I grew up a huge Beatle fan. Heartbroken Outcomes. Wings has a handful of fun songs Uncle Uncle, Admiral what is it Admiral, Uncle Albert, Admiral Halls and Uncle Albert, and then there were a lot of sort of poppy love

songs that I didn't yeah to say the least. But your Um Wings album is very revealing of some lovely nuances when one Wing that I completely missed the first time I heard them as Paul McCartney. But the under your version, the song's really breathe and come to life, I think, you know, bringing a musical sensibility to so I'm not just simply doing kind of a like a reproduction, right, it's not a note for note identical, getting inside basically um kind of really trying to rewrite it from from

the inside out. And there there's a I Forget the Borgers novel where there's a character who whose mission is to rewrite don Quixote, but not just to copy it, but to actually like imagine it from the ground up and have it be exact exactly the same. And it's it's not quite that because I'm not trying to recreate it in that respect, but just to reinterpret it, to to do it in a way that brings some fresh perspective to you reveal a musicality to some of those songs.

Is that I think for your original version either doesn't emphasize or or you're just not hearing it in the rock and roll version. And I think that's an important point in terms of the way in which existing copyrights can be utilized. You know, when I mean, let's face that, you know, the whole copyright, I think the mechanical license came out of Graham Phone Records, and Graham Phone Records came out of print publishing. I mean they sold records

in order to sell sheep music, right. Um, But when you think about how many different versions of songs existed in that time period that you know, somebody would do a song and then there would be half a dozen covers of it. You know, different artists would do it, and it was very common for different artists to do songs.

And then you get to the beatle area, you get to the sixties and rock music, pop music as as an art form, which is unique to those artists, and and that that went away, that you didn't get three different versions of the same song on the charts at the same time, you just had that one definitive version. UM. And I think that there's there's a very rich heritage

of music to draw on to re reinvigorate. For example, I've always so when you talk about the earlier period, um, you're referring to what on this side of the Atlantic we call the Great American Songbook, which is everybody from La Fitzrael to Frank Sinatra and earlier to early being crosspech. I mean you're still you know, mid twenties is still in copyright. I mean the early twenties is now you know, is now ours? What is it ninety years? I think

it is. Whatever it is, it's it's now at the point where you know some of the Great American song But the early Irving Berlin stuff, for example, you know, Alexander's Ragtime Band is public domain, and the irony is the sixties and seventies changed that and then you ended up with a lot of those artists doing the Great American song Book, whether it's rod it's circled full fall around, and so I refer to it as the Great Anglo American Songs Book at this point, because when I was

growing up in the sixties, the thirties was only thirty years earlier. You go back thirty years from now and you're in what the nineties, um and going back to you know what, I guess the Great American Songbook is a cannon. Like the classical cannon is a cannon, and we have a rock cannon too. I mean, you know, Layla is part of the rock canon. The Beatles is part of the rock cannon. And that it's not that means it's not going to go away, and and and

it's it is a rich vein of reinterpretation. Maybe you're a string quartet and you do layla, you know, you can, you can cross fertilize those kinds of genres. So do you think the music of that era, the sixties and seventies and beyond, is going to have the same sort of staying power as we've seen in the twenties, thirties, forties. I think I think it will. I think it does certainly.

You know, there's always a certain amount of attrition, and there are certain gems that kind of just fell off the radar for really, Look, I just discovered Margot Gourian. For example, you you look at me quisitely. Margot Gouryan was kind of if you could combine Brian Wilson with a strud Gilberto in a power pop context. She had a very breathy voice. She wrote very kind of psychedelic influenced pop songs. Oliver had a hit with Someng of her Sunday Morning back in Oh sure, yeah, but that's

one of her songs. She made one album and then quit the business. But I just discovered her music and it's it's like very cool. And that's one great thing about the streaming environment is how much music you can discover and how you can curate your own musical Have you have you worked out any Margot songs yet? So I'm right now I'm working on a bunch of standards, actually my own great American songbook stuff that I'm working on. So you'll have you'll have to give us a sample

