The Guitar Journal

Jesse Paliotto (00:08)
Hello everyone and welcome to the Guitar Journal podcast where we love to talk about making music, particularly through the lens of finger style guitar and a little bit of jazz sometimes. I'm your host, Jesse Pagliato. I love bringing the best of the music community to you here on the Guitar Journal podcast. Today I am so pumped to have with us Alex Misko. Excuse me, I can't talk straight today. Alex Misko. What's up man? Alex is...

Alex (00:28)
Hey! Hey! Hey Jesse, thanks so

much. Thank you for having me. Great, great pleasure.

Jesse Paliotto (00:34)
It is it is an honor man. I'm so glad you're here Just to give people little context on you in case they may not have run into you, which is unlikely Alex is a modern fingerstyle guitar prodigy. He has grabbed attention around the world with his innovative approach to guitar acoustic guitar particularly He's released five albums. He's been on big stages like Carnegie Hall He was named actually guitars to the year by UK's music radar a few years back You probably have run into his viral covers of like Billie Jean careless whisper

And then along with that, he also has his own songwriting. And the thing that really stands out is that he kind of brings together technical brilliance, musicality, and a really unique approach to acoustic guitar as well. So if you're not familiar with Alex, you will be after we get a chance to talk today. Great to have you, man.

Alex (01:19)
Thank you for such

a kind introduction and as I said, great, great chance for me, a great opportunity for me to be here because as I said, I stumbled across Jesse's podcast a few weeks ago and I saw so many friends there already. So all our Fingerstyle community, all the friends, all the people that I love are already here. So John Gong was here, Will McNichol was here, Trevor Gordon Hall and lots of other guys. So happy to be a small part of this growing family.

Jesse Paliotto (01:37)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

awesome. Glad to have you, man. Yeah, we've got some more folks on the way. think Andy McKeel will be on in a month or so. Callum Graham, just emailing with him. So, yeah, really cool to kind of get the community together and sort of still we're past COVID, still sort of a remote record from home way. Alex, I wanted to jump in a little bit at the beginning and just get a little context, because I had read on your website that you had studied classical guitar for like three years.

And then you dove right into modern fingerstyle guitar and are self taught. I'm really curious. How did you do that? Like how did you go about teaching yourself fingerstyle guitar? Or is that accurate? Did I I misinterpret that?

Alex (02:31)
That's pretty accurate, but I don't take full credit for being self-taught, because I'm not quite self-taught. would say I'm self-taught in fingerstyle, but it's not the same as when you're self-taught from scratch, when you just pick up the guitar and you instantly start doing fancy things and learn from the videos, from Andy McKee's videos or whatever. But I had classical training beforehand, so I wasn't super passionate about it. I just had nothing else to do because it was just my middle school years. I had video games and guitar.

Jesse Paliotto (02:36)
Mm.

Alex (03:00)
and I kind of started to go to this private classical guitar lessons and my teacher was kind enough to give me all the fundamentals that I needed. It's not like I have become a guitar virtuoso after that, but at least I knew the very basics, how to sit, how to hold your hands, how to learn to be relaxed, how to learn music, which is also very important, why it's important to learn the whole song, not just like...

Jesse Paliotto (03:17)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (03:24)
10 seconds of it and lose interest. you know, things like that and how to work with metronome, at least some basics. And then when I stumbled across fingerstyle on the internet, like Don Ross, Andy McKee, so all the classic fingerstyle players from early 2000s, 90s, so my biggest inspirations, I got so hooked by this music because it's like that's something that I needed so much in my life back then, obviously. I fell in love with music.

Jesse Paliotto (03:26)
Yeah.

Alex (03:48)
Technically, of course, it was very exciting because if you listen to some of that stuff just on the recording, you have no idea how it's been possible, which is exciting by itself. But when you listen to the music, you're like, that's beautiful. I want to play that. I want to make the sounds myself. I want to make this music myself. And that was very inspiring. And that's why I was just so passionate about it. So was just buying tablatures from the websites of these guys that I mentioned, watching videos hundreds of times.

Jesse Paliotto (04:13)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (04:18)
slowing some sections down, making sure that finding tons of mistakes in those tabs because, well, I'm a nerd and then complaining about it. Preston Reed still, well, remembers how was complaining about one of his tabs. And it's like when I was a kid. then, yeah, and you just like sit down and you play and you like spend eight hours doing that, but you're not tired. And it doesn't feel like it's exhausting or anything because...

Jesse Paliotto (04:24)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex (04:44)
After this eight hours, he realized that, I can play this first eight bars. Yes, they don't sound perfect yet, but they, well, it sounds kind of like that guy, kind of like my hero who plays on that recording. That was so motivating. It was so exciting. So I just spent a few years just learning hundreds of songs of all sorts of fingerstyle people. And that's where I picked up my, I guess, compositional and technical basics in fingerstyle.

Jesse Paliotto (04:54)
So.

Alex (05:08)
So my teacher could not really help me at that point because he was a straight up classical guitar player. he just, well, he doesn't have much interest in that. And also he doesn't have enough technical understanding because he never worked on that. But even though he could still help me with musicality of it. Because you don't have to be fingerstyle player to hear that you play out of tune or that you play out of time and things like that. So that's something he helped me. And then I just stopped doing lessons because I obviously realized that, well.

Jesse Paliotto (05:14)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah.

Alex (05:36)
It's very unlikely I would keep going with classical route. And since then, I'm basically learning everything by myself. And it turned out to be a never-ending process. So I'm still learning every day.

Jesse Paliotto (05:48)
Yeah, that's amazing and like a shout out to every fingerstyle guitar player out there who has put out tabs. It works. It helps people get into your songs. Yeah. And it's what strikes me about what you're talking about. There's a...

Alex (05:57)
Thanks so much guys!

Jesse Paliotto (06:05)
There was a book by guy named, I'm going to mispronounce his last name because it's a very difficult, I think it's a Czech last name. It's Mihaly Cechsimahaly. And he wrote a book called Creativity, another book called Flow. And his concept of flow is exactly what you were describing. Like when you get into something that when you do it, you lose track of time. You're completely absorbed. You're kind of living at the edge of your abilities where you're learning, but you're also able to kind of accomplish enough to feel like you're making progress. And that's really what he talks about, how creative people, when they can find things that they enter into,

state of flow like really like what just what you described that is like heaven like that's where you you know all of a sudden you find like I love this that's that's so what another question I'd had which I'll just jump to because I think it connects with this is you have a really unconventional approach to acoustic guitar can you talk about kind of some of the different stuff you do for people that may not have seen some of your videos like you're using percussive stuff pens

chopsticks, like you're using all kinds of like what are you doing and how do you approach saying I'm gonna try out this new thing. Like how do you do that?

Alex (07:14)
Well, that's a good question because I sometimes ask myself what makes me keep doing all that, what makes me keep searching for all these different sounds and everything because a lot of that is just experimentation. I wish I could say, you know, I have this genius idea in my head that it should sound exactly like that. I have this clear concept, like clear orchestral concept. Most of the time it's not. Sometimes it's just really some thing that you find like, I don't know, a CD.

or like compact disc that you put in between your strings, you start hitting it and instantly it sounds like a marching snare drum. And you're like, wow, I want to compose a song around it. I want to make my guitar sound not like a guitar because it's very exciting to me in the first place, but then it's even more of an interesting challenge to compose a meaningful piece of music around it. So you could present it on stage and aside from this funny, fancy looking things or different objects that you can use, all of that still makes sense musically. So there's tools.

Jesse Paliotto (08:09)
Yeah.

Alex (08:10)
kind of support the musical idea, but not just, you know, bring attention for a second and then just like, okay, well, he has this stuff, but he just not, he doesn't play anything meaningful. So it kind of was interesting for 10 seconds, but then it's all non-musical and boring. So yeah, and I think, I think it's just something in my head, something about my approach. And this is not like a DHD or any like, well, mental thing. It's more like just the fact of,

Jesse Paliotto (08:35)
Hmm.

Alex (08:38)
maybe not liking guitar in general, like not liking acoustic guitar sound in general, something like that, know, something that I picked up wrong instrument because it's like, at first it was kind of enough because you felt like there's still so much to learn and there's a lot of music to learn, but then you kind of discovered all sorts of techniques that you could pick up from all these different players like, well, Don Ross, John Gomme, Andy McKee, Mike Dawes, you've got to bring Mike Dawes as well, by the way.

and Petter Sariola, also my great friend and Mike's friend from Finland. And when you just learn so much stuff from all these people, at least from the technical standpoint, you realize that, I really can do so much. And then on top of that, I actually did so much music, like so many videos, so many albums. And in each song, I was trying to explore some new idea. Okay, let's like...

