Maneli Jamal Interview | International touring Fingerstyle Guitarist
hi everyone welcome to this video this is an interview with maneli jamal who's in toronto right now he's a finger style guitarist and uh well you're i guess you could say your professional uh performer right how many years have you been doing this uh minelli um probably since 2006 so close to 15 just just more just a yeah a year six 16 years yeah i can do that wow so full time basically full-time yeah um full-time now for sure i mean when i first started out i was you know i was working at a copy center doing some restaurants uh gigs and stuff like that uh before it kind of took over i guess i could say i was doing it professionally maybe about 10 11 years or so i'd say okay and uh and uh what what uh what light what led you into this kind of a career um both of my parents are actually musicians and artists that's my my dad's painting so i grew up with a very heavily artistic influence around me and i'm also the youngest of four boys um so i think just being around artists who were always better than me and musicians were always better than me i was very inspiring and i guess i didn't realize that i would um you know take what what knowledge and wisdom that was around the house and take that into my own version and try to make music in my own light as well of course it wasn't until i moved to canada that that really started to pick up personally but um that's definitely a huge i think like uh a tribute to me being a professional musician right now now.- I'm curious how did you end up sort of zeroing in on solo performance fingerstyle guitar? what was it about... i mean you when did you start playing guitar? yeah so i was 16 years old i was started with metal music, metal and punk you know the classic like metallica, iron maiden all that stuff then went into punk and emo and eventually went to blues guitar because i was living in austin texas at the time so blues was very very big then especially stevie ray vaughan and eric johnson that was the style that i was kind of really liked listening to and and was hard to replicate for me at the time because i wasn't really that good back then so uh but i was very inspired by that so yeah 16 years um and as far as zeroing in on like finger style guitar um that probably didn't come until me having just gone through a whole bunch of genres so at that point i was already i think 18 years old already in canada because we immigrated here um and then i think it was i saw a video of don ross playing with a thumb pick and i was just just blown away that what he could do with one guitar uh and uh that thumb pick idea just kind of stuck with me i took that from him and and uh thankfully i've never really left so because i was really heavy into picking you know punk and metal music typically there's a lot of pick use- plectrum use -so i didn't want to lose that so when i went to fingerstyle i wanted to make sure that i could have a tool that allows me to do fast picking and technical you know sweeping and stuff like that while also having the fingers free to do finger style at the same time so that's kind of the best of both worlds ------okay so you um you do that uh all the time now? you always have a thumb pick or is that just most of the time? i would say most the time yeah i think uh right now i'm definitely liking just the regular thumb and and with nails on my writing because i have acrylic gel on my nails uh so i think i i'm liking that sound especially on nylon guitar so i've been doing a lot more nylon guitar work which i really like the soft sort of more feminine sound of the instrument which has been great and that's just kind of me tapping into something that's different than the whole technical you know trying to make one guitar sound like as many instruments as possible thing which i was really into because right i mean right now i'm definitely more i think melodic focused and more mood focused rather than technical virtual so type style playing right right so that i'm sure evolved over time your own style of composition you mentioned Don Ross- i'm familiar with Don i saw him, i met him and i saw him perform at the canadian guitar festival near kingston ontario- have you ever been to that festival ? yeah i played there a couple times actually oh awesome yeah yeah really good so i mean with those festivals i i feel like uh because it's just it's just finger style so it's like if you're not a finger style fanatic uh you can get bored pretty quickly i think but other than that it's just a blast for us artists especially because we get to hang out with each other yeah it was a judge there's a judged event at the very end of it right like a competition which we were all part of yeah--Now how many - i've been to your website i'm going to put a link below the the video when i upload this, and uh you have a website i noticed uh browsing through you've got quite a few uh recordings you have uh you offer uh one-on-one lessons through zoom or whatever i'm assuming and uh and um yeah tell me a little about sort of your hub of activity because obviously uh we just got through this crazy pandemic a lot of people a lot of musicians like yourselves probably saw your gigs dry up. How did it go for you? that's a great question and uh before the pandemic even started... i made a decision to kind of take a little break from touring anyway so it's just the pandemic habit and it was just like just good timing um i just at that point had done so much touring around the world and it was just getting a little bit out of hand where I was... i felt like i was losing myself and i was just doing it all for music where i didn't really
