Harvey Valdes likes pushing limits. He challenges conventions, breaks rules, innovates new concepts, and is on the lookout for alternatives. But don’t consider him an oddball iconoclast inventing systems to mask his limitations—he’s the opposite of that. He boasts prodigious chops on guitar and oud, is a master player in a variety of genres, has first rate compositional skills, and collaborates with many of NYC’s most progressive and innovative thinkers.
A New Jersey native, Valdes’ first exposure to music—aside from the salsa and cumbia in his Columbian household—was ‘80s MTV. “One of the first cassettes I bought was Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction,” he says. “That got me hooked right away. MTV at that time was a big product of metal and hair metal, so there was a lot of guitar that I was being exposed to. I wanted to know everything about it. And once I discovered Metallica I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is guitar music.’”
But Valdes didn’t join a metal band or wear spandex; he broadened his horizons, discovered new styles of music, and eventually earned a degree from New York’s New School in Jazz and Contemporary Music. Post-college he joined the ranks of the City’s progressive music scene and worked on notable projects like Karl Berger’s Improvisers Orchestra, Butch Morris’ Luck Cheng’s Orchestra and Nublu Orchestra, Harel Shachal’s Anistar, and toured as part of the Wooster Group’s production of Francesco Cavalli’s 1641 baroque opera, La Didone. His trio—featuring Sana Nagano on violin and Joe Hertenstein on drums—released PointCounterPoint in April and that was preceded last fall by Roundabout, his collection of recomposed jazz standards for solo guitar.
We spoke with Valdes about his influences, his experiences on oud, the parallels between baroque music and jazz, odd meters and polyrhythms, his idiosyncratic approach to composition, and ergonomic guitar design.
When did you first start listening to music other than heavy metal?
The metal thing was big for me, but around ’90/’91 the whole grunge movement was starting and that had a big influence on me. I also started listening a lot to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which opened up my ears to thinking about funk music. I checked out their influences—Parliament Funkadelic, James Brown, and whatnot. Things started really shifting for me my junior year in high school. I wanted to study music and that meant either classical guitar or jazz guitar—that’s what you’re faced with when you’re going to study music in college. I decided to be serious about classical guitar, but I found the rigidity of that was too much for me. One thing I’ve always been attracted to—even from the very first day of picking up the guitar—was the idea of being in the moment, being able to pick something up and play music. I think that spirit of improvisation was always there for me early on, but I wasn’t exposed yet to jazz and all these things. Somebody that was very crucial in my development was Chris Buono. He exposed me to so much. I would go to lessons with him and he’d say, “During this lesson I am dubbing you a Miles Davis record. I’m dubbing you a Thelonious Monk record. You gotta check out Wayne Krantz—he’s badass right now.” He just opened up my whole world musically.
What period of Miles? His electric stuff?
Not at all, he was giving me ‘50s Miles. I think the first record he gave me was Kind of Blue. It was a great experience to have somebody like that as a door to this whole world. I owe a lot to him.
When did you start playing oud?
I was studying at the New School and a good friend of mine—an Israeli friend of mine—Harel Shachal, was putting together a group. He was really into the Arabic maqam and jazz. He wanted to combine these two things together—improvisation and maqams—more of a western/eastern fusion. He was pivotal in getting me into that world. He said, “Dude, it is great what you can do with a guitar, but get an oud.” And that slowly progressed from there.
How does oud technique differ from guitar?
There are a lot of similarities, obviously—it is a stringed instrument—but since the instrument has very little sustain, you have various right hand techniques to keep projecting sound out of it. As soon as you hit a note, it’s dead—fast decay—whereas a guitar is not like that, you can play a chord or a note and it rings out. The oud is a whole different experience with the trills, tremolo picking, and this whole ornamentation thing that happens. Also, on a guitar you can bend a note, but on an oud you can’t so you do all these kinds of hammer-ons and slides to make the notes or phrases come alive.