Jesse Paliotto (09:03)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's great.

Alex (09:31)
I can play harmonics with one finger. Let's do two finger harmonics at the same time. Let's compose the whole song around it. But just once, because, OK, this idea is already there. I did it in that one song. I don't need to go back to it anymore. OK, let's just do, I don't know, half capo or spider capo thing or Ebo song or Chopstick song or whatever. And then it's like, what else to do? And I think all of my things that I came up with later, so, for example, just to give a context now. So now I'm playing my so-called Frankenstein guitar.

that we built in collaboration with German brand called Baton Rouge, so not the one that's in Louisiana, but it's just a German company that happens to have the same name. And it's a guitar that's super unique, and this guitar is inspired by every guitar player and also Michael Manring, the bass player, in one. So this guitar has triple detuning system, which means that I can detune my strings from...

Jesse Paliotto (10:03)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alex (10:24)
all the sides like this on the fly within the song musically because it's all levers it's all pre-set mechanisms where I can well basically take one note and change the tuning of that note just using this levers from both side and eventually have four notes per string playing it once and then just doing this and having four different notes because it was boring using just one

Jesse Paliotto (10:45)
That's incredible.

Alex (10:49)
no tuning change you wanted to and then you want to three and then you want for them at some point you can just i can just just got bored playing normal drums and guitar because well my guitar looks like all beaten up and destroyed because you tried all sorts of scratching you tried all sorts of brushing you tried all sorts of drumming and at some point it just not inspiring you just pick up the guitar and no matter what you play at least sonically like dearly you you realize that it's just

doesn't sound like anything new. You realize that you can compose the same song over and over again. I mean, not compositionally, but I would say technically. And then, OK, I realized that what if I buy some add-ons that some percussion companies, manufacturers produce? And that's what I did. So I just installed some metal strings that's reminiscent of snare drum, for example.

kinda like a real snare drum, there's like a wooden plate with snare

underneath that you put on the side of the guitar and you hit the snare where you normally hit the side of the guitar but instead of the wooden clap you get a string clap

Jesse Paliotto (11:46)
that you put on the side of the guitar and you hit the snare where you normally hit the side of the guitar but instead of the wooden clap you get

Alex (11:52)
so then I hit the side of my guitar and now it's not a wooden sound anymore, but it's almost like a real snare sound because the strings are rattling inside. And the same goes for my metal hi-hat that I have on my guitar and so on. I can show you the guitar later when we get closer about it. But the idea is that all that stuff inspired me to compose music again. And all of that stuff is just so I wouldn't stop playing. Otherwise I would stop playing. It just feels like, and it's not some, you know, as I said,

Jesse Paliotto (12:06)
Yeah, that'd be great.

Hmm.

Alex (12:20)
deficit of attention or whatever it just feels like it's boring it's boring when there is when there's nothing that excites me anymore when i feel like i tried this i tried that i tried this and to me this technical approach is as much as important as compositional approach because my music can come like note wise speaking musical is speaking is very simple i want to write pop music so i don't want to go into exploration of jazz harmonies and micro tonality on complicated things that's not interesting for me sonic sonical perspective is much more interesting when i go on stage the idea is that

Jesse Paliotto (12:23)
Yeah.

Alex (12:49)
If even if the audience, even if some particular person doesn't like my choice of notes, which is a personal taste, which is a personal preference, it's okay. You don't have to like my music because of my choice of notes. It's normal. You like other choice of notes. You have other idea of how music should sound, but you would be excited and probably you would see so many things for the first time. It would be like, well, I'm not quite a fan of this song, but I never could imagine that the guitar could be used in such way. I could never imagine that you could get the such sounds from

Jesse Paliotto (12:58)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alex (13:17)
this guitar and I'm talking about extreme ways. I'm not talking about playing bass and drums at the same time. Everybody does it in the fingerstyle. This is boring. You want to like have ebos, want to have chopsticks, you want to have the real orchestral sounds, you want to have prepared guitar ideas like as I said this DVD thing or CD thing stuck in between the strings that sound like a marching snare drum adding reverbs, delays, making it sound huge and convincing on stage and that's what I mean by oh God, I had no idea that

Jesse Paliotto (13:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alex (13:45)
you could go that extreme because that's also inspiring. I want to show that to people. Look, you don't have to use, you don't have to take all of my ideas and try to imitate me because it's really complicated at this point because well, even the guitar works only for me. I can barely control the guitar. It's extremely hard to play, but I just want to show people that, look, if you want to, you can do anything with the guitar. You can use any part of it. You can install anything on it. And nobody would tell you no, because there's no...

Jesse Paliotto (14:07)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (14:14)
school of playing fingerstyle. There is no rules and we gotta use that. We gotta use it as our advantage and try to do music and try to compose music for this weird instrument to have this kind of artistic and cultural statement. Look, I can push my boundaries in such way and hopefully it would inspire other people to do the same in their own ways.

Jesse Paliotto (14:34)
You made a very passing comment that to me I'm just going to hook into. If you could not play guitar, what would you play?

Alex (14:41)
drums and do rap. That's for sure. Yeah, both of my passions.

Jesse Paliotto (14:42)
Ha!

Drums and rap, is that what you said? That's funny. That's amazing.

Yeah, because I mean, it's interesting that a lot of what you said resonates with me that fingerstyle guitar is not only about note selection, it's about textures and what kind of effects I can get out of this instrument.

that in a lot of genres is really just strumming in the background. In most rock country songs, acoustic guitar is just doom-chicka-doom-chicka-chicka. And I'm going to create the sonic palette that is just out of control. People have no idea. The other thing that I'm curious your thought on this, because it strikes me that a lot of fingerstyle guitar also is as much a visual performance as it is a...

auditory performance that you know part of what's amazing is watching hey there's this one guy doing all of this on one instrument. Do you think that's accurate that it's that sort of what I call it just the amazement of that is is part of the element of what makes the the music interesting?

Alex (15:54)
Well, it's definitely something that, yeah, you're right. In short answer, yes, because we cannot deny that. Because, a lot of success of fingerstyle, especially in YouTube era, so in our internet era, based around this visual factor. Of course, it's great when the music is good too, but you can also kind of be just visual at some point and it's already would be pretty exciting for people. Maybe not on YouTube because the choice of what to watch and what to listen, especially nowadays, it's like...

Jesse Paliotto (15:59)
Yeah.

Yes.

Alex (16:23)
humongous it's like you can choose anything you can find the best music ever but on stage for especially for non-guitar players if i just go on stage and go like all the stuff non-musical out of tempo whatever but in open tuning so everything sounds okay it's gonna be impressive okay maybe not for the whole hour but for five minutes it's gonna be impressive you're gonna grab the attention because you're gonna be like wow it's a guitar player but he does so

Jesse Paliotto (16:36)
Right, Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex (16:47)
so many cool interesting things I never saw before and does it convincingly. If you do it convincingly with like proper music face, know, like vibing to it, it's all out of time. It's all like non-musical. There's no melody or anything. But if you like do it convincingly, if you like go there, it's going to work out. And this is not a criticism. It's not a sarcasm. Just, I mean, it's okay too. It's like, it's fine. It's such an impressive, it can be so impressive. So even playing out of time, out of tune and out of, well, big musical goal, still going to work out.

Jesse Paliotto (16:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Still amazing, yeah.

Alex (17:17)
at least for five minutes

open mic open mic show one song perfect and

Jesse Paliotto (17:22)
It's funny you say this. I have a buddy

who has a story that him either with a band and they're at this event where there's a number of bands that went on and they went on last or next to last and they had all been these huge bands. And so the guys, the two guys got up and the one guy just I think did acoustic guitar.

They're like, we're not doing our whole band after what you guys just saw for the last hour and a half. We're not doing that. So the one guy who just pulled out an acoustic guitar and then his buddy, the drummer, did exactly that. He had a microphone and was just playing his chest and doing stuff. And he said that everybody loved it because it was such a shift from everything they had been blasted with this huge music for an hour and a half and then all of sudden these guys, anyway, sorry, side story, just a very funny thing.

Alex (17:52)
The body percussion, body percussion.

