Brandon Douglas is an acoustic music veteran. Brandon has an eclectic background playing experience as a professional performer playing styles ranging from: jazz, blues, acoustic rock, funk, punk, acoustic pop and classical music. This extremely diverse musical background is the framework and foundation to his eclectic approach to music and fuels his truly original, dynamic playing style.
Brandon did not start out as an acoustic musician, he did in fact study jazz in college as a promising bass player under the direction of grammy award nominee Henry Wolking (jazz composition). He claims that playing gig after gig backing groups on bass got old and that he longed to be the fronting “voice” of a group; plus he was told one too many times that he played too many notes (there’s no such thing).
As a multi-instrumentalist, Brandon has natural musical abilities on every rock instrument and plays all of the instruments on his debut mp3 music album “Loose Ends”:
“I love Loose Ends. It’s a combination of years of work finally coming together for me. I couldn’t ask for more just coming out of the gates and I am very proud of the work I did. However, the album did teach me what I am not, this allowed me to make some changes in my musical direction to being more of a solo guitarist/singer-songwriter instead of attempting to play all the stupid instruments and arranging. What a nightmare…”
And this change in focusing on just one instrument instead writing and playing every instrument on the music album has made all of the difference. He is now able to integrate the styles from his multiple instruments and incorporate them into what turned out to be his true passion: the acoustic guitar.
Armed with this new focus, Brandon has forged a new sound for himself unlike all acoustic singer-songwriters performing today. Taking heavily from his time spent on bass and piano in the rhythm section of jazz music groups, Brandon has a heavy percussive, linear bass-heavy style to his playing which makes other acoustic guitar players ask… “What is he doing???”
“I’v studied Jaco, Mingus, Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten on bass and then my view of the instrument is more linear than chordal like a piano player views his keyboard. Instead of seeing frets and my hands just making choard shapes I ayer approaches the piano. I find too many acoustic players get too grounded in the form of always having to play pre-arranged chords. I just make them up as I go along and picture my frets similar to how I see keys on the piano. The piano is much more of a visual instrument and it’s been a struggle to see the guitar the same way, but this does lend to much more free improvisation and musical interpretation.”
Brandon’s new direction has lead him to a love for travel and live performance. He travels the world playing to audiences in smaller acoustic venues. The intimate settings enable him to talk freely with his audiences building a rapport and bond that is then carried over to online interaction as shared friends on FaceBook and Twitter. Rarely performing with full ensemble groups anymore, Brandon packs only himself and his guitar but he is still able to produce an amazingly full sound as he interprets many different parts on his acoustic guitar.