Do you find those techniques go back and forth, do you use them on guitar?
I do. For a while, it was a very conscious thing, but now it is becoming more ingrained. I am not trying to separate it anymore. I am trying to make these techniques all-inclusive somehow. I still play oud, although I find my time more on the guitar these days. I quit guitar in the early 2000s and became an oud player.
You played oud exclusively?
For eight years. Part of it was that I was completely burnt out on bebop guitar. Oud was a great new world to be exposed to. And also the gigs were paying way better.
What brought you back to the guitar?
Around 2006 I ended up getting a gig with the Wooster Group, a downtown theater company, and they needed an electric guitar for their production of La Didone, which was a 1641 baroque opera that they were juxtaposing with 1960s Mario Bava sci-fi vampire movie. It was a modern interpretation of a baroque orchestra. I was playing alongside a theorbo, which is an instrument with a lute body but an extended range neck. There was also a harpsichordist, an accordion, and a bunch of opera singers. That got me to start getting into guitar again in an interesting way. I was reading figured bass scores and it was starting to bring back my jazz stuff—baroque music is in some ways like an early version of jazz.
How so?
Figured bass is kind of like looking at a chart—a standard chart. There are rules, but it is very open to improvisation and interpretation. It is not like a classical piece of music, where it is right there and you’ve got to play those exact notes and interpret them. This is just a bass note underneath and a melodic line. You have to make choices as to how to fill that out and how to color around that melodic line that the singer is singing.
And you embellish or do variations?
Exactly. That was a lot of fun to be thrown into that, it got my wheels turning again. It also brought back my interest in effects—guitar effects—in that I used a lot of different textures.
They gave you free range to use whatever sounds you wanted?
Yes. The musical director for that was Bruce Odland, musical thinker. He was a really great guy to work with and he gave me free range. I mean, there was some direction as to what they were looking for, but I had some choices about colors as well. Also at that time I started checking out midi guitar. [Bruce] had a really great sample of a baroque cello-type instrument. I was able to access that sound and play a sample of that sound with this midi pickup I had. I had a lot of stuff going on: I had the reading of the charts, midi guitar playing bass parts, and then textural stuff—so it got me excited again about guitar and it’s possibilities. That was around 2006 and that gig lasted about three years. I got to tour a bunch with them.
That was a paying gig?
Yeah. I was rehearsing with them five days a week for about six months. The first gig was out in Brussels, Belgium. We opened up in Brussels, never had a run through of the show up until the first day of the gig—it was just wild. Being involved in theater is a whole other experience coming from the music world. That experience was really cool. It got me thinking about rehearsing—understanding that the rehearsal process is very important, having an open mind to try as many possibilities as possible. Instead of where sometimes in a music situation in rehearsal you just have to play the stuff down. Obviously, time constrictions are a part of that, too, and you just have to play something down. But that work ethic has translated a lot to my own thing and other groups I play with. It is really interesting to experiment.
Meaning you’ll try anything.
Exactly. Keeping people on their toes—you’re up for the unexpected. But back to your question, more specifically, the guitar was starting to happen again. I started to get excited about it again. I was getting excited about jazz again, too. I was into David Torn—he was somebody I was checking out a lot. He was very influential for me in that he was somebody who was like, “Things can be jazz, things can be rock, things can be this—all these different things can come together and be all the same in some way.” It started breaking down my thinking about what I thought jazz guitar was. There are very strong conventions about what that is. As a guitar player, if you are in that world, you are up against a lot of those things. There are stylistic things that you have to adhere to and whatnot. I have been kind of a rebel about that because I grew up a metal head and a punker. I love 1950s music, but it is the 2000s and we are here today—how do you make it relevant to me and today?
Can you talk about your approach to rhythm, do you borrow from other cultures?
Definitely. It is probably a big thing from playing a lot of Middle Eastern music—Turkish music—which is in fives, sevens, nines, and ten.