Yeah, mean, no, no,

it's a great story. I'm just saying it's like, yeah, but of course, the visual factor seems to be a very important part of it. But at the same time, it's nice. I'm not saying it's necessary or anything. I'm not like being an elitist, but it's nice when the music behind it is good, too. I think that's one of the reasons why we can explain drifting success. So famous Andy McKee song, of the first, actually the first ever.

Jesse Paliotto (18:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alex (18:29)
big finger style hit like very historical moment of on YouTube in 2006 right where when Andy recorded drifting at Rob Paulins home so the owner of Candy Red Rackers label when they just recorded that at his living room uploaded on YouTube and it just exploded all over the world because well the time was right so the YouTube had the same main page for the whole countries around the world so the whole world suddenly saw Andy McKee playing drifting on the front page of YouTube which is impossible now because we all have

Jesse Paliotto (18:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alex (18:56)
our personalized feeds and stuff so obviously it's not going to work anymore. It stopped working for two decades already. anyways, but then it's like, yeah, okay, all these people had a chance to see Andy playing fingerstyle music instantly, this niche stuff for the whole world, but why people actually loved it and connected and still it's such a...

Jesse Paliotto (18:57)
huh.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Alex (19:20)
such an important song for the whole guitar community in general, not just for fingerstyle, it's just because it's a good music, it's just a nice singable tune, with an easy structure that you can follow, even technically it's not even crazy, you don't have to be crazy virtuoso to pull it off, you don't have have a special guitar, you don't have to do anything crazy, it's gonna work, and it's really good music, it's a really nice melody, and you can play it on any instrument and it's gonna sound good.

So I think that's a great example of what I think the fingerstyle embodies. It's like, yes, it's visual. Yes, there's a lot of excitement, especially for guitar players who like, oh, I never saw people playing like that over the hand tapping. Jesus Christ, this is impossible. I was shocked, too. At some point, I was thinking that he even flipped the strings. I was thinking that his sixth string was below because it looked so weird. So was thinking, OK, if he went to such length of even flipping the hands,

Jesse Paliotto (19:52)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alex (20:19)
like that, then why he wouldn't just flip the strings as well for whatever musical reason, right? But then I noticed, no, no, just normal guitar, he just plays it that way. And I wanted to learn. And then you found the tabs, tons of really bad tabs on the internet since those years. And you'd like, and you like go like, boom, and it's, wow, it works. And this is like, well, that's the moment of excitement. This song alone brought so many people into...

Jesse Paliotto (20:23)
Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex (20:44)
into our fingerstyle niche back then and I think still bringing and that's why it's like such a milestone. yeah, visual is, visuality is very important. That's the part of it why fingerstyle concerts are a thing because if you just sit with a guitar and just, and the music is nothing special and when it's also not exciting to watch, it kind of, I guess it really doesn't make sense. not just, it wouldn't be in demand, but if, but the showmanship is important because by the end of the day,

even in such an issue as fingerstyle, it's still a music business entertainment. If it would be just about your virtuoso or compositional abilities, then the whole music world would be totally different. We would be listening only to proper classical opera singing 20 long, 20 minute long, kind of Queen like, Pink Floyd like songs. But obviously the visual factor, the entertainment factor, the character, the charisma factor is as much as important or probably even more important than what kind of music you do and how you do it.

Jesse Paliotto (21:41)
Yeah, there's a joke somebody told me once that the more extensions you add to a chord, the less you get paid. And so just playing a G chord and a C chord will get you paid. If you start playing flat nines and make it more sonically interesting, it's actually less.

Alex (21:56)
And less

females you have in the audience as well. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, it's music for guitar players and their girlfriends who they bring to the shows.

Jesse Paliotto (22:03)
It is true, you're get a bunch of other guitar players out there where you're just playing for other musicians. You're like, this is just, we're gonna out nerd each other on what I can play. I, you know.

Yes.

I wanted

to ask, mean, kind of as an expression of like the different sonic stuff we've been talking about, the different things that you can do with your instrument. I loved your cover of With or Without You, the U2 song, which you incorporate a whole bunch of different textures in there. I know that your cover of Billie Jean, I think, was kind of your own like...

big YouTube moment where it got a lot of views and stuff. I'm curious, like when you look at, and a lot of fingerstyle guitar players do covers of songs, I would say some that's mostly what they do is they rearrange other people's songs for the acoustic guitar. How do you pick them? How do you know like this is a good cover? There's so many out there. takes, know, John Gomm and I were talking about this last week. It takes so much effort to arrange a cover that it's almost as if you're doing as much work as writing your own song.

So it's really important, like picking ones that you're into. how do you, do you have a method to the madness or how do you do it?

Alex (23:20)
Well, yeah, I have a lot of more kind of maybe controversial thoughts about it that's based on my experience because I believe that, well, just a lot of, well, doing covers in general in such an issue genre or just in general doing covers is a great way to attract audience to what you're doing. So I would say it's like, I know for sure that John does it because he loves those songs.

Jesse Paliotto (23:41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alex (23:47)
That's why he has like three or four covers throughout his whole career. Like the same goes for Andy. He just did two or three covers throughout his whole like 20, 30 year old span of career. But in my case, and maybe in case of this kind of new generation of players, it's different. And the question is if it comes from sincere love of those songs, if it comes from the fact of like, okay, this is really what I like to do. I love...

playing other people's music, rearranging it for guitar and sharing that with the audience online and feeling happy about it. If it's that, it's all good, it's all fine, no problem with that, beautiful. Keep doing that. But in my case, it was never like that. was always a vehicle of bringing new audience to hopefully take, so hopefully some of those people will be interested enough to check my original music. That was never...

Jesse Paliotto (24:39)
Mm.

Alex (24:40)
good and on par at that point, well I believe now it's now got much better but well not obviously not from the very beginning because it's compositional process is something that you also takes the whole lifetime to learn. So of course my original music wasn't on par with my covers back then because well it doesn't it doesn't take my it should not take too much credit for doing a cover song of of a genius song like Billie Jean. I mean it's not your achievement that you it's I mean those catchy lines and catchy bass lines and great hooks and everything it's not you.

Jesse Paliotto (24:50)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Alex (25:09)
It's not something that you can post. You can play Billie Jean melody on one string. You can play the melody on one string and everybody's going to recognize it and everybody's going to love it. It's not because you're a special guitar player. It's not because you're doing something crazy outstanding. It's just because it's such a good song. So it's recognizable when you play it on one string. It's just such an effective melody. It's such a great songwriting. And nobody should take credit for that aside from the original authors or whatever. But it's effective way of it used to be.

now not really now but back then in the times where some of those my covers were getting going viral it used to be a great way of attracting new audiences and i was thinking of that as just vehicles of of trying out new techniques of trying out what's possible to do like okay so i don't like the song or like i mean i'm not a fan of all the songs this is also something that's very important you don't want to ruin the song that you actually like because

I can name only one, two, three, I don't know, covers that I know and I listen to a lot of covers that I would listen to over the original. So it means that inherently, inherently it means that we're making a subproduct of something that's naturally better. It's not gonna be even as good, it's gonna be worse. It's gonna be different, okay, but it's not gonna be, most likely it's gonna be a subproduct. And I mean, it's a subproduct anyways, but I'm just saying most likely it's not gonna be.

Jesse Paliotto (26:12)
yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Alex (26:32)
as good. And then it's like, what's the point of all that? What's the point of even of kind of settling for setting yourself for mediocrity? Because you're going to make a great song mediocre just by the simple fact that you still simplified by putting all these different lines on one guitar, inevitably losing a lot of musical material because you have to play it on one instrument, not in a band setting. And on top of that,

Jesse Paliotto (26:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alex (26:58)
use the most important thing most of the time if it's not an instrumental use the lyrics you use the vocal delivery you use the unique tone of the voice because that's so important you can use all sorts of embellishments like slides and trills and whatever but none of that would ever fully imitate or fully replace the real vocals the real tone of the singing voice that people love that people connect that people feel emotions like no matter how cheesy my heart will go on song is because it's overplayed and but it's like

but it's a beautiful song and when you listen to the original version of it, of the original take of how Celine Dion did it in the studio back then, it makes you cry, it makes you relate to every word of hers, even if you never watched Titanic movie, because it's just so powerful. Regardless of the fact, if you're not trying to play an elitist, like, it's overplayed and it's cheesy, I like progressive metal. No, it's not that just so powerful. And when you hear the cover song of that,

Jesse Paliotto (27:39)
Right.

