I Don't Really Know What A Glockenspiel Wants
An Interview with Guy Buttery
Guy Buttery was recently nominated for three SAMAs for Orchestrations — Album of the Year, Best Instrumental and Best Engineered. The album, released last year after 12 years in the making, took shape across a dozen countries, involving different orchestras, string players and musicians along the way. This weekend he returns to the Hilton Arts Festival with multi-instrumentalist Quintin Song.
Bios: The first thing I noticed listening to this album is how different it feels from your other stuff — like every track has this intention, this driving force behind it. I'll never accuse you of being structured, but this feels like you're heading somewhere specific in each track.
Buttery: Yeah, man. I mean, when you work on something this long, the vision becomes very clear. What I will also say is, what was that film that Terrence Malick made where a lot of people didn't make the cut? The Thin Red Line. Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney didn't make the final cut. A lot of people recorded parts for this record and ended up not landing up on the album. The vision of it was so clear after such a long period of time. I think there's also a lot to be said for the fact that when you're working with orchestral musicians, classical musicians, there was an improvisational nature in some of the playing, but 99% of it was scored and rescored. There was a lot of back and forth with the arranger, Chris Letcher. There was certainly improvisation from me, but the orchestral parts were very much scored with great intention. You kind of have to when there's a 52-piece orchestra.
Bios: Letcher is a genius. That early 2000s Van Der Want/Letcher album is still etched in my mind.
Buttery: I think that record you're talking about was called Bignity. If it was 2002, I think they had one before that called Low Riding, which was late '90s, around '98, if I'm not mistaken.
Bios: How much did you know about scoring before going into this, and how much of it was just you learning a whole new way of making music? A 52-piece orchestra versus you on stage with your sitar — those are two completely different headspaces.
Buttery: Working with an orchestra versus working in a solo environment, they're sort of incomparable. That video was filmed when we started this project, and it was simultaneously incredibly exhilarating — there's just so much power behind you — and also really, really terrifying. I've done a lot of concerts, and I'm not normally too nervous, but this was different. It was like, “I never asked to be born,” you know? It was just terrible. But also really empowering. We rehearsed on this very stage where that video was captured. Chris was there for the rehearsals, and we ran through the piece. Afterwards he ran onto the stage changing the timpani parts and the bass clarinet parts, asking, “What about this?” Just insane imagination and ability to isolate 52 different voices — 53 including my own. He's an amazing man whose voice on this record is very loud and very clear. It was a privilege to work with him. This project went on for so long. I could put out a ten-album box set.
Bios: When you started, did you know you'd end up on stage with a 52-piece orchestra?
Buttery: No, it was actually more the other way around. One of the reasons the project took so long was, I'm afraid, the very boring answer: mostly funding. It's just a very expensive project to get going. That video was the very first time — it was just a one-off concert, three songs with the orchestra that night. Then we did it again, and a few more songs were added, and then a few more. I did it with a string quartet for a while, it got transposed down, then there was a different orchestra. Then I got the Standard Bank Young Artist thing, and more songs were added, and the project just kept growing.
In my head, the very first time, I was just playing three songs with the KZNPO, and that was it. I never thought it would happen again. So the idea of recording came quite a bit later. There's a dark story there too, because I ended up rerecording my parts three times for this record. The project just kept changing and transforming into something different. But to answer your question, it evolved organically.
Bios: How do you even have the balls to ask the KZN Philharmonic to sit down and record an album with you? That's a massive ask.
Buttery: Ha! Indeed. But not just KZNPO, many orchestras and string players were involved in the end. There were string players from all over the world — a lot from the Eastern Cape, a lot from Edinburgh, and others in the US and India. It was recorded all over the place, really.
Bios: So now it's all transposed and written down — could any orchestra pick up the sheet music and perform this? Does it move beyond you once it's on paper, versus when it's just the recording?
Buttery: Totally, man. I have an agent in the US, and one of the projects was pitched with orchestra, either symphonic or philharmonic, so it's completely playable by anyone with the sheet music. The one thing missing is my parts, because they were never transcribed. I was always present, so it wasn't necessary. But that doesn't mean it can't be done — that part has just been left open. Another interesting thing is that a lot of the arrangements were shaped so beautifully that they stand on their own. In the final mix, when we muted my guitar parts, the orchestral parts were just gorgeous by themselves. There were sections on the record where we removed my part completely because the orchestra was singing so beautifully on its own. So yeah, I like the idea of the work living on without me — if anyone is mad enough to go and play it.
Bios: How do you perform this if you need 52 other musicians every time? Do the songs become a fixed point in time?
Buttery: Yeah. You know, for me it's a project that comes back around. It picks up, comes my way, leaves me, and then returns again. I was actually supposed to perform the work in Prince Albert, but that was unfortunately cancelled quite late. So it does keep reappearing. There are orchestral programmes in South Africa where I occasionally get included, and if I was actively pushing it, I could probably go around and perform these works more often. I'd be open to that. I guess I just have so many projects on the go that it's one of many. In some ways, a lot of this work only really existed in recorded form, and that's fine by me. Some pieces were never performed live, while others were performed live but never made it onto the record. So there are different worlds there. But for me, just being able to do it, work with these guys, and dive into a project like this — in a way I wouldn't have been able to otherwise — was really special. Working with all these wonderful players and finally having this work recorded was always the end goal.
