Nels Cline loves the humble

On 3rd May 2018 Nels Cline, legendary guitarist of Wilco, Mike Watt, Thurston Moore and so much more shared his thoughts on music and life with the students and teachers of PXL-Music in an inspiring master class.

Nels talked about his inspirations (from Ravi Shankar to Minutemen), making choices as a musician in order to survive (“I got lucky to be able to work in a record shop”) and the quest for the perfect guitar and sound (which is not necessarily created with expensive gear, as he is a fan of the humble and sometimes maligned Boss CS-3 compressor, for instance).

Nels also demonstrated the setup he uses for his combo The Nels Cline 4, a simple configuration with only five pedals.

The students came up with a series of interesting questions (from life issues to nerdy tech talk), smoothly moderated by guitar teacher Jo Mahieu.