before before the morning's over. Well maybe when the next when that album comes out, I'll come and give you some samples. So so, given given the changes that we've seen in music in modern era with hip hop and sampling, what does it mean to somebody who earns their living playing a live strings instrument. It doesn't go away. I mean those things coexist and you know, it'll see my daughter,

you know, the songwriter. I mean, she's been on plenty of sessions where it's guys sitting around with laptops, you know, creating beats. But she's right now working with Mark Ronson, who's one of the great contemporary guys. And it's very organic. You sit down and play drums on, you know, on the song. Um. That's that's that combination of the tech side of things with the organic side of things. I think is is where it's where the vitality is in

all of it. That there's a lot of talent out there. Um, but you just want to make sure that you don't have the kind of copyright restrictions that inhibit the creativity. You know. It's one thing to listen to a motown record to kind of gather the groove of that. It's another thing to then get sued because you've taken a groove that really is is not a copy writable at the time, wasn't a copyrightable entity. Um. So Wall of Sound is not copyrightable, or at least has a will.

The sound is just a lot of reverb, you know, it's a lot of reverb on top of reverb, and and it's a lot of musicians. I mean on a Phil Spector session, you got to the chorus, if you needed more piano, you brought in another piano player. You know. Now you you know, you know that was when they were working on four track. Now you can, you know, you can overdub the second piano or whatever. But um,

but the technology is great. I mean I just did a track with Marcy Levy, who's a friend of mine, who neighbor, who used to work with Eric Clapton and was in a bank called Shakespeare's Sister in England who had some big hits there, and she she gave me a logic file like an Apple logic file that I then transferred like put into pro Tools and then started fooling around with and added some guitar and change the arrangement.

And then we went in the studio on Monday with Klem Burke from Blondie playing drums and walked out with a record, you know. And so that technology is great because it's not as limited as it used to be where we were working with tape and now the plugins have really evolved to the point where you can get a very analog sound out of the digit digital environment. Can you stick around a little bit. I have a ton more questions and and I'd love to get a

couple of a couple more songs out of you. We have been speaking with Lawrence Juber, guitarist extraordinaire and recording artists. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and come back and check out our podcast extras, where we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things musicology. We love your comments, feedback, end suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Check out my daily column on Bloomberg dot com. You can follow me on

Twitter at Dholts. I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Video. Welcome to the podcast, Lawrence. Thank you so much for doing this. I always enjoy when you come into town. And this will broadcast after um we've recorded this, but I'm gonna see you tonight at the cutting room, which is always a lovely place to see. Cool place. Yeah, it's kind of It's a

nice intimate place. I've seen enough um shows in places where you're so far away from the performer and everybody's a tiny person and you happen to have a charming uh rapport with the audience. Thank you you all, but take questions. We went to see Paul Simon of the Hollywood Bowl last week. I saw him when he started the tour last year in Forest Hills. He put on a very interesting show, fun show, fourteen piece band, m great right back, he does ringo, was sitting right in

front of us. Really, I hadn't seen him in a long time. Oh, that must have been fun he um. Someone described this as pretty much his his last stur He said, uh, his voice is going, and he said he's this isn't gonna be you know, it didn't sound like it. I mean, he was still in great shape. I thought any any old Simon and Garfuncle songs did? I mean? He did Homework Bound, He did um Sounds of Silent opened with America. Yeah. So, I don't know

if you know the band Aztec two steps. So they do a version of the Simon and garf Uncle's songbook based on the print book that a DJ named Pete for Natale wrote. I was interviewed by him was um, he passed away a w N. Yeah, that's right, w anyw in New York. And so he created this this book about He wrote a book about them, and they subsequently adapted it and with with um images and streaming video and other stuff, they're basically telling this Simon and

