Viktor Tanaskovski: Blending Rock, Jazz, and Experimental Music

Ever wondered how a passion for skateboarding could spark a lifelong journey into the world of music? Victor Tanaskovski, an acclaimed guitarist and GuitarZoom instructor, shares his unexpected path from being a punk rock enthusiast influenced by the Tony Hawk Pro Skater soundtracks to becoming a jazz aficionado trained at a Jazz Academy in Macedonia. Victor’s story is a testament to the transformative power of music, evolving from playing in cover bands to crafting original pieces with Minstrels Gallery, Alembic, and the improvisational trio Improve. Each step of his journey showcases a dedication to exploring and mastering different musical styles, deliberately steering clear of traditional Balkan folk elements.

Victor reveals the layers behind his music creation process, beginning with mastering guitar fundamentals sans effects and progressing to a collaborative band approach enriched with innovative tools like loopers and octave dividers. His duo, Alembic, transforms into a full-band sound with the help of his classically trained pianist girlfriend, who adds depth with keyboards, theremin, and vocals. Dive into the intriguing dynamics of his improvisational trio, Improve, where every performance is a one-of-a-kind experience guided by Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies cards, ensuring that no two sessions are ever the same.

Explore the breadth of Victor’s musical influences and his unique recording techniques in our conversation. From the avant-garde impact of John Cage’s 4'33" to the magic of creating music with unexpected elements like a cat on a piano, Victor’s stories are as enlightening as they are entertaining. We also discuss the balance between technical precision and soulful expression in teaching guitar, aiming to inspire students with a versatile approach across genres. Celebrate Victor’s contributions to GuitarZoom Academy and get a taste of his original material, linking directly from our podcast. Don't miss this captivating episode packed with musical insights and creative inspirations!

Check out Viktor's YouTube Page for music and videos:
Viktor Tanaskovski - YouTube

Ready to learn Guitar with Viktor?
Viktor Tanaskovski (guitarzoom.com)

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Chapters

• 0:00 Musical Journey and Creative Process
• 14:53 Exploring Collaborative Music Creation
• 23:31 Musical Influences and Recording Studios
• 38:02 Teaching Music Through Versatility

Transcript

Steve [00:00:00]:
Hey, Steve, here again. Thank you so much for joining me. Today. We're going to be talking to Victor Tanaskovski, who is amazing guitar player. He is now working with guitar Zoom. He's one of our academy instructors, and I thought it'd be really great for me as well as everybody else to get to know him a little bit. Victor, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to hang out with me.

Viktor [00:00:22]:
Thank you, Steve. Hi, and thank you for the kind words.

Steve [00:00:26]:
Yeah, absolutely. So what I love to do is kind of start off with just, you know, before we get into all the details and things like that. Tell me, what inspired you to first start learning how to play guitar or what inspired you in a musical sense, where you recognize that, you know, all of a sudden, something about music spoke to you and you went, oh, my gosh. This is something that I could see myself wanting to do.

Viktor [00:00:54]:
Yeah, I know the exact moment when I got interested in music, because apart from being a professional musician, even with an academic background and all, I started digging and diving into music when I was 13 years old. No, earlier than that. I don't have this proper musical education before I went to university. So I started listening to music when I was 13 years old because I was, my main hobby when I was a teenager was skateboarding. So that's when I got into punk hook, first and foremost.

Steve [00:01:38]:
Oh, nice.

Viktor [00:01:39]:
And then that's where it all started, actually, by playing the Tony Hawk pro skater games. They had an amazing soundtrack, always. So that's how I found first, above all about the Sex Pistols and Ramones and so on. And then later on, some hard rocks, some AC DC maiden and stuff like that. And then as any teenager, I wanted to be able to copy what I liked the most.

Steve [00:02:06]:
Sure.

Viktor [00:02:07]:
So I started thinking about getting into playing the guitar. So I started visiting some private guitar classes in my hometown in Skopje, Macedonia. And I had a very good, very good teacher who was a rock guitar player with, again, no academic background, no sheet music, no notation, nothing. Just straight ahead rock and roll. But later on, that was really fun for me and very educational. But later on, I felt like something was missing, because anytime I get into any subject, I want to dive deeper and deeper. And I got interesting in music theory and harmony and composing and so on. So I was visiting just regular high school, no music high school, just proper high school.

