Transcriber: Kaori Nozaki Reviewer: Denise RQ
Thank you. Hello.
Hello there, thank you very much.
I'm going to start by telling you that I'm a musician,
and I travel the world playing concerts,
I play about 300 concerts a year that's how I make a living.
It's also my calling in life, I'm one of the luckiest people on the planet.
I get to make a living doing what I love,
and people say, "Are you in the music business?"
I call it "the happiness business."
I play music and you get happy. That's what matters to me.
So I was on a long flight in business class,
I was hobnobbing at up in business class.
A gentleman beside me starts talking to me, and he says,
"So what do you do for a living?"
And I said, "I'm a guitar player."
And he looked at me like I was in the wrong place,
I should have been downstairs.
And he said, "You make a living playing the guitar?
Wow! What band do you play with?"
And I said, "I don't. I don't play with a band, I play solo."
And he said, "Oh, then you're a singer."
I said, "No. No, I'm a guitar player."
But then I started thinking about it;
I do have a band, and the band is me.
And I think like a band, and that's what's different about what I do.
I think like a band when I play, and when I write, and when I perform.
And that's how I hear music.
I hear it is if it is a band, and I write as if I'm writing for a band.
So I'd like you to meet my band, just to get started,
and that is my bass player
(Bass guitar music)
drummer
(Drum-like music)
I've got a rhythm guy as well.
Think at the money I'm saving up here.
(Laughter)
(Guitar music)
And then finally the melody guy
(Music)
(humming a song)
I'll play the bridge, I think.
(Guitar music)
Good.
(Applause)
Thank you!
That's my one-man band.
(Applause)
Thank you.
And I wouldn't be standing up here tonight and playing this way
if it wasn't for a great man by the name of Chet Atkins.
I was about seven years old when I heard him,
I was on the road with my family.
I'm one of six children, and four of us played music,
but we were driving along in the car,
I tuned in the radio, and I heard this song
by this American guitar player by the name of Chet Atkins.
And what he was doing is something I'm just going to quickly explain to you.
With his thumb, he was playing the left hand,
on the piano would play, the accompaniment,
and then with his fingers he was playing the melody and the harmonies.
So this is what it sounds like, here is the accompaniment.
(Music)
And then here is the melodies.
(Music)
Tommy Emmanuel: Is that enough? (Audience) No!
TE: I'll play with you.
(Music)
(Humming a song)
So that moment was a galvanizing moment in my life.
I heard that sound, and I knew he was playing everything at once.
Everybody told me, "Oh don't take any notice to that.
It's a recording trick, you can't really do that."
But I somehow I could hear it, and I wanted to work it out.
I just kept at it, and at it, and at it, listening to Chet Atkins.
I eventually got it.
Of course, many years later,
I wrote him a fan letter, and we became pen pals.
Then, by the time when I was in my early 20s,
I had learned so much of his material
and taught myself to play in a way that was different from everybody else.
And I knew it, and I was enjoying it so much it;
it was so much of a challenge, and so creative in its own way.
When I eventually got to meet him I played for him,
and he confirmed that I was doing everything right,
even though I had no training, and I still haven't had any training.
I still don't read or write music,
but I can write you a song, I just can't write it out on paper.
So anyway, this style I developed has helped me
to keep my one-man show interesting and to try to come up with new ideas.
So in my late teens,
I started listening to a lot of pop music
and trying to come up with arrangements using these techniques;
the technique of playing everything at once.
So some tunes by the Beatles make really interesting pieces,
and they have become a big part of my repertoire.
People love it where you get that.
(Playing "Day Tripper")
Something like this!
(playing and humming "Lady Madonna")
So you get the idea, right?
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Another thing I started doing when I was young
was banging on my guitar like a drummer
because I am a drummer.
I've always played the drums and loved it.
So when we were fortunate enough to have electronics
where there's a microphone inside the guitar, I started
experimenting by playing the guitar like a drum.
