Interview Bryan Beller

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Interview with Bryan Beller about his fingerstyle guitar technique

Bass guitarist Bryan Beller has played with greats such as Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, and on May 30 he will be at Muziekgebouw Eindhoven with The Aristocrats, the trio in which he can be his freest and most musical self. This article was written in collaboration with De Bassist.

Rock-fusion of The Aristocrats

Beller explains that he and his bandmates grew up with rock music. ‘As a result, that classic rock structure always remains the starting point: verses, choruses, bridges, and middle sections. We try to translate that into instrumental rock fusion. Ideally, the melody is very important in this, especially in instrumental music. The Aristocrats aren’t there to make big, self-reflective statements; The Aristocrats are there to show up, play a lot of notes, not take it seriously at all, but still give good performances.’ He prefers to reserve the serious and contemplative for his solo work.

Kling-kling-kling 

Beller takes three Mike Lull basses on tour, each with its own character and function within the set. He uses this variation deliberately to give every song exactly the right color. Remarkably, he almost never plays with a pick live. Instead, he has developed a fingerstyle technique: ‘That allows me to hammer on the strings, giving it that clear ringing as if it were played with a pick. I worked on that a long time ago, being able to do something like kling-kling-kling with my fingers so that it approximates how a pick would sound.’

Soloalbum

In addition, he is working on a new solo album, the compositions of which have just been completed. It will not be a double album like his previous project, but it is a thematically grander album than he had initially anticipated. It will still be a while before we can listen to it; Beller does not expect the album to be released before 2027.

Read the full interview with Bryan Beller on De Bassist’s website.

 

 

The Aristocrats in MgE