have that sense of that inner compass for myself so i actually stopped touring and playing gigs and that's still the case i'm kind of not taking on any gigs right now i'm just trying to be be prolific and and just write- i feel like that's at heart i'm a composer- i'm not really a performer at heart so um and it's been a great journey to do that to get out of my comfort zone to do that but the pandemic has been a blessing in disguise because i released an online course a really in-depth course called fingerstyle pro and it's just focusing on fingerstyle music and especially more in the percussive style of playing so that's been a huge kind of dream of mine and it finally came to fruition last year just just over a year ago uh so that's been really cool and i've just been able to write so much music now because you know, as you know as like as a performer you have to upkeep with the the repertoire and you have to make sure that you can play them and i was playing solo guitar so when you're solo on and solo instrumental of all things on stage um it's a lot of pressure it's a lot of pressure on you to make sure that all the notes are there and i'm really hard on myself so like if i'm making a wrong note i would usually be upset about that whereas now i don't really care as much but i think that's that kind of relationship kind of started with um just putting that pressure on myself that wasn't necessary and now at home being able to compose without the need to replicate the music so much has been really great because now i can just get into different styles of music and easily try to convey moods that i'm trying to go for now i'm just uh i'm just admiring that piece of art behind you as well you said your dad did that yes yeah yeah my wife and i my wife and i when we got married uh over 25 years or 20 years ago uh we we began this little um ritual it was just we were on our uh honeymoon and we saw we liked to go to galleries we saw a great piece of art so we bought a piece of art and we decided to do that every year we actually haven't kept it up but uh we love the idea of having an original piece of art and we're not into going to walmart and buying a print you know and uh we want to support artists so uh you're very familiar with the artist lifestyle you've grown up with with the with the family-- how how is it that you gravitated toward music and not toward art? actually wanted to be an artist before becoming a musician um it wasn't until i moved to canada that and i came here under pretty extreme situations my whole family was basically deported and extradited so we had to claim refuge in canada we only had 30 days to do that so it was a very dark time for me i was 18 years old and i was just basically in my room for the last the next six months just drawing and playing guitar because at that point my art skills were i think much better than my guitar skills at that point because i just started playing maybe two years of guitar at that point uh where i was doing art kind of my whole life already and that's kind of the direction that i thought i was always going to go in at the visual art world um but it wasn't until i went to high school here my last year of high school here in canada and then i met some people and then the guitar thing kind of just picked up more and i was in bands um and i really liked that lifestyle and actually really liked the performance side of it too of being with a group of people that uh we were writing music together so i think that shift probably happened um when a good friend of mine was my manager at the time we were both just a fresh out of high school and he pushed me to do an open mic um with my own music just solo guitar it was my first performance ever as a solo player and i was doing you know the whole two-hand tap stuff and percussive thing and i had a hat so no one could see me because i was so shy to be on stage and i remember getting off the stage and just people came up to me and said really nice things and and i actually felt like that burden had been lifted i felt like maybe some of the trauma had been released from for letting it out on stage and it was a glorious moment for me to uh an aha moment for me to be like hey maybe music can can can be more important now than visual art yeah so what's uh what are you how are you looking to the future now now that the pandemic has calmed down ? uh i know in ontario i understand even today they were saying as no more masks starting today no more mandatory masks uh we're a little bit slower in BC uh they did they did drop the mask there's still some restrictions and traveling and stuff uh so what how how are you eyeing the future now you said you've got your your your amazing course there which is it sounds great i'm gonna have a look at that and uh what what's the future looking like for you? yeah um i think what i'm trying to do right now i've got like the next couple years already planned with releases i like to think ahead with this stuff especially my music career um i just get so much joy of thinking ahead as far as the next projects and stuff i think what i'm really liking is collaborations i've been doing a lot of collaborations with other players and i think that just brings a whole different touch to the music that i'm writing and i think that they're writing and so that's been a really cool blessing i started a piano project as well like a minimal piano project um so again i'm really liking just being a little bit more prolific right now in life as opposed to like before i was doing one album every three four years now i'm doing two albums a year so and i'm really liking just just doing that and again that that lack of pressure of not needing to perform the music is even greater because then i can do something record it right on the spot because i've got my studio here and then go to the next song and and continue that process so as far as the recording uh do you often record uh yourself are you self-produced or do you go you go to recording studios how does that work for you yeah i i used to do that um but nowadays what i'm doing i have just i've got all the mics and i've got the gear here to record it here my apartment in toronto so that's been really great um yeah and then as far as the mixing i will usually do that myself um but if not i might get a friend of mine to do it a high school friend or even another canadian guitar player uh antoine de four so he does mixing and mastering as well i usually send my masters to him usually does the mastering i really like his his touch uh the final touches that