Viktor [00:03:03]:
And the first time I got into music education, Washington, after high school, when I signed up for jazz Academy here in Macedonia. So I was studying jazz guitar later on. And that's when I got deeper into music theory and harmony, but I never had a classical music background, for instance. So I went from rock music into jazz music, even though I'm still more of a rock and experimental music player. But I always use that jazz knowledge as a composing tool and improvising tool, rather than as a sound and a genre of music, if you know what I mean. Yeah.

Steve [00:03:51]:
Can you elaborate a little bit more on what that means to you?

Viktor [00:03:55]:
Well, sure, yes. The thing I'm interested in the most is actually songwriting and composing. So I've been playing in cover bands for many years, but for the past maybe six years, I focused only on my own music. And I've been recording and producing and releasing albums with my few bands, actually, first with Minstrels Gallery, then with Alembic, which is the current band that. That my main focus is there, and also an improvising trio called improve. So I felt like this cover band musician was sort of getting in my way of being a composer and a songwriter. So I decided to focus only on my own music. But I wanted to make something that might step out of the regular rock and roll songwriting process.

Viktor [00:05:09]:
Because ever since I heard, for instance, bands like King Crimson or Mahavishnu or, I don't know, Jethro tall and so on, I got into this very eclectic kind of music. So I wanted to take it a bit further and try and mix genres and take everything that I've learned from being a cover musician and a jazz music student and use that knowledge and this other knowledge in my own music and try and create something that will be something different than all of this. And I don't know, I hope I am succeeding, but that's for other people to say, not me.

Steve [00:05:54]:
Well, I tell you I did, because you sent me some links and I did listen to some stuff, and I find it really interesting. So I'd really love to talk a little bit more about this, if you're okay with that. Sure, sure. When you're writing, generally, when we think of the standard, I'll call it pop structure, which includes any general style of music. But you're thinking about an intro and a verse and a pre chorus and a chorus and that sort of thing. When you sit down to do your composition. And I'm going to talk about this in a simple way and then a more complex way when you sit down to do your. Your writing for something that you're coming up with, you're not thinking like that formula, right?

Viktor [00:06:42]:
Yes, yes. I very seldom do.

Steve [00:06:45]:
That's right. Yes.

Viktor [00:06:47]:
Yeah. Mostly mostly I try to think as a. And that's the. If we take those three pillars of music, there is pop music, where rock music stands as well. There is jazz music, and then there is classical music and art music and, okay, of course, folk music. But I'm trying to step away from the folk traditions of the Balkans because they've been overused in our rock music. Not that we have bad folk music, we have some very good folk music. But I'm trying to step away from that style, especially having this very famous guitar player here in Macedonia ever since the seventies, Vladko Stephanowski, who in my opinion, overused this folk music tradition of the Balkans.

Viktor [00:07:36]:
I'm trying not to do that, with all due respect, of course, but getting back to my own music, yes, I've listened to mainly to rock music, especially more progressive genres and more avant garde and art rock stuff. And I've studied jazz, as I already mentioned, and I used the knowledge of the jazz harmony in creating more of a post rock or experimental rock sound. But thinking maybe as a classical musician would do, arranging as if you were writing for a big orchestra, because nowadays, I believe with all those pedals that we have and we use and with all the electronics available, even though you may be in a four piece band, you still do have a pocket orchestra in your hands and your feet. So I'm trying to think in that way. And when composing, I'm trying to think of a song as a composition that would have sections. Then it would go somewhere and develop in a way. And sometimes we're talking about longer compositions, maybe ten minutes long, maybe longer. Sometimes it might be.

Viktor [00:08:59]:
I'm not saying I'm limiting myself here. Sometimes it may be a two or three minute straight ahead song, as in a songwriting fashion, you know what I mean? But, yeah, I'm trying to use all this knowledge and combine it and get something new out of it, something fresh.

Steve [00:09:19]:
So with your writing, do you think a lot more? And again, I know it changes because you write a lot of different things, you're very diversified. But do you start off thinking about something from more of a technical perspective, or do you think more in terms of texture, or how do you kind of, like. How do you start the process when you're doing something like that?