You

Alex (27:55)
song you're like well okay i can recognize it but it's never as powerful it will never i mean it will never it's not it's absolutely not the same you need that voice you need those lyrics you need to hear that so yeah that's why i i find it important to be honest about it like okay i'm happy that people enjoy my covers but i have no personal connection to that i just like it used to be a marketing tool to bring people to my

Jesse Paliotto (27:58)
Yeah, it's not the same.

Alex (28:17)
music that maybe wasn't as good back then but it still was effective because people still were listening and playing my music, they still do and I think a lot of people in fingerstyle, not a lot, I don't want to talk for other people but I'm not sure if all the other guys would do something similar like I used to do or still do now, I don't think they do that for...

for the sake of music. I think it's also like a commercial strategy behind it. And I think it's important to be honest about it that, I don't care for this music. I have something else that I'm passionate about. And I would want to bring you guys to listen to something that I'm truly passionate about it. Because if it would be just about creating subproducts or something that I'm not happy about, of this whole concept, then I would stop at some point because it's just not, artistically, it's not fulfilling.

Jesse Paliotto (28:38)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Alex (29:06)
Unless if you like what you're doing, unless if you like creating that, then it's not, then we're not talking about subproduct and all this like fancy criticizing or like diminishing, you know, de-evaluating terms, because I'm using very de-evaluating terms now because, because this is just my, because I have very bitter feeling about it.

But if you really enjoy doing that, then I have no problem with that. So I don't want to sit here like a critic who just like, you guys, you all just don't want to say it out loud that you just do it for views or whatever. No, it's not my business. I'm just talking about myself. I just feel like, well, it would be nice to bring more original music in the subgenre, in our niche, because it feels like, well, when we create all this...

Jesse Paliotto (29:21)
Yeah.

Mm.

Alex (29:48)
experimental instruments, all these incredible ideas, all these new techniques, you would want to explore them in the context of original music, where you're not limited of playing four chords for the four minutes of this without your song, without any change, it just...

Jesse Paliotto (30:02)
I know that is

Alex (30:05)
It's just boring. It's just, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like

Jesse Paliotto (30:05)
that song in particular is very repetitive. Yeah.

Alex (30:09)
any other song. mean, most of the songs have just three or four chords, very simple melodies because, okay, you don't need a complicated, interesting melody when it's a vocal. But on the instrument, most of the vocal songs would sound pretty boring. Like even Billie Jean, it's a bad song. Instrumentally, it's a bad song. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. That's all vocal in the verse. What it is about. Yeah, but you want to listen to Michael singing that with all his like,

Jesse Paliotto (30:30)
Alright.

Yes.

Alex (30:35)
quirkiness and charisma to it and like everything that's that's what it shines but not when I play it on one string and go yeah what is that but the approach was and is if I do cover I'm not against covers but I the approach is just to explore new technical things that I could later apply to my original music that would make me really excited but the process of creating cover still exciting from a technical standpoint

Jesse Paliotto (30:41)
Yeah, you lose.

Mm-hmm.

Alex (30:58)
Yes, you don't care for the song, but it's even better because you're not afraid that you're gonna spoil your connection to the song because you would listen to it too much or because you would create something that's not as good. So I take it very easy. And on top of that, you explore new techniques, then you think, okay, well, probably this one looks fancy. This one has a lot of cool techniques, probably is gonna get a lot of views and I might get something out of

But then the internet changed and it's a totally different topic to talk about. internet changed and now it doesn't matter if you do covers or originals, which is even better. So now everything gets compressed into short vertical videos and you just got to be exciting. You should get to be incredibly convincing. Also incredibly technical still because it's a well guitar oriented musician community, but it's thankfully it doesn't matter anymore what you play. So it's not like it's either you do covers or you die in poverty because well, nobody cares for your original music.

Jesse Paliotto (31:31)
Yeah.

Yeah the

Alex (31:51)
So now it got

a bit easier.

Jesse Paliotto (31:54)
Yeah, the playing field got leveled sort of. There isn't this huge commercial free advantage you get out of doing covers, I guess. You said so many good things there. Partly what struck me was, covers did have a real advantage. They are a gateway drug for fingerstyle guitar where somebody goes, I know the song, so I'm willing to listen. But I didn't know you could play like that. One of the things that you said that you kind of implied, but was that

Alex (31:57)
Hmm

Jesse Paliotto (32:24)
when you're learning. So the song that you're going to cover is usually a great song. As you're learning guitar, you may not be a great musician yet. So it's a way for you to kind of like learn. It's a it's a say, OK, I'm to figure out how do you play a great song and you internalize it. So there's a really great learning tool. But the thing that I was really curious at the end there while you're talking is it almost feels like this parallel with early jazz and all jazz, but typically early jazz used. They did covers, right?

When you hear somebody doing, isn't it romantic, Louis Armstrong or somebody, they're doing a cover of a musical theater song, right? And then they're interpreting it in their way, in a way that provides some accessibility to audience. But then they go do bebop stuff over it or whatever. And it just strikes me that fingerstyle guitar has a little bit of the same methodology where in order to kind of connect the audience, our musical interest and what's good out there in the world of music.

we do these kind of reinterpretations. And one that I love, which I know that you just did a duo with Thomas Lieb, his early song, No Woman Don't Cry, he did Bob Marley, he did a cover of it, is so good on its own, as its own vibe, groove, and everything, that even though I know it's the other song, it's one of those few where I'm like, should just listen to this on its own without listening to Bob Marley's version.

Alex (33:45)
Yeah, that's

a great example. Dust cover is better than original. Not better, but it's so unique, it's so Thomas. So it feels like it's his song in a way.

Jesse Paliotto (33:49)
Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, like you're really creating a separate thing. Same with that with the jazz thing, like listening to John Coltrane do my favorite things is a totally different experience than listening to the sound of music and my favorite things. And yet, you know, they're both good on their own. They don't they don't fall into what you said, where you feel like you're trading like they're in some

positioning.

I'm going to jump to a different topic and we kind of got into it there with the Thomas Lieb thing. You seem to do a lot of collaborations. I know you've done one with Dmitri Toparov, which I loved song for Max off of the album that you did with him is in my kind of regular rotation. You did some stuff, I think, with Pavel Stepanov than the Thomas Lieb one this year, which, funny enough, I think was like it just came out, I think, within the last month or two. And I cannot. How do you say the name?

Alex (34:40)
Yeah, we recorded a long time ago.

The name is Orkatsl-Schwof. It's an Austrian word. It just means the squirrel's tail. It's a tongue twister. also it's in a very heavy Austrian dialect. So this is not like, it's not even like normal German, let's say. So this is like, it's a tongue twister to scare the foreigners away.

Jesse Paliotto (34:51)
cut, slash, 12.

Okay.

That's funny, because

even in English, squirrel, it can be a hard word for people coming from other language. Yeah. Yeah. So with with with doing collaborations, how do you think about that? Is that something that allows you to try to do different material that you normally couldn't do on your own? Or is it more just about personal connection or just kind of staying creative, trying new things? How do you approach those?

Alex (35:08)
Yeah

everything and to me collaborations uh actually saved well not they kind of saved me from total creative boredom uh during my transitional transitional transitional period like let's say i released my last my final big solo album final the last one in 2009 in 2019 it was my round trip album so before the covid hit and then i kind of put so many ideas and i was in such creative rush for that album i composed like i don't know 25 songs only 15

Jesse Paliotto (35:34)
You

Alex (35:55)
stayed on the album so it was a lot of work and I was just super creative all the time, was composing things, was working on things all the time and then Covid happened and then I realized okay I released my solo album now I feel like totally uninspired I don't know what to do I cannot compose anymore it feels like I well explored everything and then it took me like basically four years after that point to build well the Frankenstein guitar with all the levers and additional things additional sonic textures that made me inspired again to write solo music but within that let's say three four years spectrum of my

solo hiatus. I still did like two or three albums, like tons of singles because of collaborations. And it started with collaboration with Dmitry, actually, it's a great bass player from Russia. And because he's my good friend, and we were always hanging out. And then we realized that, okay, COVID is a great time to actually get together and compose music in the same room together, like old school musicians, not online.

Jesse Paliotto (36:34)
Hmm.

What up backwards?

Everybody else in COVID's like, I'm going to record a solo album by myself. You're like, no, that's when we're getting together.

