Ever since making his debut in the mid-nineties, Richard Hallebeek has become a respected name in international fusion circles. With fans like Kiko Loureiro, Fredrik Thordendal, and Dweezil Zappa speaking highly of him, the Dutch guitarist has garnered a lot of praise for his characteristic guitar sounds, his keen sense of melody and his strong compositions.

“I like guitarists who offer the total package”, Hallebeek says. “Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Frank Gambale, Allan Holdsworth: all of them are great composers, they are incredible at playing guitar solos, and they have interesting ideas concerning their arrangements. If you have an awesome song, and that song has a great solo, it’s truly the cherry on top of the pie. On the other hand, if there is a great solo on a terrible song, that doesn’t do much for me.

If I’m in the car and I have a long trip ahead of me, I don’t want to hear someone playing as fast as he can the whole time. Then I just want to hear a cool song. And if it has a great guitar solo to boot, then that’s simply a nice bonus. Whenever I have the time, I tend to spend more of it composing than actually practicing playing the guitar.”

Writing Music Every Single Day

“If you want to make a cd, you need to have eight or nine songs. Maybe even ten. And fusion songs tend to run a little longer than pop songs, so they need to be five, six or seven minutes long. That can be quite a daunting task. If you sit yourself down with the idea: I need to make a whole cd with all of these complex fusion segments, you might just freeze entirely.

That is why I have chosen to divide that process into little pieces. I simply write music every single day. A melody of eight, maybe sixteen bars. But every single day. Sometimes it takes half an hour to come up with something worth using, other times, nothing really happens. But either way, you’re generating some kind of routine. There were times in the past when I finished all the ideas for a new cd three or four weeks before we started recording. And then it’s simply a matter of developing those ideas.

If you have a melody that lasts sixteen bars, you already have an A section for a song. Then you create a B section, return to the A section, and what you end up with is already a considerable portion of a new song. Then there is a solo section, for which I tend to rearrange a few of the chords of the main theme, and before you know it, your new song is done. It tends to start with such small things.”

Requiring Adjustments

That description of his songwriting process might make Hallebeek’s albums seem like an individual effort, but his album ‘Bumerang’ (2020) has been a much more cooperative process with drummer Niels Voskuil and bassist Lorenzo Feliciati. “We went to three different studios and played all those songs together”, Hallebeek explains. “Some songs were constructed in a way that Niels started drumming, there was a bass part, but we left some parts open, so I could go back home, and fill in the blanks there.

These days, there are a lot of those internet cd’s that are a result of sending files back and forth. There might be a well-known American appearing on those records to boost their notoriety, but it’s usually very easy to hear that it’s a result of such a process. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s amazing that it’s possible to record an album like that, but I don’t like it when the lifeless character of the recording process can actually be heard on the results.

‘Bumerang’ signaled the first time in many years that the three of us wrote all the material together. I’m very happy with the results, but it did require some adjustments from my end. I was pushed out of my comfort zone a couple of times. That’s why the arrangements of the songs turned out quite different when compared to those on my previous albums.”

Stretched to the Limit

Hallebeek is always open to being taken out of his comfort zone. “On my album ‘One Voice’ from 2018, I also did some things that were different from what I was primarily known for”, he says. “Some funk things, some more groove-oriented things… On ‘Bumerang’, there was kind of a Meshuggah-styled song. I bought a cheap eight-string Jackson guitar, because our bassist came up with a lot of ideas that focused on lower notes. His compositions tend to be quite riff-based, and some of his riffs were so low that I couldn’t reach them on a six-string guitar.

There was also a song for which he created some really difficult harmonies, with some strange chords. I couldn’t make that work in a way that sounded right on guitar, so I dubbed those notes note-for-note. Ultimately, there were about thirty guitars stacked on top of each other. Logic was stretched to its limits. Kind of like a Steve Vai type of thing, but it was a good fit for a fusion album.

‘One Voice’ was a fairly arranged album. All themes and harmonies are fairly arranged. But the solos are simply chord progressions in which I let them loose. I don’t tell them what to play, or even how to play it. If you’re playing with great musicians, you just have to trust that what they do is right for the songs.

