Guthrie Govan is one of the most creative and unconventional guitar virtuosos in the world of music. While on tour with the band of film music composer Hans Zimmer, he took the time to share his thoughts about compositions, improvisation, modeling, the importance of musical theory, and of course, the surprisingly accessible fusion of rock and improvisational music in his band The Aristocrats.

“Finding a meaningful balance between accessible or melodic versus crazy is a big part of what we are going for”, Govan explains. “We can genuinely appreciate both extremes when we listen to other people’s music, so I think one of our compositional missions is to come up with something which we would want to hear, in the hope that by doing so, we can attract like-minded fans who share our tastes.

Famously, Frank Zappa once asked: ‘Does Humor Belong In Music?’ And to each member of The Aristocrats, this is just a rhetorical question, haha! Ultimately, we are just being ourselves, so any humorous elements you might hear in our music are really just facets of who we are as individuals.

I do like the idea of a little humor coming across in what we do. Whilst a lot of instrumental fusion can run the risk of being overly serious, we genuinely enjoy playing, so we hope to share that with our listener, even when the music ventures into slightly more complex territory. Maintaining a playful mindset should theoretically make everything more enjoyable for both the performers and the audience.”

Recognizably Aristocratic

Since fusion is a genre known for its lengthy improvisations, one might assume that The Aristocrats’ songs are left very open. The opposite is actually true. “Based on some of the questions we have encountered during various band clinics over the years, our songs are more finished than a lot of people would assume”, Govan emphasizes. “We record full mp3 demos of our individual compositions, and each of us frequently writes with his two bandmates very much in mind.

When I am making a demo for a new Aristocrats tune, I often find myself thinking of the other two instruments specifically as ‘Bryan (Beller, bassist) and Marco (Minnemann, drummer)’, rather than simply ‘bass and drums’. Sometimes I will try to dial up a Bryan-esque bass tone to help me find a suitable bass part.

Our demos typically contain all of the key harmonic, melodic and rhythmic information for each instrument. The tunes then come to life and become recognizably ‘Aristocratic’ when the three of us meet up in a studio and start to run through the new tracks, injecting our own personalities by making arrangement suggestions, tweaking our tones, and so on.

Over the years, I think we all got better at knowing what kind of material is likely to work for this line-up. In the beginning, we didn’t entirely know what kind of band we were going to become!”

A Unique Occurrence

“To me, the improvisational aspect of the way we play together is definitely one of the strong points of this particular line-up. I think the combination of us being a trio rather than a larger ensemble, coupled with the fact that we simply seem to understand each other well as musicians, enables us to take risks on stage, and surprise each other without having to worry too much about derailing the performance.

This sometimes leads to happy accidents. I can think of a few such accidents which we liked so much that we found ourselves remembering them and incorporating them permanently into our live arrangements of the tunes.

Allowing some space for this improvisational element makes each show feel more like a unique occurrence, which definitely helps to maintain our enthusiasm levels and creative excitement throughout a tour. Having said that, we still care a lot about playing actual compositions, rather than presenting our improvisational abilities as the primary focal point of what we do. I would say that both aspects are equally important to us.

In terms of setlists, we always try to come up with a running order which makes sense as a whole. One of our goals is that an Aristocrats show should have an overall arc which flows naturally and tells a story. So once we have found a setlist that works, we tend to stick with it for the entire tour. Fortunately, we feel relatively immune to the risk of consecutive shows feeling like Groundhog Day, because we never play the same song in exactly the same way from one night to the next.”

Unusual Stability

Govan has been working with Charvel guitar for nearly a decade and a half now. “Their willingness to work with me from the ground up, rather than just showing me their existing range of instruments and inviting me to pick a color, drew me towards Charvel”, Govan says. “They invited me to make a wish list of every feature I could think of, and then we spent almost two years fine-tuning what eventually became my signature model. Perfecting the bridge design alone already took two months!

It really felt like a constructive working relationship where we were all striving for the same outcome. The end result was a guitar which not only covers a lot of sonic ground, but also copes unusually well with the challenges of life on the road.

The pickups and bridge are both unique to this model. You can’t find them anywhere else! I would also single out the unusual stability of the neck, which comes from a combination of roasted maple with a graphite insert. Access to the truss rod is very easy when a quick tweak is required, but on the road, I have found that I very rarely need to adjust at all.”

Gauging the Requirements

“Live, I just use a Fractal modeler with a couple of expression pedals – one for global volume and one for everything else. I also like to have a powered monitor behind me on stage, to simulate the feeling of having a real amp. For smaller one-off fusion gigs around London, I will sometimes use whatever is available at the venue, but for Aristocrats tours, I always favor the Laney LFR cabs, which are loaded with FRFR speakers, but still somehow feel more like guitar cabinets rather than PA equipment.

When I’m recording at home, I always use my Fractal for practical reasons; I live in a small flat in London, with neighbors all around me. When I’m elsewhere, I just try to gauge the requirements of each situation.

The guitar tracks on the last Aristocrats album (‘Duck’, 2024) were probably 70 percent real amps versus 30 percent modeled. Something about our trio format makes me want to use more traditional gear. But in all honesty, I’m not sure if someone listening to the ‘Duck’ album would be able to distinguish precisely which guitar parts were generated versus which came from traditional amps.

For The Aristocrats, I try to travel light, so I use the FM-9, which combines all the processing and the foot switches into a single unit. With Hans Zimmer’s band, I use a rack-mounted Axe-Fx III with three identical daisy-chained pedalboards stationed in different areas of the stage, each of these comprises of an FC-12 floorboard and two expression pedals.