Viktor [00:09:42]:
That's an interesting question, because it always comes from a different place. I don't have one particular way of doing this. Sometimes it may be a new sound that I found by, I don't know, playing around with the knobs of the pedals or whatever. Sometimes it may come even from practicing just those boring exercises. But when you do an exercise that you limit yourself in a way, and you say, okay, now I'm gonna play this scale with. By playing three notes on this string, and then I'm going to skip, for instance, two strings and go from the 6th to the third string, then get back to the fifth string and so on. And then something musical may come out of it, and I might write it down, recorded on my phone and save it for later. But then I try not to use it just as a technical piece, as something that sounds interesting, but I try to connect it with, for instance, if the song that I'm working on at the moment, it might have a lyric, it might have a poem connected to it, and that's going to be sung in the song.

Viktor [00:10:59]:
So I might try and think which of those. All of those sounds and riffs and licks that I recorded on my phone, which of those suits this part of the lyric best? You know what I mean? So sometimes it comes from exercising. Sometimes it comes from exploring sound that can be made with the guitar, with or without pedals or whatever. Sometimes it might come out of a very non musical inspiration. For instance, reading a book or, I don't know, a movie you've seen or whatever. Whatever. A conversation you had with somebody. And maybe you write a piece of a lyric and then think in a sort of.

Viktor [00:11:47]:
Maybe if you dive deeper into a conversation that you had with somebody, and then you start thinking sort of philosophically about what you talked about with your friend the other day, and then, okay, how can this knowledge be used in a musical context and then try and translate it from this language that we speak to this language that we play as music? You know what I mean?

Steve [00:12:19]:
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

Viktor [00:12:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. So the inspiration always comes from different places, actually.

Steve [00:12:26]:
Sure. So when you're writing, do you have a group of people that you tend to work with in terms of, like, other instrumentation, things like that?

Viktor [00:12:34]:
Yes, yes, of course. Especially lately, because previously I've been to. I was making music with this first band of mine. First band that I made original music with. We're called Minstrels Gallery. And as you can tell by the name, we had a very strong Jethro tal influence because I have a twin brother who plays the flute and keyboards.

Steve [00:12:58]:
Oh, okay.

Viktor [00:12:59]:
Yes. And we were a four piece with a drummer and a bass player, but it was mostly. Not always, but mostly me writing the songs and even writing the riffs for the other instruments as well. And then, of course, we were rehearsing that together, and we were making the song together and arranging it. But I always had sort of the first idea, and then we were sort of building up from there, because I'm not a drummer, I'm not a keyboard player and so on, but I can give the initial spark the idea, and then we work from there. But later on, we released two albums so far, and then we formed that band in 2013. Yeah, and 2016. We released the first album and the next one in 2018, but then we formed a duo with my girlfriend in 2020.

Viktor [00:14:05]:
And this is the first time when I've been writing music as a proper collaborative effort, writing together, not having a piece prepared at home, and then saying, okay, we'll play this, we'll play that. We were exactly writing on spot, which was also a very good exercise and very different from what I've been doing before. And this is actually the first time because I was a very. Not in a bad sense, but a very stubborn guitar player when I started out, because everybody was starting out and immediately using pedals and all those electronic devices and effects, I said to myself, I first need to learn how to play the guitar as best as I can without any sort of pedals, just a cable straight into the amp with gain to the maximum, and then get the sounds out of the guitar by using all the knobs that are here. And I've been playing a lot of blues and blues rock music with COVID bands, and this helped me a lot because, I don't know, to play with, for instance, a trio, like, to play the music of cream or Jimi Hendrix or whatever, you really need to get into this way of creating sound as they used to do in the late sixties and early seventies. And then comes the wawa and maybe some distortion, fast pedals and so on. But you build up from there, from playing with the cable straight to the end. And then later on, actually, when we formed Alembic is the name of the band with my girlfriend.

Viktor [00:15:53]:
That's when I started using more and more pedals, and especially not only those sound beautifiers like delays and so on, but also the looper was a very important part of this band because we started out as a duo, and we recorded the first album as a duo. We only have a drummer and a guest guitar player on a few of the songs, but now we have. Now we became a four piece. Now we are starting to work on new music with a drummer and with one more guitar player. But previously, because we've only been working as a duo, I had to think of a way to make this sound as a full band. My girlfriend plays analog and digital keyboards. She's a classical pianist, a graduated, classically trained pianist. But she's playing, in this case, keyboards and the theremin.

