The idea behind this lesson’s example solo is to try to ‘reinvent the wheel’ by wilfully ignoring the rich tradition of blues/pentatonic soloing – which has evolved over decades – and imagine folk, jazz, blues and Celtic music combining as if for the first time in a parallel universe... In theory, this could give a brand-new perspective on vocabulary, tone and so on. In practice, it reminded us a lot of Mike Oldfield!
Mike is best known to many as the composer and performer of Tubular Bells. Though renowned as a multi-instrumentalist, Mike has said that he regards himself primarily as a guitarist, having initially been influenced by acoustic soloists such as John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. However, he was also very struck by the emotive blues-influenced soloing of Free’s Paul Kossoff and the electronic soundscapes of Terry Riley.
