About Guitars with Jean-Luc
I never considered myself as brilliant guitarist really, but my sincere love of the instrument forced me to explore many of his different forms within Minimum Vital or Vital Duo.
As influences, I have a huge respect for great progressive guitarists of the seventies such as Steve Hackett, Steve Howe or Mike Oldfield, but I also have an affinity for acoustic classical guitar. In my way of playing, I’ve always been more interested in melody and sound than virtuosity.
That’s why I’m sure I would have been a very bad jazz guitarist or studio guitarist! Instead, I tried to build over the years a personal style, made of modal chords, Celtic and early music influences.
I have a personal musical recipe that includes, among other things, love for forth and fifth intervals, the using of “open” chords and the trend of “reversing” the bass of them, witch gives them a special colour.
If the electric guitar was my main instrument from the beginning, I became more and more interested in acoustic guitars in the last few years, especially with typical Middle Eastern instruments such as the Arabian oud or the Turkish saz, witch gives, I hope, a little touch of “world music” in our progressive rock !