We pronounce it "BILL'n'ted." It's the same number of syllables as Amanda, Jessica, Anthony, Dakota, Damian, Apollo, Sebastian, Oliver, Caroline, Akira, or James Freeman.
Was classically trained in piano (age 5-13), but now I play guitar, bass, and keys/synth well enough to get them into a computer and chop everything up. Program drums, arrange for orchestra, and write/produce pop vocal harmonies as well. When people ask what my main instrument is, I say "mouse."
So don't expect to come over and jam, but I'll remix your band.
Depends; I get bored pretty easily. If my wife's flying, this week I might crank blackgaze and doomgaze (she hates the screaming) but when she's around, we'll play 70s rock, 90s alternative, film scores, tiki lounge, or early 00s hip hop.
(Peak hip hop was when Dre, Neptunes, and Timbaland/Missy Elliot battled to see who could make the craziest beat hit #1. Prove me wrong.)
Favorite bands: Curve, Deafheaven, Deftones, Failure, Holy Fawn, Igorrr, The Joy Formidable, Mr. Bungle, Spotlights.
Not sure if I should answer this one—not because it'd spill any secrets, but because it's fairly pessimistic.
Ah, screw it.
Y'know how in "Better Off Dead (1985)," John Cusack plays saxophone and it was meant to be a totally cool moment, but when we all watched it decades later, it came off as a bit... 80s cheese? That's how kids see guitar these days—it's a "dad instrument." Sure, there are thousands of guitar-centric bands out there, but very few of them crack the top 40. We'll need a new Nirvana or something to really kick things into gear but unfortunately, the state of the record industry no longer fosters those sorts of artists. (My sister helps run Lollapalooza.) It's
much easier for kids to throw three loops into GarageBand and share it on TikTok than it is to learn three chords
and find other musicians willing to play with them.
And I'm totally fine with this from an artistic standpoint. Times change, music changes, it's all good. But I work for Yamaha
Guitar Group, so if we want to keep our jobs, it's something we need to take seriously.
So Yamaha is looking at methods to minimize cases of the "lapsed guitarist." Investing in music education, incentivizing younger people to take up guitar, and getting them to play more, play longer, hone their skills, and showcase those skills in front of others to then hopefully inspire others. We're not the only ones—Roland/BOSS (and I believe Fender) have similar campaigns.
From a tech standpoint, you might see a lot of Chinese companies pushing their way into the higher-end multieffects space. Except they can do it with lower overhead and ex-factory costs. It'll take a lot of ingenuity (and if necessary, IP protection) to stay ahead of them. Other than that, I try to pay more attention to the problems users face than what technology might be trending. We'll all probably be supporting, I dunno—let's say Apple's upcoming AI headset—in X years, but there better be a notable advantage to that experience to make it worth pursuing. Doing AI purely for AI's sake would be dumb.