Viktor [00:16:52]:
And she's also single. And I started using more and more pedals. And as I said, especially the looper, in order to be able to play on top of it, of course, and to make this sound as a full bandaid. And also I started using an octave divider to have a bass player in the band. And from over there, I went to, I don't know, some shimmer, reverb, stremolo, you name it, an octave divider with four different octaves. Wawa, fuzz, chorus and flanger, and so on and so on. But before that, my point is, I was trying to be able to create, for instance, when playing with an amp that only has reverb and a gain knob that you can. That has vacuum tubes.

Viktor [00:17:48]:
And you crank it up. And if you have this. Sorry, where is it? Yeah, you may get a sound such as this with a sort of mid game overdrive. And then from over there, if you roll the knob, you get a cleaner sound. If you use different pickups with the tone controls, you get more mellow, jazzier sounds and so on. If I turn the. I'm not using an amp at the moment. I'm straight into the sound card.

Viktor [00:18:21]:
I'm trying to emulate these sounds with my pedals. But if I crank the reverb all the way up, I might get some more psychedelic and imitate sort of a very low delay. And then from over there, I've been trying to do some stuff such as imitating, for instance, chorus pedals. Then you also, when playing a strut, you also have a wawa in your guitar by using the switch. And then, yeah, I tried to use all of this. Now, this reminds me of what we talked about in the previous question, actually. Because in the second album with Minstrels gallery, I didn't even use a distortion pedal. I played like this.

Viktor [00:19:22]:
And I tried to imitate all of those effects. For instance, a wawa without a wawa pedal, a chorus without a chorus pedal, a delay and so on. But then I got fed up with it and I said, okay, let's move on. So I started using more high gain distortions, delay. And from over there, it expands the. The palette, of course, but yeah, and then also apart from this duo alembic, probably in the same time, actually a bit earlier than that, we formed a trio. Me, my girlfriend. And this guitarist that was a guest on a few of the songs in the first album, and that is now a part of the band.

Viktor [00:20:11]:
We also have this trio with a different name because we play a different sort of. A different kind of music, actually. We play with a different approach because this is a trio that we only play three improvisations. And we recorded an album, actually, a double lp of four improvised compositions in the studio, which last for. They all last for 20 minutes. So we released it on a cassette tape. It's here, actually. So there are two cassette tapes with 20 minutes on each side for long improv pieces.

Viktor [00:20:56]:
But what we do here in this band is that we draw a card from. Are you familiar with Brian Enos? Deck of cards? Oblique strategies. That's what we use. We always draw a card. Sometimes all of us draw a card each. And we don't tell each other's cards to the other players. But sometimes we draw only one card and we all look at it and we all start playing. Sometimes when playing live, the audience draws cards for us, and it's never the same.

Viktor [00:21:32]:
You never repeat the same thing that you've played before. So it was an interesting thing. For instance, we released a. We released this album a few months ago, and at the promotional concert of the album, we couldn't really play the album. You know what I mean? Right. Of course, we played different pieces. The audience drew cards. And now, an interesting thing that happened, for instance, was we drew a card that says, use unqualified people.

Viktor [00:22:06]:
So we took two people from the audience that cannot play music, any instrument, and they play with us.

Steve [00:22:12]:
Right.

Viktor [00:22:13]:
And something crazy comes out of it. You know what I mean?

Steve [00:22:17]:
Are you familiar with Philip Glass?

Viktor [00:22:20]:
Yes, of course. Of course. Yeah.

Steve [00:22:21]:
Okay. So I forget what it's called, if it's four minutes and 32 seconds or what it is, where the composition is him sitting at a. The piano. And the composition is the noises that come from the audience outside the auditorium. Like, he doesn't play a single thing. He just sits there. And the noises that occur.

Viktor [00:22:44]:
That's John Cage, 433 John.

Steve [00:22:47]:
That's what it is. John Cage.

Viktor [00:22:48]:
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, of course, of course. Yeah.

Steve [00:22:53]:
That's so great.

Viktor [00:22:54]:
Yes, it is. It is. Because bends your way of thinking about music. That's not a musical piece in particular, but it sort of gives you a different idea of how you look at how you listen to music and what music is about.