he does is really great right right that's great so are you are you self-released are you associated with a record label no you right now i'm self-released i only did that one album um movement with candy rat records but we had a falling out and uh something longer with them so everything's just self-produced right now yeah it's a lot of work i mean that that that's a full-time job in itself releasing your own music promoting it doing the social media stuff right so yeah amazing so is this how uh you mentioned how you had that traumatic you know experience uh when you're 18 i can just imagine how difficult that would be probably leaving friends behind and things like that and coming to a new country uh yeah that would be pretty traumatic i can just imagine so um so how do you feel now you feel nice and settled uh here in canada oh yeah yeah it's it's hard to leave canada and i think part of touring is that you start losing the sense of home you know and then when you come back you're like oh wow i can't miss this um so yeah toronto is definitely definitely my home and i guess broader thinking it's it's even canada i'm very grateful my whole family is very grateful that canada accepted us as refugees and now we're all very proud canadian citizens um and it's it's been great i mean it's really been a blessing in disguise as hard as it was at the time as you know with hardship and things like that we oftentimes don't know that what meaning it really has for us until later on in hindsight that we see the importance of it and why it happened and i've let i fee most of my music is fueled from that it's healed from hardship that has been overcome in some way right right so that comes out in the music the whole um oh i forgot my train of thought i had a question for oh yeah here here cause you know there's uh i do have uh guitarists who watch my channel um not everyone's a musician necessarily who watches my channel but um um i uh wanted to ask you a couple more things just uh to round out the interview we'll get a little bit to gear because of course the gear heads will be interested what gear you use maybe uh also i was curious if you've heard of alip Ba Ta because that's what kind of triggered the reacts to fingerstyle guitar on my channel i i had uh i don't know how i got the request someone requested me to react to this fingerstyle guitarist and i used to do some fingerstyle guitar in the late 90s i've been playing guitar most of my life and uh i went through a phase and i learned about don ross all these guitars and i was really into finger style composing and alternate you know detuning the guitar i mean that's part of it do you find that you just uh detune into some wacky tuning and just write a song in that tuning ? usually yes in the past that's definitely how a lot of my songs came out to be um that open c voicing the cg cc is actually from a don ross song um and so that's that's where i took it but that Capo was my little touch on it and then it just creates this whole really more mysterious sound which i really was gravitating toward so a lot of it is like exploration and experimentation um it doesn't help i mean it it doesn't hurt when um when again when there is hardship and there is difficulties in life that i kind of like to channel that through the guitar and that exploration is a way for me to deal with some of the hardship as well actually because it's like the canvas right that's the canvas and then you're now deciding to choose how you paint over that canvas with the notes that you're deciding and the harmony and stuff like that so yeah so i think a lot of it is that versus nowadays i would say it's a lot more technical it's like i i guess i understand harmony a lot better now i know my theory is a lot better than it used to be so i it's hard not to go into into theory land because when you start playing you start to realize oh that's the minor six of this and then you start to overthink it and so you know sometimes i'll just smoke a joint or something and just to relax myself that really helps to detach from the theory and just go more into an intuitive sense into what the song is is all about writing that way excellent now it's always uh instrumental right you're not a do you ever sing no no it's all instrumental yeah okay okay and uh do you ever intend to get into uh partnering with uh a band at some point? are you focusing on just being solo? what i really like is having a percussionist with me that is i think the most powerful connection that i've had and there's a really great player that that is here in toronto as well and he uh adds so much with this percussion to my own playing it's and it's so fun because we improvise a lot on stage too um so if i were to get back on the road i would i could see myself doing it with a percussionist because it just the show is just i think ten times better from that then it's less pressure on me too to just constantly focus on the guitar playing where i can let him do his own thing and he's very versatile so yeah i mean if anything uh and i've got a few songs out with him already like el cielo and ziwa yeah it's a really really fun journey um especially sometimes we invite a saxophone player as well so we got we got a different instrumentation um i love guitar music and all but i think having out non-guitar instruments is it just aids the guitar a little bit more and it makes it more musical it makes it a little bit more musical better than just guitar focus right that sounds really intriguing yeah so have you been uh have you been influenced at all like myself personally you mentioned you play some nylon string uh i found uh when i had a nylon string i got into playing uh kind of classical style and but then i kind of heard uh some uh some latin jazz and i started learning some more chords into the so the latin jazz does that influence you at all you mentioned the percussionist what kind of percussion would you be playing yeah so it'd be like a like a hybrid it'd be like cajon with the snare with with all the basically like a full kit but instead of him just sitting on himself he's got extra you know