It takes some getting used to sometimes, if a drummer plays something very different to how you did it on the demos, but it usually just needs time. It always sounds better than on the demos. You may have a very strong idea of how something should sound sometimes, but you have to be prepared to let that go. You’ll end up sounding like yourself no matter what.”

Hearing Different Things

In the early years, Hallebeek’s approach drew a lot of comparisons to what Allan Holdsworth was doing. “I feel like I’ve moved quite far away from that in recent years”, Hallebeek states. “Partly through using a lot of hybrid picking in my right hand technique. There’s a lot more attack to that way of playing. I also don’t play such wide things, because that usually doesn’t feel right for me. I use hybrid picking to skip strings. The same notes as I would play them legato with a big stretch. But this way, there is more articulation and I don’t have to stretch that much.

If you have a smooth sound with a lot of legato, people tend to compare what you’re doing to Holdsworth quite quickly. But if you look at people who sound like Jimi Hendrix: that has simply become an accepted style. Holdsworth was very singular in his vision, so people accuse you of imitating him quite quickly if you do something that is slightly similar.

One of the reasons why Holdsworth was so awesome is because it wasn’t very ‘guitaristic’. When I started playing guitar, all guitarists played pentatonic lines and used a lot of bends. Holdsworth was something completely different. And I suspect my approach to playing guitar is somewhat similar. I probably would have preferred to have been a keyboard player. Different sounds, playing with midi, all kinds of keyboards around me…

But I am a guitarist. Not a typical guitarist playing textbook guitar things, however. I like to play around with different sounds and different intervals, and I hear different things. Holdsworth did take that too far at times, in my opinion. On some of his albums, his guitar sound is so processed, through multiple preamps, that it doesn’t even sound like a guitar anymore.

I enjoy all his stuff, but especially when his guitar sounds like a guitar. I like my guitar to sound as a guitar. After all, I like rock stuff too, like George Lynch and Van Halen.”

A Bit of a Compromise

“When I studied in America in the nineties, I had a deal with Brian Moore Guitars. A fancy brand making super expensive guitars with all kinds of unusual electronics. Piezo pick-ups, a 13-pin GK output for connecting to guitar synths, push-pull things, stuff like that. When I opened the cap on the back of that guitar, the wires would be bulging, and I would have to apply some serious pressure to close it again. I played a very fancy model with mother of pearl stars and planets inlaid in the neck until 2007 or 2008. That’s when I switched to Suhr.

I had already tried out a few Suhr guitars at Erik van de Haar’s workshop. When I played at a festival with a bunch of Suhr artists, I got an e-mail from John Suhr himself, asking me if I was interested in a deal. So I ordered a bunch of guitars from him, but that was a bit of a compromise as well. My main guitar had hollow chambers, which is what I wanted, but truth be told, I wanted to have an ebony fretboard as well.

They didn’t have any ebony, because the wood was hard to come by at the time. They recommended Indian rosewood instead, but that wasn’t entirely what I was looking for. I play legato a lot, and ebony has amazing sound projection. If you connect the notes, they come through really well if you use a guitar with a fretboard made from ebony.”

A Unique Situation

“When I went to pick up my Hook Wizard amp from Haar Guitars one time, Erik said: we could build you a guitar that meets your exact demands. When I brought up that I was looking for an ebony fretboard, he said that wasn’t a problem. They had a bunch of ebony lying around. He has a lot of fantastic wood and he works with great, artisan luthiers. They built me a guitar and the prototype was already amazing. A really thick tone, and a very pleasant neck.

That’s when we started talking about launching a kind of limited edition signature guitar that is my responsibility. That’s quite a unique situation. They aren’t sold through Haar Guitars, but through my own online store. I’ve got all those guitars at home, and I will also adjust them myself, so that they are perfect guitars for a guitarist who plays legato with hybrid picking. It’s got a really fat projection; even the high E string has a bit of body to it.”

Contact with the Guitar Scene

One of Hallebeek’s most prominent supporters is Dweezil Zappa, with whom he shared the stage for three sold out shows since 2013. “Dweezil is a cool dude”, Hallebeek states. “He never stopped developing, and he really seeks all contact with the guitar scene he can get. He wants to learn from everyone.