Alex (36:53)
I'm

Yeah, well because

I'm not finally not on tour. I'm finally at home there everything got cancelled Obviously, there is no perspective song on doing anything traveling traveling wise for for the next until the next year He is also kind of won't he lives in the same seat in the next city the next next to mine and we like okay Let's just do something fun. We've been by that time already did one single because we just had all the two singles song from X with the second one and they were like, okay,

so fun to work together, just vibing so good. Let's just do the whole album, but like old school musicians. So we were sitting together, just sharing ideas, playing like, okay, is that good? Let's change this and that. I think this is such a precious moment when it's not like just like a guitar player brings the fully composed song to a drummer and bass player. And they're like, okay, let's just work with what we have. No, it's like, it's a totally different process when you just discuss things on the fly where each section is kind of composed together in this, and there's the synergy of creativity.

Jesse Paliotto (37:33)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (37:51)
Robert was calling fragile frontiers in interview. It's very close to this feeling. What I discovered is that it's really interesting and not easy to put a fingerstyle guitar in the context with other instruments. Because, well, normally you play that bass line, you are the bass player, you put so much time and effort into figuring out those bass notes, you don't want to give them away. No, it's my music, it's my notes, I'm not going to let you play that.

Jesse Paliotto (37:54)
Yeah, yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Alex (38:20)
That would work, I would kind feel this way if it would be taking already existing song of mine and trying to add new instruments on top. Because that's the problem of fingerstyle music, especially very dense fingerstyle music where there's a lot of things happening, is that there's just no space for the instruments. So most of the time it's not a good idea to add, at least to me, it feels like it's not a good idea to take some whatever drifting song or like some classic fingerstyle song and try to add the second guitar on it because just nothing to play there. Everything is already there.

Jesse Paliotto (38:33)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (38:50)
But the composing thing from scratch is totally different thing because even though Dmitry is a bass player, but he plays crazy fingerstyle on bass, it means that he can do solos, he can do fingerstyle, he can do tapping, he can do harmonics, he can do basslines, real basslines where I can focus on my melodies and drums. So basically most of the album I play melodies, drums, harmonies, sometimes we switch, I play bass and he plays melodies and it's just...

Jesse Paliotto (38:53)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alex (39:12)
It

was so fun and so refreshing and so interesting to work on that and I felt so inspired. I'm still proud of this album. think every song is really special to me. I think it's a great compositions and technically there's a lot of pushing boundaries things happening. then I started working with a harp player with Alexander Bolichev, one of the best harp players on planet earth. He's really one of the best. And so we played in Carlinger Hall together. then I do this sporadic.

spontaneous collaborations with Thomas, with other guys in the community, did collaborations with like short videos like with Adrian Belou, the great American fingerstyle player, with who else? Well anyways, there's a few, mean sometimes just short videos for Instagram, like with Jong-Gong for example, we did collaboration with Dmitry and John, so it's like, I think it's super refreshing to put

Jesse Paliotto (39:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Alex (40:09)
two fingerstyle guys together and try to come up with something on the fly with a limited amount of time taking one of their songs and try to do something about it or if you have time even compose something from scratch that would be so much better so it's a like heart and soul project it's not about views it's not about anything it's really strictly for being happy that we are all together because we're all loners right so we all like single guitar player guys who just travel around the world and there's not that much of a human connection within the community it's really hard to catch each other on the road it's really hard to

Jesse Paliotto (40:38)
Hmm.

Alex (40:39)
Well, keep the friendship more personal than just this long distance thing when we see each other once a year at NAMM. And all the other time we just follow each other on Instagram and send each other a few messages. So these moments are really precious. And I think it's also important that when you do collaborations with, let's say, OGs, the older generation like Thomas, or I would also love to do collaboration like Andy McKee with Preston Reed, with John Gomes, something more proper than what we did back then. I think it also creates this thread.

Jesse Paliotto (40:46)
Right.

Alex (41:08)
of continuity of like, let's say, so the generational thing. So, okay, I'm trying to bring this older guys to, well, older, they're not old. Like I say, previous generation, the people who inspired me, I'm trying to bring them to my audience to show that, look, this is the people I got inspired from. And now like after 15 years of like studying their music or like working together, we are like friends now, and now we can, now we create music together and we like kind of create this well, generational.

Jesse Paliotto (41:25)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Alex (41:36)
mixture of new and old and we also make sure that this old older people they're they're not going to be forgotten because it's thomas is not really active musically and because the world is so fast and social media is so overwhelmed with everything well there's a tendency that if you're not only present people just kind of start to forget that you exist that's really it's a really bitter feeling of course i mean not saying forgetting like you know in a harsh sense of this word but it's important to be only present that's how world works now

Jesse Paliotto (41:39)
I love that.

Mm-hmm.

Alex (42:04)
And

on top of that, aside from this whole generational thing, because I do that also with younger audience, with younger generation players as well, is that I think it's so important to show the world and show the community that we are all friends. there's not that many people who do that, whether on the internet or the touring. And it's important to keep us all connected, keep us all together. So we're not fighting for booking opportunities. We're not comparing each other's views of who's more successful, who's less successful. All of that doesn't matter.

Jesse Paliotto (42:18)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Alex (42:34)
It's like all of that comes strictly from the perspective of, we both love what we're doing. We're like really deeply into this community, into this music. We're here because of, well, this particular people that we got inspired from. And we just want to have fun together. We just wanted to create some good memory together. We just want to show others that, look, we can do collaborations with you, with you, with you, just to keep everybody closer, just to keep this human connection within the community, well, stronger.

At least that's my goal, that's how I think about it.

Jesse Paliotto (43:05)
That's an awesome goal. yeah, even so it's interesting, like you said, solo as a solo instrumentalist, it's very easy to get isolated. You these you mentioned multiple things there, but one of those was the connection to the community and the ability to really create community. I'm curious when you're touring that I would imagine can be a.

Difficult time because you're out by yourself basically, especially if you're not part of some like tour where there's multiple instrumentalists like I know sometimes there'll be a You and then Andy will do a show or whatever. But if you're out by yourself, how do you keep mental health going when you're out on the road by yourself? Is there any any strategy or what's that like when you're you know, it's you in airports for three months or whatever it is

Alex (43:54)
Well, that's a great question. think I can try to keep it more structured than I always do. feel like I'm going a bit all over the place. I'm just excited. Just really, really well. I think we're talking about some really well, topics that resonate with me heavily. And I also will first want to start that I really like what Trevor said in his podcast about mental health. And but he was talking about, well, more like social media side when you can tend to compare yourself with other people because everything has metrics.

Jesse Paliotto (44:02)
No, I love it, man. It's great.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Alex (44:22)
But talking about something that's more, let's say, real life oriented. So when you actually have to travel a lot by yourself, have to play concerts by yourself, then travel the next day by yourself, and it might be lasting for a long time until you get back home. But then even if you get back home, you also might find yourself there just on your own. Because that doesn't necessarily mean that you have a family, or you even have a girlfriend, or parents. You might just really be there by yourself. And I figured out that with years, it's like this mental health

Jesse Paliotto (44:26)
Yeah.

Alex (44:52)
issues and mental health problems that you kind of don't seem to notice, they kind of start to pop up in some very nasty ways, because it just feels at some point there's a lot of things are bubbling inside of you. And then at some point you just realize that you might get depressed or you might get sad for some reason, or you just start to realize that, okay, this is loneliness. This is how I feel lonely now, because before that, maybe when you were younger, you always managed to...

Jesse Paliotto (45:01)
Mm.

Hmm.

Alex (45:20)
put the stuff away, or you were thinking that if you would get if you would get busy, if you would be always on the road, if you would always have things to do, here's emails, here's the concert, here's the tickets to buy, here's the hotel to book, it feels like this type of, well, let's say, hectic life might also distract you a little bit from some deeper, let's say, insecurities, even or low self esteem issues or whatever, need of external validation, it might distract you, but then

What if all this black hole inside of you would be catching up on you when you're already doing that? When you realize that, now you still have the hectic life after this 15 years, but now you realize that all this coping mechanism that you figured out for yourself, they don't seem to work anymore. You still feel lonely, you still feel sad, you still feel like you're not happy. And I think this is like, well, it's not like I'm not referring only to my own experience because I have to go through that a lot. have to really, well, sometimes at least...

Jesse Paliotto (45:54)
Yeah, yeah.

Alex (46:16)
well, taking therapy, because I think this is something that turned out to be so important, this is something I cannot recommend enough to all the people from the age of two, because it feels like, I mean, all of us have so many unresolved things, and I'm not talking about this pretentious Freud childhood traumas, whatever, we all have that anyways, but even what's happening now, even with so much stress that we have, and also kind of a social isolation as well, because...