Steve [00:23:11]:
Yeah, right. This is great, man. This is awesome.

Viktor [00:23:14]:
Thank you.

Steve [00:23:15]:
Okay, so do you find yourself wanting to also do more structured stuff like the rock stuff that you used to do, or do you not really go there much anymore?

Viktor [00:23:36]:
Yes, I do. And now, because my point about talking about improve this band that we are improvising with was that we use that band as a filter in a way to get new ideas and sounds that we're gonna use in maybe later with Alembic or maybe in our solo releases and so on. But yes, now that we've four piece with Alembic, we had our first. We had a few gigs with the new markup with the drummer and the guitar player, but playing the old material, they jumped in and we rearranged the song so that they have drums now they have one more guitar or bass, whatever. But now, a week ago, we had the first rehearsal where we started making new music together. And it immediately sounds more heavy with a drummer and so on. And it sort of asks of us to play more heavily. You know what I mean? Sure.

Viktor [00:24:46]:
Yes. So I suppose that this music that we're gonna make now and that is gonna be released on the second album is gonna sound much, much different than what was on the first album. And also very. We will probably use very different composing techniques in this case. First of all, because we are four different people now, not only two, so everybody will have their own input. Second of all, because some of the ideas that we already used in the first album are, for me, always out of question. We've done it. We are not going back.

Viktor [00:25:26]:
You know what I mean? But, for instance, there are some very, very interesting, crazy things in the first album. Okay? For instance, one of the songs is composed by my cat walking on the piano. I was recording the cat walking on the piano. And then from those short videos, we drew some segments. And my girlfriend, Eva, she wrote a fugue based on. Based on what the cat played on the piano. You know what I mean? And then we also. Okay, the composition starts with an improvised piano by Eva.

Viktor [00:26:03]:
Then there is this composed section as a proper fugue for piano that might have been composed by Bach, but it is played with a prepared piano in an avant garde fashion, with different strings and pieces of paper inside the strings and so on. And then in this last coda section, we recorded the cat walking on the piano. So she had her honorable mention in the sleeves, of course. Yeah. One of the. For instance, there is a solo on one of the pieces which is called. It's got a german title. It's called das pfjldfriestkainen gurken salat, which means the horse is the horse doesn't eat cucumber salad, which is the first sentence that was transmitted via an attempt of a telephone that didn't work out, that the patent was refused.

Viktor [00:27:03]:
But I made this microphone with two carbon pieces for pencil in a matchbox, and I recorded the sentence with that improvised home microphone. And we recorded an old rotating phone. What are those called? You remember?

Steve [00:27:29]:
Yeah, yeah.

Viktor [00:27:30]:
With rotating.

Steve [00:27:32]:
Yeah. With dial on it.

Viktor [00:27:33]:
Yeah. And the phone makes some rhythms. We recorded some segments, and then we created sort of like a loop with different sounds of the phone. We play on top of it. And then there is this solo played by a sequencer of an analog synthesizer. And the synthesizer has his own honorable mention as a soloist in the album. We didn't compose that thing. The synthesizer did it itself.

Viktor [00:28:02]:
Sort of like a primitive artificial intelligence tool. Yeah. And so on. Yeah. But my point is that we already did this things and we're not gonna do the same thing again.

Steve [00:28:19]:
Sure.

Viktor [00:28:19]:
We'll try and go further and further and see what happens with it.

Steve [00:28:24]:
Right. Well, that's great. This is great. I love talking to you about this.

Viktor [00:28:29]:
This is really interesting.

Steve [00:28:31]:
When you mentioned going into the studio, like, what studio are you going into? Is this something at your house? Or do you go to a professional studio? Or what do you do?

Viktor [00:28:40]:
Depends. Sometimes. For instance, the album with Alembic was recorded with a professional sound engineer who is a friend of mine. But he recorded the album in my house with his equipment and his knowledge. Because I have this basement. Actually, my brother lives in this house. Doesn't matter, but in the basement we've made sort of like a very primitive home studio. But I did it myself and I did it well enough.

