Anatholi Bulkin Interview

INTERVIEW WITH ANATHOLI BULKIN FROM TheCelebrityCafe.com ARCHIVES

DM) When did you first start studying guitar?

AB) I actually first started out on drums and was totally fanatic with it for years. When I was 14 I played the drums in a jazz-rock group and also in the local big band. I remember the big-band leader always shouting at me that I was playing so loud he could not hear the trumpets! I also taught drums to some students at this age. The first instrument I really wanted to learn how to play was the guitar, though. At this time when I was like 11 or 12 years old my mother applied for me to go to the local music school to study the guitar. I couldn't enter because they had some awkward regulation there, that at that age children have too small hands?
At the age of 14 or something like that I studied both the drums, piano and the guitar at the same time at our local music-school, but my focus was on the drums then. I didn't really play and practice the guitar seriously then, I was just like bashing away some open chords. That was it. Later on I got more and more fascinated with this instrument, the first one I really wanted to learn how to play the guitar. The time when I really started to study and practice the guitar on a regular basis and with a serious goal (to get better all the time) was around my 22nd birthday. I went to study music then for full time at a school. Here I started to play and practice on the guitar for 10 to 12 hours per day. My goal with the guitar is still like that, to get better at it all the time and to find new ways of expressing the music through it.

DM) Do you still practice that often?

AB)I practice and compose each day, but the time varies a lot. I now got a daughter she is 2 years old now and her name is Soleya. Being a parent is a unique and totally wonderful experience and I just love being with her but this also takes time and it´s worth it. At my present level practicing and composing also involves that you´re thinking about concepts, time in music and life etc. I think that everything you do away from the actual composing and playing/practicing also have a big impact of the result in the actual music. There´s a story about a man who got money for a year from his publisher to write a book. He began to take nine months of vacation! He then wrote the entire book in three months! What this story might tell us is that even if you´re not working on it you´re mind will! I am not saying that you should´nt be working on your music by playing/practicing and composing but if you really want to do something you´re mind will constantly be thinking of it and the progress will always be there no matter what.

DM) Is your jazz more written or more improvised?

AB) It varies a lot. Sometimes the use of a short melody and some chords to go with that feels sufficient for the tune to be complete. Other times when it feels right for the music, the song can be very much arranged and written. musicians can use this "as a map" to know where the music "wants to travel." For me everything with music has elements of composing and improvisation all integrated with each other, more or less the whole time.
Composing is improvisation in slow motion and with the privilege to add and subtract before you present it. Improvisation is like live-composing in the heat of the moment with no "safe-net".
All in all music is music, a divine power and a cosmos within itself for me. If it needs improvisations, arrangements, or whatever it will tell you, if you listen close enough.

DM) But doesn't that also promote a vicious cycle of working and then resting?

AB) No. Only resting. Just kidding ... the thing that this story is trying to tell us I think anyway is that, in our western society it´s so common that sometimes you really try so hard, maybe too hard to accomplish or solve something but maybe there is another way, easier way, to do things with the same result - or maybe even better - if you some times let it go for a while.

DM) But can a composed song have an improvised feel?

AB) It depends on your own attitude. I think that even if the music hasn?t got any parts in it, that is "dedicated" to improvisation/soloing when you actually play the music it can never be exactly the same because we're humans, right? So if you?re mind is set for it even a totally composed tune can feel improvised to the listener. 99.9 % of the music I?ve written so far has had some elements of improvisation in it (often as a dedicated part of the tune for improvisation) maybe it?s because I love searching, breaking new territory and the freedom to express myself through music. But I can also foresee a future when I will be composing tunes that are totally written with no improvised parts in it, but that hasn?t happen yet, though.

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