Are they strict about time?
There are these fixed meters and you are working within them. I got thrown into that stuff—playing that music and learning it on the bandstand more or less. I didn’t really have a formal training per se. I started playing it, listening a lot, and asking a lot of questions to Harel and some of the drummers I was playing with.
Did you study polyrhythms, too?
Just on my own. In some experiences with drummers—drummers love this stuff—if you work with drummers you soon discover all this information. I’ve gotten some books and learned some things about polyrhythms. I like the juxtaposition of these types of things. I like that awkward feeling that happens from polyrhythms. Also, I worked with Butch Morris for a little while and one of things that he would do in his improvising ensembles was have one rhythm section play really fast and the other play really slow against it. You would have these two opposing feels. That has influenced me, too, to work with these feels that are fighting but also working somehow.
You hear some of that on PointCounterPoint.
My concept of that was using rhythm as an almost harmonic structure in a sense. When you look at a chart, you have chord symbols and stuff, and your head is thinking, “How can I play through these changes?” The charts for PointCounterPoint were these juxtaposing rhythms—kind of like contrapuntal rhythms—and thinking of these contrapuntal rhythms as the changes in a way.
Are the charts a collection of ostinatos?
Not necessarily an ostinato. It’s two lines and these two lines are constantly fighting each other. A lot of it is written in 4/4 actually—it is not written in 7/8 or anything like that too much—the bar line is completely blurred. There is a lot of counting to keep it together, but I wanted to have that freedom of the whole page having this bleed-through—having the rhythms pop and having that be the influence to play off of.
What is the story behind the album’s unorthodox instrumentation?
I got a 7-string guitar in 2010 and I thought, “This is cool. I can tune the low string down to A and it sounds really bass-y. I can do something without a bass player.” I was playing duo a lot with a drummer, Damion Reid, and I was having these sessions, doing a few gigs with him, and exploring that sound of holding down a low end—even looping some low end ostinato stuff—and then playing on top of it. That led me to thinking about writing in that context—putting myself in those shoes of being a bass player and a guitar comper. What led me to the violin was that Sana [Nagano] was somebody that I was playing with a lot in Karl Berger’s ensemble. I let her be this classical influenced sound—because it is violin and it is precious sounding—and I fuck that up with my 7-string and distorted sounds. It evolved from that. I didn’t want to use a horn player because it brings this idea of jazz to mind.
True. Sans horn, no one will call this “jazz.”
If I put a horn player in there, jazz would instantly pop up and I didn’t want that.
Are your charts still in the “head-solo-head” format?
It is basically head-improvisation—but we’re working through the chart. We are working through the chart using the rhythms as the impulse to improvise off of. It is not completely free. Joe Hertenstein, the drummer, was the real anchor. He was holding these things down for us to hear and follow along.
A big danger in free music is that every improvisation can sound the same, ending in screaming and manic playing. Your album seems a lot more structured and organized.
I love free music, but yes, it does have that trap you are describing. I was cautious about falling into that trap. I wanted to have a structure to work from.
How about harmonically? Were you using specific scales or is it mostly atonal?
Atonal. A big curiosity of mine is not having to be constricted to a key signature or changes or any of this stuff—just playing around with the natural consonances and dissonances that happen when you use all 12 tones.
How did you approach harmony on your solo guitar album? Did you keep the melodies and get rid of the changes?
I did on some of those tunes. On one tune, “Invitation,” I went with a purely atonal approach. I used these cluster voicings, which are dissonant voicings, and the improvisation was pulling from this atonal/12-tone thing—working with little cells. The rest of the tunes on there were pulling from a more free improv/free re-compositional approach. On some, I played the melody intact and one some I completely blurred the melody and let the harmony come forward more. Harmony is a huge part of my work. I like to investigate harmony. I think about harmony as a melodic thing as opposed to the conventions of melody being the most important thing.
How does that work?
