“He’s a funky little dude!” is something that Mr Carl Verheyen said on Thursday 29th
October 2009 at Guitar-X where he held a masterclass for the students.

I have to admit that before the posters went up around the school, I’d never heard of the
guy. But it came to my surprise when I realised that I have been listening to him all my
life to some extent without realising!

From, TV Show Themes (such as Scrubs), Movie Soundtracks (Speed Racer, Ratatouille,
Star Trek, Up, e.t.c) to random songs on the Radio, he’s played Guitar for artists such as
the likes of Supertramp, Bee Gees, Cher, Dan Siegel and others.

On the night of the Masterclass Carl Verheyen jammed on stage with Guitar-X teacher John
Wheatcroft on bass guitar and degree student Niall Woods on Drums. But WOW! What a
group, the music that I heard being performed in the opening minutes to the class was
amazing. After the three of them jammed through a few songs Carl said “I come from LA,
where the players are so strong. You go anywhere in the world, you’ll never get what you get
in that town, well maybe New York, maybe Nashville theres some great Drummers, but
man, to play with a drummer in LA is a whole other experience. So it’s always surprising to
come here to a place like this where the musicians are “so in the pocket”, it’s a beautiful
thing.”

It’s surprising when you meet a man of that calibur only to find that they are so down to
earth. Throughout the masterclass a variety of questions were asked, a lot of them of which
were very interesting and had interesting answers such as the use of his Intervallic
Patterns to how he goes about performing the “Cascading Harmonics” technique which,
take it from me, sounds really beautiful. Another question was “how long have you been
playing guitar for”, the answer to that was 44 years! Carl Verheyen iS an amazing guitar
player.

At the end of the Masterclass students where able to personally talk to him, get
photographs with him, buy his latest album, buy his book and get autographs.
I got to talk to him about guitar playing for a little bit, including getting a personally
autographed copy of his book “Improvising With Scales – The Intervallic Guitar System of
Carl Verheyen” and a photograph.

Overall it was an amazing experience to watch Carl Verheyen perform and to meet him in
person, I am looking forward to the next time he comes to London.

All the best,
Umar Arar