ON VIDEO
This month’s star video features American guitarist Jeff Kollman, a musician known for his stunning chops as both a solo artist and as band member with Alan Parsons (The Alan Parsons Project, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Al Stewart), Chad Smith’s Bombastic Meatballs, Glenn Hughes and Cosmosquad. For this feature, Jeff filmed himself playing and discussing a solo for Jason’s specially written track, Hot To Trot, a mid-tempo rocker with unusual chord changes; perfect for Jeff’s savvy musicality.
Jeff’s performance is powerfully rock orientated; he uses a Gibson SG Special guitar (fitted with humbuckers), and plays with a rich overdriven tone that provides clarity for both single-note runs and occasional double-stops and chords. His techniques include string bends, hammerons, pull-offs, slides, fast picking and strong finger vibrato. Another great aspect of his performance is the use of staccato notes. These are shown in the music with a dot above the note; play slightly shorter than the note value suggests. Jeff often uses a subtleThe instruments on the track are intricately arranged so Jeff often follows and mirrors the riffs or exclamations. The main rhythmic subdivision Jeff employs is the 16th note, sometimes spiced up with triplets and plenty of syncopation (playing off the beat). He often starts his phrases like this and anticipates the next chord change to add a