I like to play with reimagining standards. I bring in a new set of changes—modernizing standards in a way—giving them a new voice by working with voice leading. A lot of the voice leading is inside the chord—you might not hear a specific thing on top but there is something going on inside. I am working with the inner line movement. I love to work with counterpoint in my playing as well—where you hear two or three different things happening at once. I think of it all as melody. Somebody might think they don’t hear the melody, because they are expecting a melody to be clearly stated [on top].
So you are looking at all the voices and how they move.
It is probably similar to a Bach piece or something, but using different conventions of non-functional harmony. Whereas a II-V-I might happen in the conventional sense, I may take that II-V-I and use some cluster voicings with some inner voice leading.
And replacing the II-V-I with something atonal.
Yes. And another thing is with the way I think about chords. As guitar players, we’re taught a lot about chord grips, “This shape is D-minor-9, live with it.” But I think, “No, there has to be more than that. I can’t just live with that.” I listen to a lot of piano players now and what they do. We don’t have the freedom of what a piano can do on the guitar as much, but for example, I might take that D-minor-9, drop the root, put the 9th in the bass, keep the flat three here, and now I have a dissonant color—I have a minor second happening. Somebody might say that they don’t hear D-minor-9, but here it is, [it has all the right notes—here is the ninth, flat third, and flat seven].
And if a bass player played the root, you would hear it.
Right, if somebody were to play the root it would work in that context. But in a solo guitar context, it’s my world and I can create and think of it in so many different ways.
Talk about your headless guitars.
I came across Steinberger guitars—my first introduction to those actually was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure [laughs]. I sit a lot and play guitar sitting down a lot. I was getting tired of dealing with the neck falling down, having to bring my leg up, and being hunched over. My technique started changing because I was doing these extended cluster chords and I found that the normal position was not allowing that. The guitar wants to fall and I was trying to maintain it. I ended up getting an early Steinberger—the little paddle Steinberger. I liked how small it was and I liked how comfortable it was. I could keep it up a little higher and it was fairly light. I wasn’t killing my back. I could run around the city and it was awesome. That started spinning my wheels and I looked more for these type of instruments.
How do the Steinbergers sound?
It is a really excellent construction, a very forward construction, that came out in the ‘80s—a very future guitar. They’re composite materials so there is a little bit of a setback with that sort of stuff—it is a little cold maybe for me. I still had a little bit of a jazz aesthetic about a warm sound. I was still looking for that. Wood materials obviously will get you there more. I started investigating things a lot more. I was also interested in Steinberger because of their TransTrem systems—those tremolo systems that you could tune to various tunings. That also got me interested, which led me to all these different builders—the Klein Guitar, which is the next evolution of the Steinberger guitar.
Do you currently have a Klein?
No. I have a Chris Forshage Hollow Orion. I commissioned it from him. It is more jazz voiced, it is a warm guitar, very articulate. It is based off of the Klein design, with this [notch for your leg].
Does it use the double ball strings?
No, which is another reason why these guitars were more attractive to me, these are regular single strings. I have 12-gauge on here. The double balls, like on Steinberger and Klein, I think you can only get 10-gauge. That is very limiting even though it is very easy to change out a string, but it is limiting for tonal options.
And you also have the Teuffel guitars.
Yeah. [Ulrich Teuffel] calls it the Tesla model and I have the 7-string—I play it on PointCounterPoint—and I have the 6-string as well. They look the same and they are very comfy. It brings back this thing about how I play—allowing this access to big stretches—the guitar sits in the perfect position to allow that.
Tools of the Trade
If you’re interested in gear, here are some of the unusual tools Valdes relies on.
Guitars:
- Teuffel Telsa (both the 6 and 7-string models)
- Forshage Hollow Orion – 6-string
Amps:
Effects:
- Trombetta FeederBoneMachine
- Neunaber Stereo Wet Reverb
- Montreal Assembly Count to Five