More Than Just Guitar

Yeah, guitar clinics with the option of hopefully talking about other things as well,” Devin Townsend, the laidback Canadian mastermind behind Strapping Young Lad and Ziltoid, among other things, explains. “Production and just an overview of what I do, I guess.” 

By the time he finishes this series of guitar clinics across Australia, it’ll be just two days before the release of his new album, Z², a double disc at that, one featuring his Devin Townsend Project, the other his Ziltoid project. For all that, as high profile guitarists go, Townsend has never seen himself as particularly “technical”. His approach has always lain more emphasis on rhythm, whether in its most abrasive metal manifestations or merely hard rock stylings. “I think the benefit that I’ve got going and which people can draw some influence from, I would hope, is that I’ve got 30-some-odd records that I’ve done, and the majority of them were done on such a tight budget or completely on my own that there’ve been so many hurdles to overcome, in terms of technical problems and things and based around guitar in general, which is my primary vehicle for writing, so I’ve just got a perspective, I think, on this type of music that I hope to be able to, you know, pass on to folks.

“I’ve got no need to try and hoard this stuff. There’s a bunch of stuff I could offer to people that I’m really looking forward to and guitar’s always been for that – the weapon or the tool, whatever you wanna call it. I think if I give myself any credit as a guitar player, is that if I hear a solo, I’ve got the capacity to play basically whatever I feel is necessary. However, I tend to approach my music from more of an orchestrated perspective, and as a result the solos inevitably end up being more melodic or vocal that gets enhanced with other instruments rather than wailing guitar solo shit.”

Townsend is also an exponent of open tunings on his guitars, primarily Open C, Open B and B Standard. “I do find that a lot of my work is influenced by gear. For example, I had gotten a really nice Telecaster and then an old amp and music stemmed from that. Or I get some really modern eight-stringed thing and music stems from that. But the tunings are an example of ‘well let’s just see what happens if’. Primarily Open C, based on an early fascination with Led Zeppelin III and a lot of what Jimmy Page had done, and then, quite honestly, because I also sing, it was a lot easier for me to just play bar chords to things in a suspended tonality. There may be a bit of laziness involved, but after a while it becomes your thing, right? But also, taking a guitar out of a case and it’s in some fucked-up tuning, it’s like, ‘Well, there’s a song.’ Then I have to go back and remember what the guitar was in!”