So it was time again for another acoustic maestro to come and show us what he can
do. As I said in my review of Thomas Leeb’s Master Class, I and all others around me
were totally lost for words. So it’s Jon Gomm’s turn to leave me speechless, but I
didn’t think that any acoustic player could leave me as speechless as Thomas. I’ll tell
you what, Jon did exactly that! He left me and my fellow guitarists stunned as well as
some of the drummers who joined us.

I honestly do not know where to start or what to say about Jon as a player apart from
the fact he’s so unique.

Well....I think I shall first talk about his equipment. His Guitar looks quite scratched up
because of his acoustic style and another which is an ingenious idea, is that he does
not have any dot marks on the fret board. The reason for this is purely for the fact that he
wanted to be able to write with just his ears and worry about the theory at a later a date
(but I doubt very much he didn’t think of theory when he wrote songs). He got this Idea
from acoustic guitarist Joni Mitchell because she would use alternate tunings when she
wrote, so she couldn’t rely on theory, just her ear at all times and Jon quite liked this
idea so he took it on board and uses it brilliantly. Talking of tunings, Jon also said that
he normally starts in DADGAD and alters it to what he feels like, the only problem is he
has to make sure he writes down the tuning in order to record or play the song again. He
also does what Adrian Legg does with the banjo tuners and has two banjo tuners on his
guitar so he can do like Adrian does and change the tuning of a string in between the
song.

For a man who plays the acoustic very well he also has a lot of pedals. He took us
through his pedal board and if I remember correctly he had two EQ pedals, a delay
pedal so when he is doing the drum patterns it delays the sound thus giving him a slight
tempo, Reverb he didn’t say much about and an Octave pedal just to give it a bit more
depth. In the acoustic guitar world he has a Blues Driver pedal as well and he uses it to
such great effect.  He also does the same style of wiring up his acoustic as Thomas
Leeb or is it the other way round as Jon did teach Thomas for a few years!

His technique is just unbelievable. Jon being a very chilled person didn’t even ask
questions before he started telling us his ways. What inspired his drum pattern ideas is
the late Michael Hedges who is not a well known acoustic player but he was probably
the greatest acoustic player ever. Jon does this weird little slapped harmonic, which is
fairly similar to a tapped harmonic but you just slap it with your finger across the 7th and
12th Fret. Jennifer Batten inspired him to start using this technique as he saw her in a
master class a few years back.

I would recommend you go and see Jon Gomm live as YouTube does not do him
justice.

Thanks for Reading
Cheers, Bradley beets

Review by Bradley Beets - Marshall Scholarship Winner 2008

Read Bradley's series of diaries of life as a Guitar-X student

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