garf uncle story through their music. It was really quite um, quite fascinating. And I through that show, I discovered a guy who was one of the and I'm drawing a blank on his name, it will come into my mind, who was one of the original writers for Saturday Live, who has written on Curb Your Enthusiasm and uh and and basically tells the story of the Boxer in his

in a novel. In a book he wrote about someone in a college poetry class submitting the Boxer as his final exam and it's just utterly and the teacher believes it, and it's just utterly a hilarious, hilarious story. So so let's get back to music in a way from literature. Um, you you do a lot of really interesting things. UM, And I was just really curious, what are you working on these days? What do you think is is going to come out? Next you. You always have a few

albums in the well. I've got this folio I'm doing for how Landed on the evolution of fingerstyle guitar, which goes really from the Renaissance through to the early twentieth century. I got some ragtime in there, and it goes through what we would call classical guitar. And what I'm trying to do is bridge the gap between classical and steel string, because from my perspective, there is no schism, no real schism there. What is the ear of classical and what

is the ear of steel string? They coexist. Um the what we like the players that we look to as being kind of like the founding fathers of classical guitar, like Giuliani and saw Umkuruly, Carcassie, those like early nineteenth century players, we're really just playing fingerstyle guitar. They didn't call it classical guitar, and in fact, you know, it's it's you have to be careful because we have classical

in the pure generic sense. But when you talk about musical eras classical is a very specific period pretty much kind of seventeen fifties through eight twenty, you know, and Beethoven kind of straddled both classical and Romantic eras. By the time you get to the twenties and beyond, you're into the Romantic era and the and the classical cannon.

The whole concept of classical music being something for a kind of an elite social group really evolved in the eighteen twenties or the early certainly the early nineties had What was the change at the end of that, Well, look what happened politically, I mean, you have as as the monarch is, you know that the impact of the monarchers was dissolving, that the civil service became much more you know that upper middle class bourgeois became much less

underneath a monarch, especially well well France. But also you know it's specifically, I mean, Vienna was really the hotbed of of of musical development in that respect. So you go from kind of Hyding to Beethoven to Schubert. You know, Schubert was a guitar player, really, yeah, apparently he wrote most of his songs on guitar. Dia Belie published them on piano because that was the commercial market, but guitar was extremely popular. There was guitar mania in Europe in

the early nineteenth century. But so, but they weren't classical guitar players in the stylistic sense. We look at them as classical in the genre that we describe as classical, but really they were fingerstyle players from my perspective. And and what happens by the middle of the nineteenth century, the guitar loses popularity because the piano has become such a dominant instrument. But in America, the guitar became very popular.

Guitar and banjo were extremely popular. Um, and so kind of the focus shifts to that, and there were great players and a lot of them played Martin guitars too. I mean Martin was really kind of the instrument of choice of the American what they called parlor music, and that's not a derogatory term. Parla music is really light classical music and a very specifically kind of middle class kind of musical experience. Of course, there was no recorded music,

so you would play in the parlor. You would play the piano if you could afford one, or a guitar if you couldn't afford a piano, or sometimes both. Um. So there's a continuity about all of this. But my argument is you don't have to look at it through the Segovia paradigm. Sgia, well, Segovia bought the gravitas to the to the promotion of the instrument that allowed it

to exist in the classical concert hall. But guitar was guitar music was played in all kinds of concert environments before enduring sago VIA's era, and and in the twentieth century in America, you get steel strings came into play because gut strings were very unreliable, and nylon really didn't get used for guitar strings till the nineteen fourties, um, and so, but the stylistic aspect of it tended to gravitate much more towards jazz and blues and everything else.

But but my argument is that if you want to understand the music, you don't have to be restricted to be playing on a nylon string guitar with you know, with your left left leg up on a footstool and the guitar in a very specific position that you can you can play this music on any guitar. And and you know, so like Bach doesn't have to be played on a nylon string guitar at all. So I'm kind of gearing what I'm doing in that respect with this folio to steel string players. So what is a folio?