That’s how we got in touch as well. He called me to tell me that he loved what I did with my right hand. He was playing his father’s complex music, and asked me if I could show him how to play some things. I showed him some stuff through internet and video, and I think it helped him play some of his dad’s more complex guitar stuff.

Not long after, he played a concert at the Melkweg in Amsterdam, and he called me the day before. He immediately asked me if I would like to join him on stage. For a while, it seemed like the nerves would get the best of me, because I wasn’t very well-prepared. But ultimately, the music took over, and everything went well.”

A guest spot on one of Hallebeek’s albums was discussed, but never came to fruition. “For ‘RHP’ (2004) and ‘RHPII’ (2012), I wrote the songs specifically for the special guests”, Hallebeek explains. “It was not like I was just calling and asking everybody. In the end, the song remains the most important thing. It always has to fit the player.”

On the Same Page

Meanwhile, Hallebeek is working on new music. His new single ‘Endless Horizons’ was released three months ago, and it is the first in a series recorded with a new band. “I had been looking for a new keyboard player for a while”, Hallebeek says. “Someone who truly understands my music, and is on the same page with me regarding my ideas and compositions. A keyboard player who is really good at playing composed and arranged music, who can work with various synth sounds, who can switch gears quickly live, and who is pleasant to work with.

I have been following Matthijs Geerts on social media for a while, so I approached him, and he liked the idea of working together. We first played live together at Bridge Guitar Festival in Eindhoven a couple of years ago, and that went really well. After that, I started writing new music, and asked him to play on ‘Endless Horizons’.

Matthijs recommended bassist Rik van der Ouw for this piece, and he was a great fit. The music is complex, but Rik plays a four-string passive Fender Precision, which seems to make the complex music just a little more accessible. I have been playing with drummer Niels Voskuil for years, and he frequently saved productions that were about to fall apart due to unforeseen circumstances. He is someone I can rely on, and it’s important to have someone like that as the foundation of the band, both personally and musically.”

The Power of Expression

“After playing guitar on a near-daily basis for 45 years, playing live for 43 of those, and teaching for 42, I think I have become more confident, and I have grown as a composer. Whenever I have an idea, I’m not going to go and try a bunch of other ideas anymore. After all, what exactly was wrong with that first idea? Also, I feel more confident to  play something simple, and rely on the power of expression to get my point across, without doubting myself anymore. A part of getting older, I guess.

I have also started using more triads instead of more complex chords. But the bass does play a different note underneath that than the root note, haha! You can really hear that on my most recent single ‘Endless Horizons’. The A section has a lot of triads, and a fairly simple theme. But it does move up a couple of times because of the odd meters.

I like playing around with the form of a song. Going: AAB, soloing over AAB, and then going back to the theme in AAB, that is something I lost interest in a long time ago. Instead, I like introducing a brand-new section at the end of the song in order to retain the attention of a listener who might have skipped the song if the AAB theme were to return again.

What’s challenging about writing like that, is that the piece has to stay coherent. Otherwise, it’s not a song. So ideally, the new section has elements of the original theme. Composing will always be a challenge, and there is no manual for it. It’s simply a matter of keeping your ears open, and going with your gut. Knowing all the rules of music theory is a good thing, so you know how to break them. Those are Miles Davis’ legendary words, and they stuck with me all these years.”

Every Direction Imaginable

“Fusion is all-encompassing. That’s why I like jazz-rock and fusion so much. It can be a Meshuggah-like thing, but it can also be something small and sweet with a guitar synthesizer, or something that has a more poppy direction. You can take the genre into every direction imaginable. That gives me a lot of freedom.

What I usually do is start with a melody on keyboard or guitar. Or I start from a chord progression. You can start developing a song from a groove as well, but I don’t commonly do that. For me, it usually starts with a melody of five, six, or seven notes that I will start harmonizing in twenty different ways. Or I have a bunch of chords and write a melody on top of that. That way, I will always end up with the seed of a new song.

Chords and harmony are something I always liked; semi-modal music. It’s not really jazz harmony. I did study jazz, but I tend to work in a more contemporary harmonic framework.”

Parts of this interview were originally published in Gitarist 361 (April 2021)

This interview is part of Kevy Metal’s Gateway to Jazz series.