Mike Stern, a great and charismatic guitar player, has by now earned a living legend status. He’s built his reputation for over 30 years, featuring the best acts in the New York jazz scene and around the world. One of the most prominent guitar graduates from the Berklee College of Music, even after all these years his guitar still stands out as a fluent breath of fresh air.
At the Berklee College of Music, Pat Metheny was his teacher and recommended him to the producer of the band Blood, Sweat and Tears, where he started his music career at age 23. Shortly after, Miles Davis invited him to join his come-back band in the early 1980’s and later on he also toured with the great Jaco Pastorius between 1983 and 1985. That year he released his first solo album: Neesh. Later on, he would join the Brecker Brothers’ band and also recorded with them.
Throughout the years, he has consolidated his career with more than a dozen albums as a lead guitar, countless tours and awards and an even longer list of collaborations with la crème de la crème in jazz.
The 21st century has seen Mike Stern continuing his already established status as one of the most relevant jazz guitar players. He released Voices -his first album featuring vocals-, These Times in 2004 and in 2006, Who Let the Cats Out?.
Between frequent tours and great recordings, Mike Stern is now one of the best known names in jazz guitar today. If you like jazz and are not familiar yet with his music, I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed. A great guitar player by all standards.
Guitar Style
Like other great guitar players, it only takes a few seconds to recognize Mike Stern’s sound. His distinct voice consists of a light (not thin) guitar tone with a nice warm chorus. Like John Scofield, he has a very personal style, long imitated and never matched.
His phrasing style is very fluent and his compositions have a very personal touch. As a listener, I always find his music very inspired, which I think is one of the features that bring him ahead of the pack.
While many people label him as a so-called fusion jazz guitar player, I would say his music is closer to traditional jazz, but with a personal "twist". His tone is far from the usual hollow body, muted, mellow sound of traditional jazz guitar players. Other than his signature chorus, delay and eventual distortion, he’s a guitar player who keeps his sound simple. By the way, we both share a reluctance of referring to someone’s style as "fusion".
His ensembles usually have a sax player (sometimes trumpet), bass and drums. He usually doesn’t play with a piano or keyboard, which means his guitar has a lot of heavy lifting to do in order to keep the band going.
If you want to get into Mike Stern’s playing technique, be warned it is a very advanced one. He has a great control in his picking hand and often executes high speed passages attacking every note. He can play complicated patterns where he switches strings in a way that sounds almost effortless.
His phrases often sweep the whole fret board in the blink of an eye. He likes to start or finish some phrases with a string bending that is part of his personal touch. When he plays slowly, he can be a very expressive guitar player, which is something I admire about his style. He doesn’t get lost in the complexities of jazz phrases, but instead he swims freely in that language. This skill allows him to focus on connecting with the musical side of things through his inspired compositions.
One more thing about his playing is the use of pick harmonics. He likes to accentuate by using this technique, especially when he plays with distortion.
Mike Stern invented a very ingenious playing resource, where he plays a high note (using the 4th finger) as a pivot while playing a changing chord progression. Once you hear it you will see how that is one of Mike Stern’s signature moves.
Mike Stern is a dedicated musician who understands the importance of having complete control over the instrument. It seems to me that music comes first for him, but his natural style requires a very advanced technique, so he raised the bar on this area.
He gets his tone from a Yamaha Mike Stern Signature Model - PAC1511MS. This guitar is very similar to a Telecaster, but has a slightly richer sound. It also has a cutaway, to allow easier access to higher notes. Being such a fret master, this seems to come in handy. This guitar has an ash body and maple fret board with Seymour Duncan humbuckers: ’59 X1 in the neck position and Hot Rails X1 in the bridge for a nice sustain. The Hot Rails are humbuckers that fit a single coil slot, which is kind of handy if you don’t want to drill extra holes in your guitar (hint: you could try them in a strat too).
His amps are a solid state Yahama G-100 combo and a Pierce GR-1 (which they don’t make anymore) hooked up to a 4x12 JBL speaker cabinet. He has mentioned his preference on solid state amps due to his touring needs, as tube amps tend to be more fragile.
His pedal set up is very simple. He gets his chorus sound from a Yamaha SPX-90, which is an old signal processor. He uses a harmonizer patch that creates this chorus effect by creating two similar waves slightly out of phase (which is the principle of all chorus pedals).
He uses two Boss DD-3 Digital Delay pedals set to different times. One with a high value in milliseconds for slow songs and one with a lower number for the normal-paced songs.
For distortion, he uses the equally famous and versatile Boss DS-1 Distortion, which is one of the most popular distortion pedals in the market. It can give you a nice, rich distortion sound and it seems to work very well with his solid state amp.
He eventually uses the Boss Octave pedal as a resource, but he doesn’t over do it. He sets it one octave down and it is a nice to have in any guitar player’s effects chain.
He uses Fender strings:.011,.013, .017, .026, .036, .046. Which is basically a standard .010 set with a .011 in the first string.
In this video, Mike Stern explains his equipment in detail.
Album Highlights
Upside Downside An album with names such as Jaco Pastorius, Bob Berg or Dave Weckl in the credits section is for sure to catch my attention. Upsise Downside is one of those rare albums where such great talent gets to play together.
Between the Lines This is a Grammy nominated album released in 1996. It features the great Dave Weckl, one of the best drummers in the jazz scene.
This album has some powerful songs such as Sunnyside, Bait Tone Blues or With A Twist and a soulful The Vine. Wing And A Prayer is a nice slow song with Stern’s trademark writing style. The production style departs a little from Is What It Is, although it still sounds a little late 1980’s.
Standards (And Other Songs). This album earned him the award Best Jazz Guitarist of the Year by the readers and critics of the Guitar Player magazine.
This is a really great album! Not only as a guitar album, but as a jazz album in general. This is a really outstanding work and Mike Stern pays tribute, above all things, to guitar. He takes the band on his shoulders and brings the type of performance rare times seen.
I really like the fact that he records all these bebop standards with in his personal tone: a solid body telecaster-style guitar. Some people just play by their own rules and that’s what makes Mike Stern such a great guitar player.
Give and Take In the style of Standards (And Other Songs), Mike Stern releases this follow up album. Recording standards such as Giant Steps and I Love You, he adds his personal style to this recording. Again he takes the band on his shoulders in this bebop style album.
This is the type of album that guitar players listen to over and over.
Play. This is one of Mike Stern’s best. When you have guitar players like Mike Stern, John Scofield and Bill Frisell in the same album, you know something great is about to happen.
The style is different than Give and Take in the sense that follows a more modern approach. My favourites are Play (with John Scofield) and Tipatina’s (with Bill Frisell), but don’t miss pieces like Outta Town, Frizz and Link.
Overall this is fun album with a great feel. This is the type of album regular guitar players can only dream to release.
Voices This is Mike Stern’s third Grammy nomination and the first recording where he features vocals. This was such an excellent idea, as Mike Stern’s compositions are very melodical. Apparently, this approach was suggested by Richard Bona. Bona is a great bass player from Cameroon who happens to have a beautiful singing voice. He also sings in several tracks.
This is a very original and extremely enjoyable piece of work and a pleasant surprise. Mike Stern confirms his great musical taste. He reinvents himself in this album and delights everyone with a breath of fresh air!
Who Let the Cats Out? This is Mike Stern’s latest work, released in 2006. He goes back to a setting similar to Play and features vocals in two tracks.
I couldn’t stop listening to this album when I first got it. I really enjoyed Play and I thought it would be difficult to match it in that style. Who Let the Cats Out? delivers and is a great, fun album with his signature playing.