Viktor [00:29:14]:
It's got this insulation, it's got this acoustic. I don't have proper acoustic panels, but I did some improvised things with the room, and it sounds very well, actually. So that's where we've been recording. As for the improv album, the improvised thing, we recorded it in the studio of the same guy because later on he got this place where he made a professional studio. So that's where we recorded that thing. But that was a very different. We had a very different approach when recording that album because we played it live. We played all together as a jazz band would, or as an old time rock and roll band would.

Viktor [00:30:02]:
Because it's very rarely that nowadays rock bands record altogether. It's mostly drums and then bass and then all of the other instruments. So that's the way we recorded the Alembic album. But the improve album was recorded in the studio, in a proper, professional studio, in one take, especially because it was very important that it's recorded live, of course, because it's improvised music, but it was also very important that it is the first take. No, no. Second chance. You know what I mean?

Steve [00:30:39]:
Sure, sure.

Viktor [00:30:40]:
There is a mistake. It stays. And there were a few and they stayed on the album. But I like them.

Steve [00:30:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's real. I love the idea. I love, I love the idea. So when. Let's go back just a little bit. So when you first started learning how to play guitar, what kinds of things were you most attracted to? Like, some students are really into technique and some students are really into, like, bends and, you know, that kind of expressive playing, that sort of thing.

Steve [00:31:18]:
When you were, when you were younger and you started learning how to play, what kind of stuff made you want to keep practicing?

Viktor [00:31:26]:
Yeah. Okay. Because I always try to draw from everywhere. I was interested in technique as well as in soulful playing, as we might call it. And that's probably why I was very drawn to Richie Blackmore when I was younger, because there was this bluesiness about him as well as this proto shred guitar. I'm not a shred metal player, but I think I have some fine chops and I have some good technique and speed. But later on when I came across Robert Fripp, that's when I really started practicing technique in order to be able to play his fracture piece. And that is probably the only, not probably, that is the only video on my YouTube channel that is a cover song because it was really important for me that I make myself ready enough to be able to play that piece because it's very, very, very, extremely hard to play.

Viktor [00:32:35]:
Right. Yeah. So, but also not only technique wise, but also in a sense of composing. Robert Fripp was a very, very big influence on me with his eclecticism and his using of very non traditional skills for a rock player. And later on, Fred Frith was a very, very big influence on me because I really loved his avant garde music and free improvisation and making a guitar sound like anything but a guitar. And also not only his work with Henry Cow in the sixties and seventies, but also his solo albums later on.

Steve [00:33:23]:
Sure.

Viktor [00:33:23]:
And of course with Robert Fripp together goes Adrian Belew, of course. And that's sort of the, that's my most american influence in my guitar playing, I would say, because it has much more to do with soul and sound belouse way of playing the guitar and. But it also has this way of using the guitar, not as it's intended to be used and making. Creating sounds that are not very guitar like. And, for instance, there is a piece on our first album with alembic called scenes of the feather. And it's sort of. We try to emulate bird sounds, which is an idea that I got from Adrian belew, for instance. And it goes something like this.

Viktor [00:34:20]:
If I. If I get higher distortion and I use a slide, and then I'm gonna loop. I'm gonna create a sort of like a tape loop with no proper time signature or click track, just an approximation. And then on top of each other, I'm gonna do some very high slides like this. And then there comes the cuckoo. Also, here's a woodpecker. Then I record this, and Eva also does some bird sounds with the theremindhe. And then we'll let this sing by itself when finishing the song.

Viktor [00:35:17]:
Sometimes we finish concerts with this particular piece, and we'll leave it there. We'll leave the stage, and the birds are here. Sure.

Steve [00:35:25]:
That's great. That's great, man. That's really great.

Viktor [00:35:30]:
Thank you.

Steve [00:35:31]:
Yeah, I love it all. So, just to go back to your college days a little bit. So you had mentioned theory, and you had mentioned harmony, which obviously, with some of the writing that you do and the artists that you're influenced by, harmony is kind of a. Kind of a big deal. What drew you more to, like, can you tell me more about your interest in theory or in harmony and how you kind of use that in your writing as well?

Viktor [00:36:02]:
Yeah. Okay. I think I have a sort of a mathematical way of thinking, even though I was not very drawn to maths when in middle school and high school, but I always understood it. And later on in life, I started to find it even poetic. And this sort of. Those rules that some people may find rigid are actually very inspiring to me, how the universe works by the rules of math and the rules of physics. And so that's why very often, I even start writing a piece of music by trying to. Trying to solve a mathematical problem in the harmony in.