How do you? How do you do folio? It's just a collection of sheep music. I mean, you know it's a book. Are you going to put it out in musical version as well? Well? I'm going to do an album to go along with it, which is a challenge because I have to learn all these Renaissance and Baroque loop pieces and some fairly heavy duty kind of classical stuff. I have confidence that you'll be able to do that.

I have confidence as well too. But at the same time, I'm also working on a collection of standards American Anglo Americans, mostly American. I mean, for example, Jimmy McHugh not familiar, not familiar, you know his songs Sure, I can't give you anything but love written just down the street, you know, it's just in He and Dorothy Fields were walking down Fifth Avenue and overheard this is, you know, depths of

the Depressure actually late twenties. It was like right after the stock market crash, and they hear over here a young guy talking to his girlfriend looking in the the window at Tiffan is saying, I can't give you anything but love. Baby. And although there is a theory that that fat Swaller had something to do with it musically too, and sold them his contribution, the Tiffany story sounds much more romantic. It's very romantic. Yeah, um yeah, he wrote

I'm in the mood for love. He um. He was actually wiped out by the stock market crash and was walking down the street here in Manhattan and ran into George Gershwin, and Gershwin said, can I you know, do you need anything? And he said I could use a piano. So Gershwin gave him a piano. Well, really, his grandson Lee still has in his office in um piano Well

gersh Well, Jimmy mccugh's piano donated um. And the first thing he wrote on that was I'm in the mood for love, which you know, put him back on his feet. I would say, so so, so who else do you look? Yet? As you know the Great So many years ago, I got a gift from somebody which was Ella Fitzgerald sings the Great American Song and I think it's something like sixteen or twenty six c ds, and each c D

or so is a different song writer, so it's Gershwin. Um, and Berlin and Jerome currents and go down the whole the whole list. I think Berlin is is two songs, two discs, and Gershwin might be for discs, but it's just one after another and it's every fantastic. So how

do you take that enormous collection. It's just great music, just favorite songs and stuff that just feels right on the guitar um, you know, I like Bernstein, I mean, like, you know, it just fits on the guitar sis shortly and and and and the original is an E which is, you know, a very guitaristic key um. So stuff like that. I'm just not sure. I know that there's there's gonna be a music book to go along with that too.

So how how these end up getting released in terms of whether it's just going to be a digital release or whether it's going to be a c D. C Ds are really only useful for show merchandise at this point because people don't buy c D s. I'm one

of the few. I am now old enough that I have a big boy audio system that I wish I had when I was nineteen, And when a CD that i'm particularly and amor with comes out, I pop it in and I didn't rather buy it on vinyl though, No, because I'm too irresponsible to take care of a record

in the proper way. The CD, I just feed it into the Vinyl sounds so much better if you don't have scratches, pops hissing, if you take care of it and it's one gram vinyl and you know you keep it clean and that listen, vinyl is selling these days. I don't have the patients or the storage for it. I did an album about ten actually more than ten years ago now, um Guitar Noir. There was for a I X Records, which was a high resolution DVD audio project.

So that is a great sounding project. That's an album and a song if I remember correct that I wrote that song is like the title track for that particular prop. It's a few seconds the right and wrong tune. That's that's a C G d G a D t UM. So that you know that high end audio thing. I mean it's in fact, you you go into a like an audio file store, and you'll probably see them playing it because it gets used. For damn, I want a

demi award. What the hell's the demi award? What demos for Yeah, the consumer electronics people have this Demi Award, which is, you know, stuff that's great for demoing expensive equipment. That that's really interesting. The my Store of Choices, Park Avenue Audio, UM, and I always bring these CDs and I'm so excited to use and I put them on these hundred thousand analysis systems and they sound terrible. Next time you go in the awesome if they have, I'm