Jesse Paliotto (46:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Alex (46:43)
Well,

not all of us have a lot of friends or have a friend that would be just right there next to you who would be able to share something with you or even who would be able to reflect your inner struggle properly. Maybe you wouldn't want to have an unsolicited advice from a friend, even if it's your close friend, but then that friend just doesn't have any other tools to give you.

Jesse Paliotto (46:56)
Yeah.

Right.

Alex (47:04)
He or she sincerely tries to help, but this is not quite what you need and you get hurt by that and then you don't want to share anything anymore with people. know, it's something like that. This is just like, as I said, pinpoint examples from here and there. But I'm just saying that all that is kind of being fixed more or less by mental health awareness at first, at least knowing how to feel emotions, because this is something that I also never, never realized that. OK, how come? Like, how do I feel? I feel lonely. I feel sad. I feel scared.

I feel like I need guidance, whatever, know, all this like clear statements that you can validate what you feel. And this is also not easy. mean, how many people can actually say something like that? How many people can tell you right in the face, know, like, you know, Jesse, I'm scared. I need your support now. Like, no, it's like, yeah, it's like they would be going in all sorts of manipulative ways until like all sorts of saying, oh, you don't love me anymore. Or like, you don't care for me or whatever. I'm not talking about relationship, with the, but whatever.

Jesse Paliotto (47:49)
Right. It's hard.

But they're trying to provoke a response

to get you to, yeah. Yeah.

Alex (48:03)
Yeah, instead of just saying that directly, instead of just saying

it would be so much more effective. It would be making your bond with that person, whether it's a friend or spouse or partner, so much stronger. And I'm just talking about all that has to do nothing with music, but all that eventually, because we're all adult people who have to handle life, not only music-wise, it's not only about fun, nerdy things and pedals and strings and fancy levers and guitars and fancy songs. Of course, there's a lot of creative output and lot of emotional output and like...

Jesse Paliotto (48:25)
Yeah.

Alex (48:33)
Coping as well through music that you can do, but it's not enough. What I figured out, it's not enough. Music and even your best passion that you have in your life, it seems to be it's not always can save you. It can save you from this heavy feelings of all sorts that you're going through. And that's why I'm saying in general, like mental health awareness and just taking therapy if you feel like you need help and learning how to learn your emotions, well, learning how to feel your emotions, how to name them and how to validate them.

Jesse Paliotto (48:54)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (49:02)
And then from that, trying to see what you're lacking, what you need. Do you need a friend or do you or why you feel lonely or what's wrong or why you try to cope with things in such way or another. And for a lot of these things, I don't have answers yet because it's like it's a long process where you need to at least, well, figure out what's the problem, figure out what's the deeper root, because you cannot just be unhappy throughout your whole life or you cannot just make yourself covered in work and in traveling until you're old, just trying to escape your own

Jesse Paliotto (49:06)
Mm-hmm.

Alex (49:32)
like whatever inner void of insecurity or whatever. It's a very deep talk, it's a lot of things to talk about, but I just feel like with every year, if you don't work on it, if you don't start working on it on time, then there's a tendency of these things to get bubbled up, to get stacked. And then the more more things, the more work, really each year, the more work you have to, you would get to figure it all out, to sort it out, to see, what's the...

Jesse Paliotto (49:35)
Yeah.

Alex (49:59)
point of that, why it started this way, why you feel like that about these people, why you feel like that about that, why you're insecure about this, or why you're scared of this, or that, and it's like, that's why I feel therapy is essential for everybody, because the world is in general very nerve-racking, very stressful place nowadays. Social media doesn't make it easier for musicians, in particular for creatives, because that's what also I'm referring to Trevor's words, especially if you're a sensitive person.

Jesse Paliotto (50:20)
Yeah. No.

Alex (50:29)
sensitivity means that it's also easier to hurt you, easier to put a wound in your heart, let's say, or on your ego, or on your self-esteem, or whatever, and then that person just leaves, but you would have to, well, kind of work through that. You have to live with that wound or whatever. And that's why I cannot even imagine how really big superstars and big celebrities handle that. Like, for example, if you would imagine, let's say, I don't know.

Jesse Paliotto (50:38)
Yeah.

Alex (50:56)
Jay-Z or Eminem or whatever, Ariana Grande, any big superstar you can think of. Do they check social media? Do they check their comments on YouTube or whatever? Do they check? Yeah. Can you imagine? mean, like half of the people, like you get like 100,000 mails per day, but that's one thing. But maybe in half of that, people just love you to death and want to kill themselves for you, for the name of you, you as some kind of a...

Jesse Paliotto (51:04)
I hope not.

Alex (51:23)
god thing creature and another half wants to kill you because they hate you to death and again just imagine if you if you would be taking that seriously if you would actually would be putting your thought if you would actually would be processing that through you you would go crazy i mean especially to the extent of well of fame and pressure that those that those people have and it's no wonder that there's so many like creatives who like well

Jesse Paliotto (51:24)
Yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's intense.

Yeah.

Alex (51:54)
I cannot judge these people because I can't imagine that there is so much pressure of having that. I feel just a tiny glimpse of it. We're not celebrities, we're just normal guys who just happen to have wonderful people around them supporting us with our music. But we're not really celebrities even though some of us have big numbers on social media, but we're very reachable, approachable and I this is what makes the community also very open and friendly.

Jesse Paliotto (52:18)
Yeah.

Alex (52:20)
But I'm talking about the big scale celebrities. Even I feel this pressure in my little world, with our little bubble of niche family-friendly music. How can you possibly offend somebody with instrumental music? But no, you can. You can. There's so much.

Jesse Paliotto (52:28)
Yeah, how much more, yeah.

Yeah.

Alex (52:39)
There's still so much hate about it. Okay, it's not directed against, I mean, can be directed against you. People can be just talk to tone all sorts of stuff about you because they just don't like the way you play. this is like, in you not to even haven't even said a word yet. We didn't even said any, anything political or whatever in your in your song and stuff can just imagine how much they would hate you if you would be a bit more.

elaborate about your views of whatever kind. And still they manage to hate you just for this. And then you can imagine people who were like Eminem, who was especially like provocative like 20 years ago. And it's like, I cannot imagine how these people live. can only like, well, I cannot, it is just beyond my comprehension. And that's why I'm thinking it's not easy to be a sensitive person in this, well, nerve racking world of social media and just this.

Jesse Paliotto (52:59)
Yeah, right. If you actually talked.

Alex (53:27)
fast pace of everything in general.

Jesse Paliotto (53:29)
I love that you said, you know, the music won't, I can't, don't think I can say exactly how you said it, but basically the music won't take care of any of the other stuff in your life that may be there from mental health. I think that's such an important message. I know we're kind of, we're very much in like the deep end of the pool here of what it means to be creative and to be a musician and all that. But I think there's probably this fantasy that every, probably every creative person, but musicians in particular have that, well, if I could just be out on the road touring.

or if I could just have a really popular recording, or if I could just be playing with such a band, everything would be okay. I would feel fulfilled and all my, wouldn't, everything else would not matter because I'd be doing the one thing that I have my identity really wrapped up in. And the reality is it's not true. Like we're all just people and you end up, there's that, it's a really dumb phrase, but wherever you go, there you are. So like it's just, now it's just you with all of your baggage and stuff.

in an airport in Dusseldorf waiting to go to the next show, but you're still your that hasn't taken away that. So it's such an important message and it's kind of hopefully it's encouraging to some folks to hear it from you, you know, because for every for every Alex Misco, there's dozens and dozens, hundreds and hundreds of guitar players at home that wish they could maybe play if they didn't, you if they had more time or freedom or skills or whatever. And it's refreshing to hear from somebody who's out there doing it like

Yeah, it's not gonna like cure all ills. There's still stuff I need to do to take care of who I am regardless of where I go with this thing. So thank you, man. I appreciate that. Mm-hmm.

Alex (55:05)
I wish it would. I

wish we could just get in our solipsistic world of just me and my music and I would be just totally happy in it and not think about anything else. But it feels like we all grow older. I mean, I'm 27 now and of course, I there's still so much to learn and the whole life in front of me still. But of course, I feel different now and I feel much more, well, kind of much more responsible for how my life is now than I was when I was 20, when I started doing it, when I started doing it as I was 16.