whistles and things like this and of course the cajon adds that like flamenco touch as far as latin jazz i'm i'm not too familiar too much with artists or bands but i guess the sound yeah i would say i could definitely be influenced by that yeah yeah cool and so let's uh that's a good segue into the gear if we could just talk a little about what kind of gear you use when you perform do you actually end up using pedals at all yeah so uh my guitar is a Cole Clark guitar it has a three-way pickup system so it's basically plug and play if if this if the room is set up and it's it's tuned to and it's it's nice and the frequencies are all there um then it basically is a plug and play thing as far as the pedals that i use i tend to use strymon pedals i'm in big sky and the strymon timeline those are my two main pedals and other than i just have a tuner pedal and also a tube screamer from ibanez uh just in case i needed to do a loop and then i want to solo on top of that but that's it i mean it's a reverb and delay again the guitar sounds natural enough that i don't need too much and i think the more you process the more you kind of lose that acoustic sound you know which is kind of what i'm going for but also i do like the effects because i do have an ability to sustain the notes a core and then solo on top that's really fun and i got an ebow that i usually bring on stage so i'm trying to make as many sounds as i can with the guitar and to not just have it all plucked because that ebow adds a whole new element uh which is like an electromagnetic field that basically makes it sound like a violin uh so there's no attack it's just like ah it's really nice really beautiful it's very haunting as well especially that in conjunction with the sustain uh chords the ability to sustain chords it makes it a really immersive sound wow and uh again i lost my train of thought that's so interesting what you were saying oh yeah - you mentioned looper - do you use one very much? um for like at home all the time for practicing purposes it's one of the best tools to get better as a player because it really makes you hone in on your timing as far as live goes it's rare that i use a looper maybe a handful of times i'm still exploring that if i really want to take it to that next level with that but honestly i just like doing at home um and i've got another project that's basically like a loop pedal -the cd that i'm working on right now- that's just loops what kind of brand of looper do you use or do you use a few? the boss... no- i just use the boss rc30 it's the one that has two pedals it's really minimal um again i don't i don't need the ones that have like multiple uh um channels which would be nice but again i just i like the the compact size right i don't like to have these just a big every you know it's kind of gets confusing so i like to have everything in a close uh proximity right right because if you i find that too if you give yourself too many options uh it's kind of uh i mean if you look back to the beatles they were recording on a say eight track or something you know nowadays uh on your laptop you could have 160 whatever channels if you wanted and there's so many endless even after you've recorded something you can reprocess it and change it and uh yeah i find that's why i like going back to my acoustic- i've got a nylon string i play mostly i've got also a martin steel string but there's something really comforting and grounding about just grabbing an acoustic instrument and dealing with the quote-unquote limitations of that and obviously there really are no limitations and i think uh you as an artist are and others too there's a lot of uh artists out there who are just demonstrating how there's there's no limit to what you can do with it with a simple instrument and it's a pretty marvelous i love guitar and i'm really glad to have interviewed you manelli and uh appreciate you took all the time here to talk with me and the audience and uh so i guess we'll wrap it up and uh thanks again for your time and i encourage everyone to check out the links below check out minelli's uh minelli jamal's site get some of his cds get some of his pdfs as uh i guess you produce when you make a song you make a a chart it all out so you can you can order for most songs yeah yeah especially the more technical stuff i do that just there's a lot of guitar heads out there who want to learn the music uh yeah it's my way of it's a lot of work but it's it's worth it i think once it's done it's done i don't have to and i think that's really wise because um when i made i had about an album worth of fingerstyle music but i didn't end up recording it properly and i kind of lost track because of the songs have all these different tunings had i done what you do do a pdf and put it all in notes i could actually remind myself how to replay my own songs that i compose and that's that's one of the tricky things about uh using an instrument where you're re-tuning it all the time that's tricky isn't it it is i mean because then you're basing it off of really muscle memory a lot of it's muscle memory that you're basing on so after a while as you know the muscle memory starts to go away um and so what i do is a mixture of recording with my phone just the audio and then also the video so i know what it looks like the shapes but usually i can figure it out from the audio stuff then i usually have in the audio files right tuning so i don't ever forget that but again i'm not too adventurous with tunings lately like i love standard tuning that's i just been falling in love with it because if i want to jam with others standard tuning is is my go-to i don't jam in alternate tunings with other people right right well thanks so much maneli for uh this interview my pleasure and uh hopefully we'll talk again and uh maybe i'll even uh be able to see if you're touring in bc or something or if i'm traveling to ontario and uh yeah i look forward to following your career and thanks very much for this interview.. yeah thanks for having me really appreciate it okay so you take care now you too cheers okay cheers
2022-03-23 01:03