Viktor [00:37:01]:
Okay, can I start here? Can I use. Okay. I love odd time signatures in music, not only because they sound interesting to me, but also because they are not as overused as the four. Four time signature. And I believe that when using old time signatures, you can at least you have a chance to create something a bit more unique. And that's what I do sometimes I sit down with a piece of paper, and I try to solve things. For instance, if I play four times seven, eight, and then try and from here, jump in a different key, but also a different time signature. How can I achieve this but keep the music going and sound musical and soulful, not as a piece of, I don't know, mathematical problem and robotic.

Viktor [00:38:04]:
You know what I mean? So it's very often that's my way of composing, because I believe, okay, I think that the best music is made, maybe without thinking, just by following your instinct, but most of the music like that had already been made. In my opinion, blues is great, but you cannot make new blues music. It's already been done. Hard rock is great. I love hard rock. I love purple. I love zeppelin and so on. But it's already been done.

Viktor [00:38:43]:
And it's sort of more. Especially in the case of the blues rock bands, in the case of, I don't know, cream, for instance. It's a very. How do I put this? That's probably the difference between songwriting and composing. Songwriting is something that a folk musician would do. Composing is something that a classical musician would do. And we are somewhere in between rock and jazz musicians. And we can.

Viktor [00:39:14]:
That's our plus, actually. In the end, we can draw from here and draw from there and use all this knowledge to make something that suits us. It's just that it's very, very interesting to me. And I always love the ending result, the way it sounds in the end. Sometimes I drop ideas if it's only for the sake of being technical or mathematical or correct in a harmonic sense. Sometimes I drop it and I never look back.

Steve [00:39:45]:
So with all these things, all of these experiences that you've had in the uniqueness of the way you approach music and things like that, how does that then work into your teaching?

Viktor [00:39:59]:
Well, yes, I believe it helps a lot. I started teaching when I was 19. I had my first student back then, which was, I'm 32 now, that was some 30. A friend of mine said, I have a younger brother. He is 13 now. He wants to start playing the guitar. Will you be able to teach him? And I said, sure. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able, but I said yes.

Viktor [00:40:30]:
And I had to adapt very quickly, and I had to sort of invent my own methods and find my own way there. But I believe that this, for instance, playing lots of different genres in carbance helped me a lot, learning how to create different sounds with the guitar that will suit different genres and also learning different techniques. You don't hold the peak the same way when playing blues and when playing heavy metal, you don't hold your left hand the same way nothing is the same. So this sort of versatility in genres helped me with the students, because you never know what the student like to learn, and you cannot be rigid about that, and you cannot be closed about that. You cannot be limited. You have to have all of this knowledge that you can then spread and adapt to what the student wants to learn, but also try and inspire him to dive into different kinds of music that he might not like yet, but he might start liking later on. Yeah. And also, one more thing about students is that I really live in a chronological approach.

Viktor [00:42:02]:
I always try to start with the blues when playing electric guitar, when teaching electric guitar, because that's where it all started in history. Even if the student doesn't like blues, he has to at least try it just to get an idea where it all comes from. So, yeah, and then later on we go.

Steve [00:42:28]:
I agree with that, too.

Viktor [00:42:30]:
If the student wants to deeper, we go to old time signatures, we go to harmony, to composing techniques and all and all.

Steve [00:42:39]:
Sure. Cool. Well, thank you so much, buddy. Thank you. It's been really, really interesting hearing you talk about stuff.

Viktor [00:42:46]:
Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Steve [00:42:47]:
And you know, I'm glad that you're part of our. All right, it's awesome to have you here. So I'm going to make sure that in the podcast we're going to, we're going to put some links in the bottom to some of your original material, that sort of thing, and so people can check out more of the stuff that we were talking about.

Viktor [00:43:04]:
Okay?

Steve [00:43:04]:
So. All right, well, thank you so much for being here and everybody make sure that you check them out. You can always go to the guitar Zoom academy, you can check out Victor. And then, like I said, I'll make sure I have some of these links and stuff, which I'm going to be checking out more as well after this conversation. So take care and I hope you have a wonderful day. All right, bud.

Viktor [00:43:22]:
Thank you. Thank you.