sure they will. Now I have the regular CD of Guitar and Noir. Is that something? Now? There's a track on um My Wooden Horses CD that I did a solo version of it. But the but the real, the real version to listen to is the one, the mosaic track on that UM actually got license by I think it was Pioneer licensed it for the discs that came with the in car Super High. Fine, that's quite interesting. So I only have you for a finite amount of I'm let me get my uh my new I got

a new phone just for for you today. Isn't that nice? Um? Yes, I'm gonna allow myself to log in. What do you feel like playing today? Oh? I have no idea. I'm in standard tuning, you know, what No, you're in dad, No, I'm in standard. You went back let me, I'll do, I'll do. I can't give you anything but love because I have to be in that mode. You ready, Nope? Um, all right, we're recording Cool Cool Boy the Delightful. So

I'm gonna put this down now. So here's the question that is very much related to the process of turning what was once a classical American songbook, really great American songbook type of tune into an acoustic guitar piece. Take us through how you you go through that transition? Well, with that one, it really was just to just make it musical and adding to that the notion that I'm

really pushing myself to improvise mall. So you know, I state the same and then I'm improvising, and I'm just kind of trying to keep myself on a particular kind

of track with that. But I mean, there's there's the concept we have of of um alternate bass where you and this goes back really like to then what they call Kentucky thumb picking, like Mel Travis and then Shad Atkins Atkins Mel Travis before my this kind of idea that so there's always this kind of this is kind of like rolling thing going on to create the accompaniments, so making that work and keeping a groove going, but

also looking for kind of voicings. No trammelo bar the virtual you're using it with your arm instead of looking for that kind of stuff. And it's a standard tuning. Yeah, I'm in standard tuning. But what I'm doing there, like I'm using open strings. Do you get these kind of

interesting dissonances? You know, so stuff like that, you know, stand, I'm kind of pushing myself to do more in standard tuning, to bring into it stuff that I've learned from being in auto tuning, you know, just again just trying to push the envelope to be to stay on my game. What what sort of songs have from that song book have you've been looking at um to include in the following Let's see right now. And these won't necessarily make the final cut, but you know, Limehouse Blues, Um, George

Sharing's Lullaby of Birdland or um. You know, not a standard tuner. No, some of this stuff is in dadad Summertime, Foggy Day in London Town, which I'm particularly fond of because that was when I was born was foggy day in London town. Um and um misty uh, Willow weep for me. It's a great song. Yeah. I mean I've done you know, in the past, I've done things like crimea River and George I love the Julie London version of crimea River. Well, yeah, Hamilton's like that he wrote

the song. Yeah, and Bonnie Castle's playing guitar on that. The request has come for do you know Wicked Game by Chris Isaac. It's way too late for way too late for me, would be like, so you're giving Willow a very bluesy flavor. Well, it is a bluesy song, is it, because the way you hear it in the traditional arrangement isn't quite that bluesy. Yeah, I'm I tend

to want to make things blues um. Yeah, but like I see now, for example, there, I'm in B flat right and I'm in Dad Dad at least I would be if I was properly in tune, and you don't even bother with the the other two. And I've got this one stuck on the end of the guitarity. Oh there we are, okay, So you get these voice things stuff like that. It sounds like it was written for guitar. Well, that's why I try and do is make it sound natural on the instrument. Actually, so I couldn't. Yeah, just

playing around thinking somewhat pianistically with that. So do you go out and listen to different versions of these songs? Yeah, so let me make it. It's handy for that. Apple music is handy for that. So let me make a

recommendation for summertime. We may have discussed this previously. There is a young woman named Renee Olsted who was an actor on a sitcom whose name escapes me at the moment, and she does she was like sixteen or seventeen, and it's one of those far too mature for her year's version. That's like wow, when you get a moment listen to that because it just and she adds a little bit of a slinky blues vibe to it that you know that that isn't in the LA version. Is I mean

