Its hard to picture Ty Segall without a guitar strap over his shoulder.
The guy is known for his room-rattling chords, eclectic pedal tones, and lip-smacking solos.
Therefore, its shocking that his new albumFirst Tastedoesnt contain a single guitar note.
Credit: Denée Segall
Its still a loud, raucous, freewheeling rock adventure that sounds like a Ty Segall album.
Fans of your music know youre a guitarist through and through.
But theres not a single guitar on this album.
Why is that?I wanted to do something different, more of a songwriting challenge, you know?
I guess [it was] also an aesthetic choice to attempt to not rely on guitar sounds.
But really the main thing was to challenge the songwriting cycles that I feel like sometimes I fall into.
Especially in guitar world, where its verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/solo/chorus.
Its like, I dont want to do guitar solos on the record.
I dont want to write using a guitar.
What can I do instead?
Originally it wasnt the idea to do that.
So everything Im doing is kind of new and an experiment.
And it yields different things.
I couldnt communicate what I was doing to myself the way that I would with a guitar.
With these other instruments Im like, I dont know what this movement with my hands does.
Oh it sounds like this?
Okay, what about this?
Its that kind of a thing.
Would you say that you were bored of playing guitar, or feeling constrained by the instrument?
Theres a hardcore song on there, theres ballads, theres funk and rock and almost metal.
So its kind of, like, I think Ive exasperated that creative perspective for now.
Theyll just join the conversation from here on out.
I think they know that when I commit to something, Im gonna do it.
[Its] a good idea.
I could have done that[laughs].
What about that instrument in particular appealed to you?Its just a beautiful sound.
But theres a little something else going on.
Its lighter in pitch, theres more space to it so it kind of floats in this nice frequency.
And it kind of replaced the acoustic guitar feeling.
I used it a lot, on all the acoustic-y sounding songs.
Id say the two main instruments on the album are the koto and the bouzouki.
The koto is such a crazy-looking instrument.
I think its just really fun to experiment.
Its not really that hard because you just press buttons down.
So that was really interesting and fun.
Was there anything else you knew you wanted to do going into this record?
That was one thing.
Theres a lot of stuff I tried that didnt really work that well.
I tried to do more drum machine.
I dont know how to describe it, it wasnt hip-hop sounding but it was more modern sounding.
It didnt match but there was something to that I want to chase down.
I would love to do an album with no acoustic instruments; meaning, like, no drums.
There was one song where I was like, Okay the only acoustic instrument allowed will be my vocals.
It sounded cool but it didnt really work.
A lot of experiments like that.
Despite there not being any guitars,First Tastestill sounds like a Ty Segall album.
It doesnt sound like anything is missing.
But I think in the end it kind of just fell into my style.
I think I wouldve liked to make something more different.
But theres plenty of time to continue to make stuff.
