DM) When did you first start studying guitar?
AB) I actually first started out on drums and was totally
fanatic with it for years. When I was 14 I played the drums in
a jazz-rock group and also in the local big band. I remember
the big-band leader always shouting at me that I was playing
so loud he could not hear the trumpets! I also taught drums to
some students at this age. The first instrument I really wanted
to learn how to play was the guitar, though. At this time when
I was like 11 or 12 years old my mother applied for me to go
to the local music school to study the guitar. I couldn't enter
because they had some awkward regulation there, that at that
age children have too small hands?
At the age of 14 or something like that I studied both the drums,
piano and the guitar at the same time at our local music-school,
but my focus was on the drums then. I didn't really play and
practice the guitar seriously then, I was just like bashing away
some open chords. That was it. Later on I got more and more fascinated
with this instrument, the first one I really wanted to learn
how to play the guitar. The time when I really started to study
and practice the guitar on a regular basis and with a serious
goal (to get better all the time) was around my 22nd birthday.
I went to study music then for full time at a school. Here I
started to play and practice on the guitar for 10 to 12 hours
per day. My goal with the guitar is still like that, to get better
at it all the time and to find new ways of expressing the music
through it.
DM) Do you still practice that often?
AB)I practice and compose each day, but the time varies a
lot. I now got a daughter she is 2 years old now and her name
is Soleya. Being a parent is a unique and totally wonderful experience
and I just love being with her but this also takes time and it´s
worth it. At my present level practicing and composing also involves
that you´re thinking about concepts, time in music and
life etc. I think that everything you do away from the actual
composing and playing/practicing also have a big impact of the
result in the actual music. There´s a story about a man
who got money for a year from his publisher to write a book.
He began to take nine months of vacation! He then wrote the entire
book in three months! What this story might tell us is that even
if you´re not working on it you´re mind will! I am
not saying that you should´nt be working on your music
by playing/practicing and composing but if you really want to
do something you´re mind will constantly be thinking of
it and the progress will always be there no matter what.
DM) Is your jazz more written or more improvised?
AB) It varies a lot. Sometimes the use of a short melody and
some chords to go with that feels sufficient for the tune to
be complete. Other times when it feels right for the music, the
song can be very much arranged and written. musicians can use
this "as a map" to know where the music "wants
to travel." For me everything with music has elements of
composing and improvisation all integrated with each other, more
or less the whole time.
Composing is improvisation in slow motion and with the privilege
to add and subtract before you present it. Improvisation is like
live-composing in the heat of the moment with no "safe-net".
All in all music is music, a divine power and a cosmos within
itself for me. If it needs improvisations, arrangements, or whatever
it will tell you, if you listen close enough.
DM) But doesn't that also promote a vicious cycle of working
and then resting?
AB) No. Only resting. Just kidding ... the thing that this
story is trying to tell us I think anyway is that, in our western
society it´s so common that sometimes you really try so
hard, maybe too hard to accomplish or solve something but maybe
there is another way, easier way, to do things with the same
result - or maybe even better - if you some times let it go for
a while.
DM) But can a composed song have an improvised feel?
AB) It depends on your own attitude. I think that even if the music hasnīt got any parts in it, that is "dedicated" to improvisation/soloing when you actually play the music it can never be exactly the same because we're humans, right? So if youīre mind is set for it even a totally composed tune can feel improvised to the listener. 99.9 % of the music Iīve written so far has had some elements of improvisation in it (often as a dedicated part of the tune for improvisation) maybe itīs because I love searching, breaking new territory and the freedom to express myself through music. But I can also foresee a future when I will be composing tunes that are totally written with no improvised parts in it, but that hasnīt happen yet, though.