So I found these patterns,
and I found a way of making it sound really interesting.
(Drum-like sounds)
(Applause)
Whoa, look at it!
Then I started trying to use my imagination and try new things
so I got myself a brush, and I started doing this.
(Music)
And then I started doing this
with my brush
so I could get
Whoa!
(Applause)
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
This stuff is all in the name of entertainment
and making my one-man band interesting for my audience.
There's another sound and another technique that I use on the guitar,
that I first heard Chet Atkins doing.
And then a little bit later on, a great guitar player who died young;
his name is Lenny Breau.
This technique is called cascading harmonics.
It's not easy to do, but it is a beautiful sound.
And the reason it's called "cascading"
is because people describe it like a waterfall.
So like this.
(Cascading harmonics)
I use this technique to make my arrangements interesting
and create parts of my show that become very intimate with the crowd.
Some songs like "Somewhere over the rainbow,"
or the Beatles' "Michelle,"
where I used this technique.
(Playing "Michelle")
(Applause)
Thank you.
I use those techniques to make a sound that I never heard anybody else doing,
especially here in Australia.
But when I started traveling overseas,
I noticed that most people over there hadn't heard it before,
and it was a new sound for them.
These are all things that I got from from Chet Atkins.
One of the things that I think I learned the most from him would be
the quality of songs that you choose to play.
And the other thing was
I quickly learned that if I wanted to stand out as a musician,
I should play my own songs.
So I started writing songs at a very young age,
and I spent a lot of time learning the craft of songwriting.
Well, it's one of the parts of my life that I really love the most.
I want to play you a little bit of a song that I wrote.
I read a book called, "The journals of Lewis and Clark."
Lewis and Clark were these explorers who discovered the American West,
and they were led by a young native girl.
After I read this book, it challenged me to write a song
to describe the American West,
the great unknown, and constant travel.
Let me play you a little bit of this song.
If you want to close your eyes and imagine you’re out in the American West
that's what you can do, that's what songs do,
they transport us and take us.
(Music)
(Humming)
Yeah.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Every now and again I come up with an arrangement
that involves quite a lot of my techniques
all involved in one song.
One of those songs is this song, "Classical gas."
(Playing "Classical Gas")
All right! Yeah!
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Alright.
I'm going to read a little bit
because my wife helped me put all this together,
and she writes in such a wonderful way
that I decided that I wanted to read a little.
This is what she wrote for me, this I say to you.
"A lot of these things that I do could be seen as show pony tricks,
but for me the real critics are my fans and my audience.
When they laugh at my bad jokes, or when they cry at my ballads,
and when they share stories that involve my music,
it touches my heart so deeply.
And I know that I'm doing the right thing.
My music has been played at weddings, at funerals,
others have learned my songs and make their living playing like I do.
My music has brought life to Alzheimer's patients,
will power to cancer survivors, and escape for grieving families,
joy to people's daily drive to work.
I hear these stories,
and I know that music goes beyond what we see, hear, and feel.
There's some innate sense that gets triggered by it,
no matter how turned off if you think you are.
That's why we tap our foot when we hear a groove like this."
(Playing)
Yeah!
There's another point that I wanted to make here,
it was one of the things that has enabled me
to live the dream life - in other words, do what I really love -
and achieve my goals.
"Chet Atkins once told me that I am the most fearless player he'd ever met.
And I think that being fearless
is a huge part of breaking molds and raising self-belief.
I have had many times in my life where people told me
that my plans were rubbish, that were crazy, that I would fail.
But I ignore the critics, and I keep working
to make my show and my life better and better.
Music brings people together,
and I love being a catalyst for it.
So I play my shows, I meet my fans as often as I can,
I answer their questions on my forum, I read their Facebook comments,
I upload videos to YouTube for them to enjoy.
I continue to tour around the world and take my one-man band with me."
And just remember folks that life is not a rehearsal.
So you better get on with it.
(Cheers) (Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)