what I'm doing with summertime? Should I be recording this? No? I mean I'm just going to give you a little example working see this. Actually this is the katana, then this is the gaitan wha tuning, right, but summertime. Um, that kind of appropriate. That's got a really bluesy flavor, much smokier than well, when you hear when you hear a a someone really belt it out, it doesn't quite have the same smokey vibe. But you know, my reference,

my kind of cross reference is like early Fleetwood Mac. Okay, you know, I'm thinking, how would Peter greenplay this? Right? You know that kind of and also, um, what else have I been? Um? I only have eyes for you. Okay, another grade that's in this tuning, hang on, have to remember it. See I'm thinking, I'm thinking almost like Revel, you get the idea and totally but it's so totally works. You know. I think we've talked about Derrick Thompson's book

last time you were here, How Hits Happen. It's not just about music, It's about music, books, architecture, engineering, And he's fond of pointing out that if you want to sell something different, you have to make it familiar, and if you want to sell something familiar, you have to make it a little different. And and it's um, I pick up a lot of that that the melody is totally recognizable, the melody is key, but everything around it is totally different. Now what tuning were you in here?

Hang on? Uh? Now the Jimmy Mcue song. You see what I look for? Is that kind of just that very musical kind of but also the guitaristic thing how everything rings. And then something like this, Well it's dissonant, but in a cool way. Uh, hang on, that's it. Of course you can't hear. You can't see this on the radio. I can, and it's way cool doing two hands on the neck, a little little Eddie van Halen action on the Yeah, easy on, Easier on electric than

on the coup, but you can still do it. It's just you know, what I like doing is is that kind of is doing the two handed thing, but to get a rhythmic propulsion to it, it's not the same. No, not a lot. That's pretty fascinating. What so when do you think, um, the American Standards album is coming out next year? Probably really so how long does it take

to put something like that? Well, it's it's a question of, you know, the timing as far as coordinating it, you know, and my distributor, because I have my own record label now, my distribution needs two months later time on a release. I always reckon you're gonna at least have three months to record, and you know, and I've been working on these arrangements for a couple of some of these for a couple of years. That was a question, is how

long does it take it actually come up with the arrangement? Depends? I mean when I my Runaway arrangement took me about ten minutes. What takes sometimes, what takes longer. Sometimes they just take time. I mean like Limehouse Blues, I still don't know, but that's even going to make the cut. And that's probably been one I'm working on longer than anything else. I've done it in standard tuning, in different keys. I've done it and dad getting different keys, and it's

just I'm not yet convinced by it. Um, But it's an interesting exercise. You're not yet convinced by the song. That's I'm not yet convinced by the arrangement because it could be and whether it's swung or whether I don't done as a Latin thing or you know, there's there's arranging tricks. You you can change the groove for change the feel, and it's just I'm not sure with that one. But um, and we'll see how it all evolves. I mean, I've got some original tunes that I want to get

recorded to. I wasn't intending that the um the stuff with all the renaissance loop music and the ragtime, you know, it goes through like Scott Joplin, and I wasn't int ending that was going to be kind of a releasable album. But as the project evolved, it kind of, well, this is kind of an interesting combination of tunes. I wonder, you know, so when you're when you're the history of of that has to span centuries, but when you're looking at something that's only a few decades, I know that

sounds ridiculous to say that's only a few decades. You still have I want to say, hundreds of songs, certainly dozens and does. I mean, there's a million of them. But it's just what, you know, what I sit down and play and it's like, oh, that's kind of cool. And then if Hope likes it, my wife because she doesn't like it, you know, kind of well then then I can't really practice it in front of her, which kind of inhibits the process of it. But you know,

