Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson isn’t a guitar hero, but his playing fits his compositions perfectly – as exemplified by his latest solo offering, The Harmony Codex. Showing once again that Wilson refuses to be confined to a single style, he exhibits elements of prog, electronic, folk, and rock. We talked with him about how he approaches guitar and gear.
How did you decide on guitars for The Harmony Codex?
Well, on the half that uses guitar as a major element, the song that springs to mind is the most-traditional – “What Life Brings” – which is very old-school, acoustic, and dream-like; it has a sense of nostalgia. I worked very hard on the acoustic tracks, so there are five or six channels of guitar – some played on a Nashville-strung, some on regular guitar, there’s picked guitar, there’s strummed guitar. It’s a Phil Spector-esque wall of acoustics on that track, which is the only track where I play the guitar solo.
So, while we’ve got a bunch of guitar solos on the record, a lot were played by other people including Niko Tsonev and David Kollar.
I have a very rudimentary approach to playing guitar. I’m nowhere near as technically gifted as Niko or David or other players I’ve had in my band over the years, but I do have a sound and a personality that I think is instantly recognizable. I play very few notes, but I play them as an extension of the main vocal melody because I’m the songwriter. That’s something people overlook; when you’ve written a song and you step up to play the guitar solo, you’re much more in touch with the melodic center of the song than some superstar session player who comes along to blow your mind with their solo. Sometimes, that’s what you want.
Years ago, one of the very few times I got hired to be a session guitar player was for Trevor Horn, the famous producer. We got to the point where I knew there was going to be a solo and I said, “What kind of solo do you want?” And he said, “Just play the vocal melody.” I never forgot that, because it’s hammering home the hook of the vocal melody. So, although it’s not quite that, in my mind it’s a natural extension of the vocal melody. I think that’s a sensibility unique to the songwriter.
Kurt Cobain was the king of solos based on the vocal melody.
Yes, that’s a good example. And also the songwriter and singer – classic.
What is amp rig?
I’m not a purist. I use all three approaches – I’m happy to plug a guitar directly into the computer and try messing about with plug-ins and then re-amp through a real amp and mic the cab. And I’m also very happy to plug into an amp and just mic it up, or I’m happy to use modeling. I used all of them on the record.
I do have a couple of amps in the studio – a Hughes & Kettner TubeMeister 5 that I get a lot of tones out of. Sounds great. And, I’ve got an old Supro valve amp with a spring reverb which I use for some things.
A lot of the sounds on the album that people might think are keyboards are actually guitars that have been heavily processed and mutated through long chains of plug-ins.
What about guitars?
These days, I find myself mostly reaching for my ’63 Telecaster Custom, which I bought about five years ago from the Fender Showroom and fell in love with. Now, I’m not really somebody who is a fetishist when it comes to guitars. I’ve had a lot of them over the years and I’ve treated most of them like tools for my songwriting and production. But this is the exception. I totally fell in love with this guitar, totally bonded with it. It looks great, it sounds great, it plays great. I would say 75 percent of the guitar parts were played on it. But also, my old Paul Reed Smith goldtop if I want a slightly warmer tone.
Acoustic-wise, I’ve got the Nashville-strung OvationI use a lot and has a beautifully crystalline sound. You can hear that on “Economies of Scale” and “What Life Brings.” And there’s a bunch of other acoustics I’ve collected over the years – Takamine, Paul Reed Smith. There is a lot of acoustic on this record.
This article originally appeared in VG’s February 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