Bios: Did anything change in your approach to music through this whole process?
Buttery: One of the things I learned sounds like a cliché, but this project was really, really hard to get together. Just keeping the momentum going was difficult.
There were many times where I wanted to throw in the towel and thought, “This is too big a mountain to climb. It's never going to happen.” And then a little opportunity would come along — “Hey, why don't you come do this thing with the Eastern Cape Philharmonic?” — and I'd think, “Okay, cool, maybe we can add one more tune.” And suddenly it would start moving again. There were so many moments where it felt impossible. So what I'm getting at here is — what's the cliché? You fill in the blanks — but it's something like, “Good things come to those who suffer innumerable pain,” you know? I'd be lying if I said it wasn't very, very tricky just trying to get this thing going. I was talking to a friend once, saying, “I can't believe I've been working on this for 12 years. It's killing me.” And he flipped it around and said, “Guy, how cool that you've been able to work on one thing for so long.” Obviously I was doing other things in between, but this project was always there — sometimes on the back burner, sometimes on the front burner. It shaped a third of my life, for better or worse.
Another thing I learned was how valuable it is to work with people who are really experienced and great at what they do. I mixed this record on my own for about three years, and eventually sent it to Simon “Fuzzy” Ratcliffe, one of the best engineers on the continent. He listened and said, “Nope, Guy, you fucked it up. You got it wrong. We're going to have to do this again.” I said, “No, I've been mixing this for three years. I'm not doing it again.” He said, “Yes, you are. You're flying down to Cape Town and we're remixing the whole thing.” And he was 100% right. Maybe I didn't need to spend three years learning how to mix an orchestra. I've mixed a lot of records, but I don't know how to handle a viola. I don't really know what a glockenspiel wants. I certainly didn't know how to work with a bass clarinet — but he did. So what I'm saying is, if you can work with people who have incredible craft and skill sets, let them do what they're good at. Focus on the guitar, Guy.
Bios: Focus on the guitar, that's your takeaway? So — this weekend's gig, sounds like there's a lot more improvisation in that performance.
Buttery: The concert this weekend and the orchestrations have very little in common, really. There's some crossover — I think there's one song we do as a duo — but it's a totally different animal. Quintin Song is amazing, man. It's almost annoying how many instruments he plays so well. I remember someone asking me, “Oh, are you collaborating with this guy Quintin Song? What instrument does he play?” And I just said, “Yes,” because what is his instrument? Is he a guitar player? A drummer? A flautist? Does he play bass? The santur? The oud? He plays everything. He plays a lot of wind instruments with me, and we've written some beautiful arrangements specifically for this duo, alongside things from my previous recorded work — my repertoire, whatever the word is. But yeah, it's a totally different animal. There's lots of improvisation, lots of space to breathe. I think that's where we really shine as a duo. It's a very open-ended thing. You know, to try and channel the abyss.
Bios: And the SAMA nomination?
Buttery: Fuzzy and I are also up for a nomination for Best Engineer, which I was really happy about. So the record got three nominations, one of which is Album of the Year, which is kind of mad in my head. It's not an obvious Album of the Year contender.
Bios: Album of the year, bro — you gonna pull a Brenda Fassie and storm the stage if you don't win? Also, I can't leave the “best of” thing alone — don't worry, Depeche Mode's 81–85 was only the first eighth of their career.
Buttery: No, I mean, I kind of appreciated it. I think what I was trying to say with that “best of” comment was just how long it took to make this record. A lot of those tracks hadn't been released because they lived in this orchestral world, and not really in any other form. But yeah, it certainly took its sweet time to get the whole thing down. Having all those tracks compiled together might have made it seem like a best-of rescored for orchestra. Joni Mitchell did something similar in 2000, taking a whole bunch of her songs and scoring them for orchestra. But that wasn't the case here. This was just because it took me 12 years.
Bios: There's this thing on the record — the sound of a finger sliding across the string, you can feel the texture of it. Do you think about that as a musician?
Buttery: Yeah, man, I totally think about that kind of stuff — string squeaks and that kind of texture. I'm mostly partial to the humanness of it. I'm all for the realness of it. Unless it becomes distracting, in which case you might clean something up. I don't remember doing any of that in these sessions — I'm pretty sure we didn't. This new recording project I'm working on right now is actually the antithesis of this. It's leaning hard into the realness of a recording. It was recorded in a very reverberant space. I mic'd the instrument twice, but I mic'd the room three times. I'm leaning into bats and cows — it was recorded in a rural church — so I'm very partial to that kind of thing. That's right up my street. I think the older I get, the more power that stuff has. The texture you're talking about — hearing the string, hearing the finger sliding — yes! That's what we want, right? Isn't that it?
Bios: How do you even record a bat? Aren't they above the range of human hearing?
Buttery: I swear there are bats on my next record. Lots of them!