Jesse Paliotto (55:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Alex (55:35)
So obviously, some effects of this lifestyle start to take its toll. And you will try to, well, you have to take some things more seriously. Like said, like your mental health, aside from all these musical things, music really doesn't matter because if you feel really bad, I mean, I don't want to sound dark. My whole message is just to take care of yourself, guys. Please take care of yourself. Yeah, but the whole idea is that, yeah, the whole idea, the general message is.

Jesse Paliotto (55:54)
No, it's hopeful. Yeah, I think it's hopeful. It's real, but it's hopeful.

Alex (56:01)
please take care of yourself even if you don't think it's that important. in general, the saddest realization is that you wouldn't want to do music and all the things that you thought you loved doing if you start to feel really bad about something that's inside of you, something internal. If you would start to feel like depression symptoms and stuff, that's where the music and your biggest passion wouldn't save you. It's not gonna make you feel better instantly. So there should be some...

Jesse Paliotto (56:16)
Mm.

Alex (56:30)
other tools and to have these tools to learn about them and to learn how to apply it, that's I think that's what takes the whole lifetime to master.

Jesse Paliotto (56:37)
Yeah, no, I appreciate you being honest, being real about that. I want to I'm going to ask something very different to kind of take a corner here. Maybe it'll be connected. I don't know. I wanted to ask about AI. So, you know, I've had a couple of conversations recently. It's a dominant conversation in the world right now.

Alex (56:50)
you

Jesse Paliotto (57:00)
you know, how does AI affect how we all live? It's a really scary question for people in the creative industries because it feels like it can come for our jobs. But as a musician, I'm curious, like, do you have any thoughts or opinions on like, what is the place of AI in music? What do we do with that?

Alex (57:20)
I'm very much excited about everything that's happening with the AI. It's not like I'm not intimidated, but I'm more excited because I think that there's no reason to be intimidated or scared of being against something that you cannot change because this is just the future. This is how the life is going to be functioning. It's going to overcome most of the fears of our lives. And of course, the side effect of that would always be people who would be left out.

out of their jobs or their whole education, their whole life that they have been creating about some particular way of living or getting some expertise in something, it would get absolutely irrelevant because now some AI can do it better on the same level but for free or for way less expenses. And I'm talking about myself too, I mean that might happen to musicians as well. It's like even for live concerts, who knows, maybe at some point people would want to see holograms of Bob Marley.

Jesse Paliotto (57:50)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Alex (58:15)
I the holograms of older, passed away celebrities would be so realistic and so great and so physical, even physical, might be some AI controlled kind of androids, but they would be so realistic and so amazingly done, so it would be really no difference anymore if it's a real life.

Jesse Paliotto (58:16)
Hahaha!

Alex (58:36)
real human breathing band playing on stage or if it's just an android because with android you can bring freddie mercury back or you can well i want to see fred i want to see michael jackson doing his stuff on stage again why would why should care about some new local band when i have the opportunity to see well michael jackson again and yes he's an android but damn it it's like if it would be looking like super realistic and everything then i'm sure it would have some demand because well people love this stuff

Jesse Paliotto (58:38)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. That's crazy.

Yeah.

Oof.

Well...

Alex (59:03)
And

people love his music for a reason, there's once in a lifetime generational talent. Of course it's intimidating thinking about how AI can take other people's jobs, our jobs in general, but at the same time, think because the process is fast but not quite fast, it's not happening in a matter of days. We can still accommodate, we can still see what works and what's not. And in music business,

Jesse Paliotto (59:24)
Yeah.

Alex (59:31)
There's of course there's I mean, AI is everywhere on social media, probably it's going to be polluting social media even more with AI created reels, with AI created music. But then, well, this is is just going to be a part of it.

Jesse Paliotto (59:37)
Yeah.

Alex (59:42)
If it means that we're gonna spend even more time on social media trying to look for better things, it means that sooner it's gonna recalibrate to having no social media at all, when it's all gonna explode into something like, okay, I cannot do social media anymore because every time you go on TikTok or anything, you don't even know if it's AI created or human created, and you're like, I don't want to use it anymore, I'm just getting so confused. Maybe it would come to this point where everything recalibrates to us using...

Jesse Paliotto (59:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Alex (1:00:06)
phones with buttons again. don't know. I have no idea. I mean, probably not like this, but I'm just saying at some point people get tired if life would if the internet in general would get so confusing. And I'm talking about internet because it feels like AI mostly now is on the internet. Because my my my kind of my favorite thought experiment would be imagining the food service being fully replaced by some sort of AI because this is something I can easily imagine because even now, if you go to most of the restaurants, you have this well automated

Jesse Paliotto (1:00:08)
Yeah.

Alex (1:00:36)
counters where you can order food without talking to people anymore, which is wonderful, right? It's easy, it's safe, it's clean, and then you order anything you want, no rush. And then, well, it means that there should be just some food supply, automated food supply where Androids would be putting that on the tables and then would bring you the food. And that should be maybe just one person who controls this chain every morning and every evening, just making sure that all the tubes and all the systems, all the mechanisms work correctly. But you can have the whole restaurant.

Jesse Paliotto (1:00:38)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Alex (1:01:06)
fully operated by androids or by AI and it's gonna be just fine. It means that there would be way less expense than keeping the team of five, 10 people there just serving food or whatever. And of course, I think it's gonna happen. And of course, well, a lot of people would lose their jobs. like, developing this thought, it means that, okay, now we can go to any restaurant anytime operated by androids. But now it means that we would be able, we would be ready to pay $2,000.

Jesse Paliotto (1:01:29)
Yeah.

Alex (1:01:35)
to go to that one restaurant where everything was reserved until the next three months where the real chef is cooking for you. And now you're paying for, yeah, so, and that's the problem. So it means that most likely this whole AI enjoyed thing would take everything that's in between of being top-notch professional or manager who manages all the system and the people who hear lower than this whole middle.

Jesse Paliotto (1:01:39)
Hmm. Yeah.

Alex (1:01:58)
part where people who physically need to bring the servers into the room, put the cables in to make sure that it all works. So basically it's kind of a physical work and maybe even not. Maybe even this Android would be able to do the physical work as well. that's a bit of an intimidating thought thinking that it's either exceptional and it's impossible for everybody to be exceptional. Then the war is going to start if everybody would be like, everything would be like that.

Jesse Paliotto (1:01:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Alex (1:02:28)
And not everybody would be able to bring the servers and put the cables because we don't need that many people in this field as well. Or we don't need that many managers who would be overseering this whole AI populated area of everything that's kind of mediocre. Because we don't need mediocre musicians, we don't need mediocre writers, we don't need mediocre screenwriters or movie makers or whatever because we can just, well, everything can be created by AI now and most of the people wouldn't find much of a difference if it's not exceptional.

Jesse Paliotto (1:02:48)
Mm.

Alex (1:02:58)
So it means that, yeah, I I'm not saying that you should be exceptional or that I'm exceptional. I also might just get thrown away because you just put all my music into some AI music modulator. So it just picks up my tones and my sounds and okay, and just create 10 albums of mine every day. And I don't need that. I'm not needed anymore because look, all my sounds, all my work that I've been putting into like guitar, into developing this physical things and stuff.

Jesse Paliotto (1:03:20)
Yeah.

Alex (1:03:26)
It's not needed anymore, you can just imitate all that. Yes, it's unplayable, probably because it's not gonna be connected to physicality of a human being, but maybe, but what if it turns out that AI is a better composer than I am? Very much can be. And it's like, okay, this music is unplayable, but it's so much better to listen to that AI music with my kind of tone than...

Jesse Paliotto (1:03:39)
Yeah.

Alex (1:03:47)
actually my music with my tone because that composition is so much better than I would not be needed anymore, okay? I gave what I could, so my technical tools, my sounds, but I'm not as good as a composer as this Suno or whatever this new websites where they create songs. That's kind of scary and then I guess I would have to just accept it or just try my best to become better composer than AI and it becomes this...

Jesse Paliotto (1:03:49)
Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that one.

Alex (1:04:15)
it becomes a never-ending race and the AI is always going to win because it has more resources to learn from. So that's a bit of an intimidating thought, but this is on the very extreme spectrum. I don't think things would go that far for some reason.

Jesse Paliotto (1:04:22)
Hmm.

Yeah, well, and I think it I agree that you're kind of painting the picture of sort of a ultimate if everything like really went to the ultimate extreme and there's so many things that will push back on that. But it does like I like what you're causing me to think, which is that what you really have to do as a musician or as a creative person or anybody is find what you can do. What part of what you do, can you do exceptional that you can leverage?

