Rodrigo y Gabriela
Sanchez: When we were writing the songs,
some of the people we dedicated them
to were already in our minds. Some were
afterthoughts. That’s because it took a good
while to select 11 artists that we both love
equally. There is not an act in there that I liked
more than Gab, and the other way around.
We already had some of the melodies written
before some of the acts were chosen, but
when we actually started working some of the
material changed a bit. A good example would
be the title song, “11: 11.” We knew we had to
dedicate a track to Pink Floyd, so we already
had the idea to do something more spacey
and open—the Pink Floyd kind of vibe, you
know? Some of the tracks, such as “Triveni,”
had nothing to do with the dedicated artist’s
type of music. That one is dedicated to Le Trio
Joubran from Palestine, and it’s totally a Latin-influenced track. However, they did inspire
pretty much all of the Middle Eastern sound
that’s present throughout the entire album.
Songs such as “Atman,” which is dedicated to
the late Pantera guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell
Abbott, has Le Trio Joubran’s influence all over
it. They inspired us to write those types of
harmonies and melodies for a lot of the music
that we write. At the end of the day, though,
we just adapted everything for what we
thought was best for each track.
Let’s talk gear for a moment. You guys
recently collaborated with Yamaha on the
NCX and NTX guitar lines, which are based
on their grand concert designs. What sort
of input did you provide on those?
Sanchez: Yamaha pretty much followed us
for about two years and made us loads of
prototypes until we were happy. We gave
them all of the measurements from the
guitars we were used to playing with—which
were also Yamahas. They were more from
the classical end of things, with that kind of
look and feel. Mine had a very nice neck with
a really thin body. We used those guitars for
a few years while we were busking, and then
when we started playing larger, more proper
gigs in Ireland we were approached by a
local Irish luthier named Frank Tate. He said
he had been building instruments for a while
and that he wanted to build our guitars.
We told him we were very comfortable with
our Yamahas and that we didn’t want to
lose the shape, size, and measurements of
those instruments. He was free to use any
type of wood that he thought would be a
good fit, just as long as the measurements
of our Yamahas were there. And the guitars
he built us were great—acoustically they
sounded really good. We still have them,
in fact. The only problem with them was
that the electronics were weak, and it really
started to show when we started playing
bigger venues. Since Gabriela plays the top
of the guitar with her hands, her guitar tone
has to be two separate signals, one from
the electric pickup and a mic from the top
of the guitar. It got pretty complicated after
a while. So, Yamaha approached us at just
the right moment. The main difference now
is the electronics—they ended up making
an entirely new pickup system. They knew
what our needs were and they worked with
our sound engineer to get it just right. The
system is made up of a lot of piezo pickups,
more than just one or two. Gabriela’s guitar,
for example, has seven piezos. Mine has five.
Also, I like really, really low action. Gab’s is
the same way. When I played electric guitar,
I had a really thin neck, so the neck on my
Yamaha is really thin, too. Probably as thin
as you can get on an acoustic guitar, with
the action being as low as you can get,
too. My guitar also has 24 frets, which is a
big difference. Gab’s guitar has more of a
classical body shape. Of course, they both
have cutaways. They were really dedicated
to giving us what we wanted.
