The only person to win the US National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship twice, Don Ross will be showing off his technique during a live concert in Malta. Ramona Depares interviews him about this specialised style of playing.

When did your attraction to the guitar start?

Well, having been born in the 1960s, I saw guitars sprouting up everywhere in North America, between the folk music boom and the rise of the Beatles.

When I was a very young child we had a piano in the house, but then my sister returned from boarding school one summer with a discarded guitar. The school had received a grant to replace some aging instruments. The guitar that she brought home was a Stella model, probably from the 1940s. My older brother and I became very infatuated with learning how to play the guitar right away, as soon as the instrument entered the home. That’s what really started it all.

What made you opt for finger style guitar as opposed to the traditional style of playing?

Right from the age of about 10, I found myself attracted to the idea of trying to play bass lines, melodies and harmonies all at the same time. If, back then, you had asked me this same question, I would not have been able to express it quite like that.

But I did know that I was not satisfied with using the guitar simply as accompaniment to play chords, to support a song. I heard a lot of other guitarists using their fingers to play rhythmic lines and melodic lines at the same time, and became very attracted to that method.

By the time I was 14 I was writing a lot of instrumental guitar music that worked very well on its own and did not always have to be part of an accompaniment. It became a passion of mine to try to use the guitar, almost like a little piano or a little symphony.

How do you describe the style and do you find that specific genres of music lend themselves better to it? If so, which genres?

Even though as a guitar player I cannot help but be influenced by other players of the instrument, I think my single biggest influence in terms of the style that I have developed for myself on the guitar was really listening to a lot of Black Urban music from the US growing up.

Since I grew up in a French-speaking city in Canada with English-speaking parents, I was very open to all kinds of cultural influences. Montréal in the time of my youth was very infatuated with soul, funk and R&B music. It was all over the radio.

This ended up having a gigantic effect on my music and, to this day, I still find that American Black Urban music is still my favourite form of music. As a result, my music is very funky. Perhaps much more so than most solo guitar players’ music usually is. But, in turn, I have also had an effect on other guitarists, especially the younger crop coming up now.

What about your available repertoire?

I have released something like 16 solo recordings over the years and I think all but three of them are available on iTunes. In this day and age, it’s impractical for me to have my entire back catalogue available on disc. So I tend to concentrate on the last five or six releases in terms of having discs available at concerts.

I have also increasingly started to have my newer releases available on vinyl LP, which really is my favourite way to listen to music. Fortunately, I have always had a young audience and more and more young people are discovering the beauty of listening to music on a vinyl record.

How does the difference in technique impact the music?

My technique is very home grown. Since I only ever had very few guitar lessons one summer in my teens, I have been free to develop a very individualistic, and perhaps unusual, personal guitar technique.

My right-hand technique, in particular, is quite different from standard technique. It suits my way of playing very well, though. It really wasn’t until I started having a lot of private guitar students later on that I realised how individual my playing style was. I think that for my very propulsive, funky style I have created techniques of my own that serve my own style very well.

I have also started to have my newer releases available on vinyl

What are the biggest challenges to mastering this form of playing?

Well, if you want to play like I do it’s perhaps more challenging than playing in a more standardised style. One has to have a very strong rhythmic sense and be adventurous enough to try almost anything. What I often tell my students is to broaden one’s horizons and avoid listening too much to other guitar players.

It can be a very specialised world, a world in which guitar players play for other guitar players, which is really the last thing that I would ever want to happen. I want people to listen to me simply because they like the music that comes out. I really want the fact that it’s played on the guitar to be a secondary after-effect.

Also, just how much do your fingers suffer?

A fair bit, actually. The fingertips of my left hand have been covered in calluses for pretty much my entire life. On my right hand I use artificial fingernails, which has deleterious effects on my own nails and the surrounding skin.

I’m very fortunate to have suffered almost no injuries to my hands since I started playing the guitar. I have occasional problems with tendinitis in my arms, but not for several years now.

I think, overall, I have been very lucky. I know many other players who have suffered far more slings and arrows than I have simply from playing the instrument. The way I look at it, I spent a totally inordinate amount of time as a teenager avoiding the shopping mall and avoiding drugs and instead focusing on trying to be the best musician I could possibly be. That meant a crazy amount of practice as a young person, when my body could take it.

If I were to practice that much now, I would be having physical problems. Fortunately, the combination of musical knowledge and muscle memory means that these days I only have to play my guitar enough to keep my chops up and my repertoire current.

Who are your influences?

Steve Reich, Keith Jarrett, John Cage, Sly Stone, Prince, Tower of Power, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Cockburn, Egberto Gismonti, Pat Metheny, and a host of others. Only a few of those are guitarists.

How do audiences react to this style – is it popular and arepeople familiar with it?

Well, I’ve managed to have a 25-year touring career up to this point, so I suppose that audiences react well to it. It’s still an alternative form of music and likely always will be, but it has a devoted, albeit specialised, following. My shows are very light-hearted and silly and very high-energy, so I think people really enjoy them a lot.

If you weren’t a guitarist, what would you be?

Tough question. Maybe I would be a linguist or a sommelier or a screenwriter. On the music side. I would love to score films. I love movies.

Which has been your best experience performing so far, and why?

I think perhaps the most enjoyable concert I have ever done would have to be the one and only time I have played in Moscow. I came on special invitation from a promoter who is also a huge fan. I got to play in this very beautiful ultramodern music hall to a huge audience. I also really loved seeing Moscow, which is a much more beautiful city then I expected. I would go back in a heartbeat. I have also really enjoyed playing in India, and one time I got to play at the Canadian Independence Day celebration in Ottawa on Parliament Hill for 60,000 people. That was crazy.

What do you have planned for the Maltese gig?

I’m just going to come out onstage and knit a jumper! Kidding – I am going to make a legion of new Maltese fans.

Don Ross will be playing live on Wednesday at 8pm at Teatru Salesjan, Sliema. Christian Tanti and Andrew Francica will open the event with a 30-minute performance. Don Ross will also be giving a masterclass on Thursday, time and location to be announced. For more information or tickets call on 7920 5402.

www.facebook.com/events/1498584630390251/?fref=ts