Because what comes to me with music is like what an AI can ever do is reproduce the human to human experience. Being in a room, listening to somebody who's just an amazing musician stand in front of me, play music that's organic and goes right from their instrument to my ear that can't be reproduced. And I think Trevor and I talked about this for second, like there is value to that. And you know there's value to it because people pay for it.

They pay for it every day when they buy concert tickets. They know that they want the in-person experience. think there's something, I think probably the real question for a lot of musicians is, know, is there this like soul or is there something to a human written composition that that an AI cannot reproduce? Even if it does all the right notes, even if it creates all of Alex's correct, you know, textures based on having inputted all of your previous music, is there something

And I think there's times where you listen to music and you're like, this is a person's heart. Like I'm listening to their soul. this is, and so being able to like really produce that, I think that's really an existential question is, you know, is that real? Or are we just making that up and an AI is gonna fake us out one day and be able to do that, which is kind of scary.

Alex (1:06:04)
That's good thing because for now all of that stuff is just our assumptions. We don't know what would be happening. I think it would be maybe in a couple of years this conversation would have a bit more clarity to it. Because all the things that you said, they make sense. But what if that would also be possible to imitate? What if it would be possible to have some kind of a knob where you turn the sloppiness of performance or heart of performance? Why not? mean, all of that stuff can...

Jesse Paliotto (1:06:16)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Alex (1:06:33)
that potentially can be analytically analyzed and, well, kind of explored in a way. because I'm not doubting that, because, the technology is that progressive. It's just, well, it's something that maybe a lot of us cannot still imagine or comprehend, but I believe it's that. I believe it's just such a strong technology so we can imitate almost anything with it. It almost feels like magic, but it's not. It's just the future. I think this is the future.

Jesse Paliotto (1:06:55)
Yeah.

Well,

it's...

Alex (1:07:02)
I'm kind

of excited to see what will be happening in five, even in five years. I have no idea.

Jesse Paliotto (1:07:05)
Yeah,

it's going to be a totally different and it's very interesting like because there is like this very pro AI pro technology pro, you know, yeah tech perspective which says it's all just electro chemistry anyway, you know, if it goes to your eyeball and your ear those organs are translating it into electrical chemical signals that go to your brain and your brain isn't getting direct access to music or visuals anyway. So what does it matter if you just turn electrical signal into the next, you know?

It's an electrical generated thing. It goes through a medium. It comes to my eyes. My brain doesn't know. Could you tell the difference? Not really. So yeah, there is a part where you're just like, it doesn't matter whether I could tell. Since I couldn't tell right now, can't shoot. Right now I can't tell whether an article on the internet is true or false. So how do I, am I really gonna get that up in arms about as long?

Alex (1:07:54)
Exactly. even like true or false things on the internet written by real people is like so confusing already and it's like Let's add AI level on top of that AI who just specifically trained to be manipulative and convincing. It's like come on. Come on

Jesse Paliotto (1:07:58)
Yeah.

Hahahaha

It'll be an interesting world. Let me ask you a couple quick questions just to wrap up. What are you listening to right now? What's on your playlist? What kind of music has Alex got playing today while you were just doing your thing?

Alex (1:08:23)
Well today we were talking, so I'm taking lessons from Petteri Seriola, this is well that fifth guy from Finland, so the fingerstyle player, great friend of Mike Dawes and mine as well, and he is exceptionally good at his rhythm and we just kind of talk, we discover things about rhythm, about how to be super on time and super groovy on stage because he's really good at that and I'm trying to learn from him because he's very kind about giving me some of his expertise and today I was listening to lot of

Jesse Paliotto (1:08:38)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Alex (1:08:53)
so-called boom bap hip-hop rap. It's the era from 1989 to 1993. When Pete Rock, one of the producers, into play, they started sampling jazz and real drums. It has a very distinctive thing that you wouldn't even know that it's called some specific style because it's just...

Jesse Paliotto (1:08:57)
You

Yeah.

Yeah.

Alex (1:09:19)
this double kicks things and this is like very prominent in RUM DMC music, early NAS music, so all the New York scene of early 90s and it's like yeah but this is the typical hip-hop sound we would just call it typical hip-hop sound but there's a name to it and there's some specific stylistics and I was just exploring that because I love it's called

Jesse Paliotto (1:09:27)
huh.

Alex (1:09:39)
obscure classifications I love that I love obscure classifying obscure things this is like my my little passion like when you listen to something you like okay this is not just metal this is black metal but it's not just black metal it's depressive suicidal atmospheric post black metal with death metal influence to it I love obscure classifications yeah yeah yeah right and I'm looking for that and I'm looking for that particular sound

Jesse Paliotto (1:09:58)
You're like... And there's only one band that fits that classification. Yes. You can just...

Yes,

I like that.

Alex (1:10:11)
I love obscure classification. That was a lot of rap and just in general a lot of rap. I was at the Ennemos Leaders concert in Munich in Germany a few days ago. It's one of my favorite progressive metal bands. Amazing guys just played together as a bass player, guitar player, or not bass player, two guitar players and a drummer and they played crazy math progressive metal. All weird time signatures, but it's very musical.

Jesse Paliotto (1:10:32)
Okay.

Alex (1:10:36)
It's still nerdy music, but I think it's very accessible. I also had a great joy with this music. I tried to write when I was very young. In 2015, that was my first big exposure to math metal. I don't know. I don't even know. There was a lot of metal. Just in general, I listen to everything. There's a lot of rap of all sorts. just love rap.

Jesse Paliotto (1:10:47)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Alex (1:11:02)
Big, big passion. If any of music I love the most, it's rap, even though I know lot of metal as well, all sorts of rap, Midwest chopping rap, East Coast, West Coast, all sorts of eras, starting from 80s to kind of modern rap. It's like all that is one big passion of mine, especially when it comes to technicality, when people speed fast. that's also one of my things. So most of the time, I guess you would hear me listening to...

Jesse Paliotto (1:11:23)
Yeah.

Alex (1:11:31)
rap or some weird obscure stuff because sometimes it's just like okay let's figure it out i'm in the mood for easy core do you know what easy core is easy core is a pop punk with hardcore influence of of of breakdowns so it means that it's a punk with very metal with very heavy metal breakdowns

Jesse Paliotto (1:11:33)
Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

Alex (1:11:50)
But it's so major, it doesn't sound evil, it sounds happy. It's a happy punk rock with breakdowns, that's called EZ-Core. And you're like, okay, today I'm listening to EZ-Core, or today I'm listening to this, and today I'm listening to that, because it just, feels like there's so much to learn and so many weird mixtures. I think this is also the part of my personality when I try to explore just new things on the guitar. And then I also love to go into all these sub-genres of whatever, whether it's movies, or whether it's music, obscure classifications is my passion.

Jesse Paliotto (1:11:50)
yeah.

Yeah.

Right on and then

one last quick question if you had to buy one piece of gear today money is no object You could get anything could be a guitar could be gear could be some software What would be the one thing that you'd go out and buy today?

Alex (1:12:21)
Mm-hmm.

One piece of gear. Guitar tuner. It's important. You want to be in tune. Please tune the guitar before going on stage. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Jesse Paliotto (1:12:38)
Get one those old school, whatever this strobe, whatever it is where you actually see the...

See the wave signal,

like I can see it. Dude, well thank you so much for being here today, man. I really appreciate you sharing so much and giving a lot of very deep insights, I think, into stuff that musicians, guitar players, creative people of all stripes, I think, can learn from. Where should people connect with you? If they wanna kinda follow your music or follow you, what's the best place to find you?

Alex (1:12:50)
You

Anyway, as I said, I'm trying to be omnipresent. So whatever platform is the best, just Alex Misko, Alexander Misko, also goes with Alex. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, WeChat, you guys in China, or VK if you guys in Russia, or else? Facebook, said. Anyway, Spotify, Apple Music, everywhere.

Jesse Paliotto (1:13:34)
Yeah.

All the places.

Alex (1:13:37)
Omnipresence is important. You want your music to be easily accessible.

Jesse Paliotto (1:13:42)
Awesome. anywhere you are, Alex is there. Go find that. Thanks everybody for joining us. I'm your host, Jesse Pagliato. I love talking about making music here on the Guitar Journal. Thank you, Alex, for being here. Thank you everybody for being part of it. Have a great week and we'll catch you guys next time.

Alex (1:13:56)
Thanks so much, JC. Bye, guys. Thank you for being here.

Jesse Paliotto (1:13:59)
Cheers.