John Butler Trio ~ Ocean

John Butler is a master guitar player and the video below, of his live performance of "Ocean," is one of my favourite videos ever.

It starts off with him drumming and playing the guitar with a smooth, calm ocean rhythm, and then slowly builds into a beautiful spiritual-like offering of his phenomenal mastery of the guitar. It crescendoes and bursts into a stunning spectacle of how music can be the most concrete grab of awe-like spirituality.

I was really excited to see that there are other musicians drumming on their guitar.

There is something familiar in it, since the guitar seems naturally to be a percussion instrument. At the same time, there’s something excitingly new about it, like this could be the future of music – putting together the rhythms of hip hop, drum ‘n’ bass, and reggae, with the melodic twangs and sounds of folk and rock.

Could this be the stirrings of a new genre?

John Butler is widely recognized for beautiful slide-playing and open tunings (common in blues, rock and folk music). The easiest way I can describe open tunings is a way of tuning the guitar so that you can get a major chord from strumming the open strings at the bottom, without fretting, or holding down, any of the strings at the top). Open tunings combined with slide-playing can produce interesting harmonies and rhythmically complex songs. John Butler is a master!

Here’s John Butler demonstrating drumming and playing the guitar at the same time.