I just came up with an arrangement Great Songs. Funny Tony Hatch wrote that on the Corner of Broadway. He came up with the hook on the corner of Broadway Street on his first trip to New York, not realizing that that's not well, Midtown isn't quite as catching. Yeah, so that's a cool song. Does it end up being the great Anglo American songbook? I don't know. You know, we'll see. Well, it's certainly from that sixties pop era. You could release an album a decade if you wanted

to find stuff. It might be too similar across within that each decade. But from a business point of view, I mean that, you know, my goal is to just kind of put a lot of stuff out there, because if it's out there in the streaming environment, then it can be revenue creating without necessarily having to be heavily promoted. Um,

we just did a re release. Hope used to have a group UM in the eighties and early nineties called the Housewives, which was a comedy rock and roll group, and they were ABC had a morning show called The Home Show Way Back, and they were regulars on that and they got a lot of TV exposs of a great name for a and the album's called Get the Dirt Yea and its songs like call a Repairman, Um, ironing Board, I've been defrosting all day, which has a killer harmonica solo from John Mayle, who I wish him

well because he's in the hospital right now. Um. And Maggie Mayle, John's ex wife was was in the band and Maggie may and Maggie Mayle okay as in John Mayle, but um and by the way, Maggie may is another one of those songs that is the Gregory Walker passa Mets and Moderno sequence that actually earlier Yeah, um and um that just came out, you know, and it's kind of like, you know, hoping it's going to get airplay on Spotify, Pandora maybe serious on comedy because it's a

comedy record really um. And then earlier this year I put out Standard Time, which is my first album that had never been released digitally, which was also some Standards, some great American songbook stuff, but out of Paul McCann is publishing catalog. He asked me to record stuff out of it. So it did Stormy Weather with a forty piece orchestra, very cool version of that. In fact, that

stuff is really hi fi sounding. Um. And it includes my first fingerstyle composition which is un called Mazie that I actually had like Paul playing bass on because you know, we recorded it on a Wing session one day. That's pretty cool. So what was the name of that album? That's called Standard Time. So that's your first and my very first, which is not a finger style guitar record except for a couple of pieces that are on their

mostly released digitally. It's a digital, full digital. It's never been released in its entirety except as a bonus CD with my book Guitar with Wings, which was not like a CD release. Um. And I always kind of like never felt truly comfortable with it being on c D because it's such high fi quality. It was so well recorded, and that was also used for demoing equipment back you know, way back that somebody borrowed the tapes from from Abbey Road Studios and ended up using them at trade shows

to demonstrate tape recorders. That's interesting. So I only have you for a few more minutes, Why don't we do one more? So long? Okay, um, before before some guy Mike comes in and kicks us out of here, Let's see if I can find um. All right, I got this on video, so whenever you want to start, this is Catch. The title was inspired by Catcherizing Star, which is where I met Hope in April. Go go, I love it? So um I okay, so we have we have a only a few more minutes left in the

peanut gallery? Is uh requesting different songs? What did you ask for before classical gas? No? I don't get a classical gas? Oh how about how about a Beatles song? Then we we have to uh by the way that catch, I've seen you do several times, and I've noticed that you're you're improving a touch in in some of it. There was a little bit that uh, it is every version of each song a little bit, a little bit. Yeah, that's just for season of the Witch. Now we're gonna

go with the Beatles. Last time it was I saw her standing gear and you spoke about it for six months? Oh it was? Was it she loves you? It might have been she loves you? All right, So let's do something different? Well do I standing there? There? You go to take co amazing Lawrence, Thank you so much, as always every time you hear it, It's always always a delight. We have been speaking with Lawrence Juber, recording star Grammy a warning Um musician, composer, artists. You you go through

the whole list, Grandpa Wow. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and check up an Inch, show Down an Inch on Apple iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, Bloomberg dot com, wherever finer podcasts are sold, and you could see any of the other two hundred or such conversations we've had previously. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack staff

that helps put these shows together each week. Medina Parwanner is our producer, Slash audio engineer. Taylor Taylor Riggs is our booker. Michael Batnick is our head of research. I'm Barry Ritults. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Compte take tempt int