The other difference would be that we all need to use in-ear monitors in Hans’ band, so I don’t have a powered monitor behind me. Minimizing bleed in the orchestral microphones is always a challenge, so I feel duty-bound not to make that problem any worse than it needs to be.”

A Different Part of Your Musical Brain

“Being in The Aristocrats for all these years has certainly brought about some changes in my approach. One significant evolution came about when I started to embrace modeling technology and realized that I could theoretically use an entirely different virtual rig for each song. This newfound freedom made me a little bolder in the way I compose for the band. We enjoy cheekily pastiching various styles, and that kind of approach feels more valid and credible when you can present each tone with a degree of tonal authenticity. There’s no such thing as a single guitar amp which can truly do it all.

My involvement with Hans Zimmer has also influenced my playing in a variety of ways. For instance: the work I have done on movie scores like ‘Dune’ really encouraged me to dive deeper into the world of sound design and creating tones which don’t sound instantly recognizable as having been made by the guitar. The pandemic, despite its overall awfulness, did at least provide me with enough free time to read the entire Fractal manual – there’s a lot in there! – and to experiment with effects in some new ways.

Playing in Hans Zimmer’s live band also presents fresh challenges on a track-by-track basis, so I have devoted quite a lot of time to solving the puzzles in his setlists. I find that you need to use a different part of your musical brain when you’re trying to add meaningful guitar content to very well-known compositions which didn’t feature any guitar whatsoever on the original recordings. I find the process rewarding, and I’m sure it has helped me grow as a player.”

Real-Life Musical Situations

“In terms of technique, the core of my vocabulary was all pretty much there when I was in my late teens. After that point, I suppose I naturally gravitated towards working out what I wanted to play, rather than how to play it. Hopefully I’m a more complete musician now than I was back then.

Every single thing I do has room for improvement. I have never reached a point where I felt like I had totally conquered any particular style or technique. This, of course, is a good thing. It’s inspiring and it only encourages me to want to play more.

However, these days, I do tend to focus on making music in general and trusting that I will be able to identify and address specific problems as and when they pop up in real-life musical situations. The guitar-centric things I find myself working on are generally dictated by whatever I find myself doing: writing a tune, learning new material, recording a guitar part for someone… So it’s been a while since I worked on a technique purely for its own sake.

Having said all of that, I do find myself increasingly fascinated by Indian classical music, and would very much like to develop a deeper understanding of that whole system. I am aware, however, that it takes a lot of time and effort to even become semi-competent in that field, so I’m fairly sure I won’t be releasing a Carnatic double album any time soon.”

A Counterproductive Myth

“Having taken the time to learn some music theory has occasionally helped me to solve problems whilst composing, and it has frequently helped me to communicate ideas to other musicians. Whether it is necessary to know this stuff or not is a debate I don’t expect to go away any time soon. Historically, many musicians have managed to become amazing players and true innovators without ever learning the names of any modes or altered chords.

I do suspect that those famously uneducated-yet-nonetheless-awesome players generally absorbed the mechanics of music theory anyhow. They just did so on a more intuitive level, instinctively learning the sound of what works, whilst bypassing the part of the process where you would learn the correct names for things. This approach comes more naturally to some people than others, so I think it would be a shame if someone chooses to remain ignorant about theory on the grounds that their favorite player didn’t need it.

I firmly believe that learning how music works can’t harm your playing in any way. That is a counterproductive myth. The only real trap is when someone expects theoretical knowledge to function as some kind of shortcut towards greatness. To me, that is not what music theory is for. Attempting to use theory to express yourself will only work to the same extent that knowing the alphabet will help you write a poem. It’s all just building blocks.

When I am actually playing, I’m not thinking about music theory at all, but various instincts are guiding me in terms of what I think would sound good in any given context. If you played me a recording of one of my solos, I could explain all kinds of things about why I might have chosen certain notes at certain times, but I certainly wasn’t thinking in those terms while I was actually playing.

In those moments, I feel like an intuitive version of music theory is just running in the background of my musical brain. It’s a lot like the way we just know how to arrange our words in the correct order when we are having a conversation with someone.”

More Philosophical Territory

“Guitar students are not all the same, but the one pearl of wisdom which I think can be relevant to the vast majority of them is: ask yourself what kind of player you are ultimately trying to become – and why. Then figure out the difference between that idealized player and the player you are now. Whatever the difference is, that’s what you need to work on.

One guitar student might aspire to become the next Steve Vai, whilst another might be happy to derive joy from playing the same five classic blues licks in their basement once a week. It’s hard to come up with any ‘one size fits all’ advice about technique or theory which would be relevant and helpful to both of those hypothetical students. I suppose that’s why I sometimes veer into more philosophical territory, haha!

If you want to master improvising in odd meters, for example, I think the key lies in learning how to feel an odd time signature. Some of this surely comes from simply listening to a lot of non-4/4 music. Once it starts to feel less odd, you’re making progress. More specifically, it’s generally possible to break down an odd meter by figuring out where the strong pulses lie within the bar. Once you have developed an instinct for that, you can start to feel the meter as a series of simpler smaller groupings.

As a very simple example: the 5/4 pulse of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’ actually feels like a recurring pattern of ‘3 followed by 2’, whereas something like my own song ‘Fives’ is also in 5/4, but the grouping is very much the other way around: ‘2 followed by 3’. Finding the shape of the groove can help make it feel less alien.

One good sign of progress is when you can start to feel the pulse with some other part of your body, rather than just focusing on the hands you’re using to operate the instrument. Some of the craziest odd-time stuff you could hope to find would actually be in Bulgarian folk music. I think the people who actually grow up with that kind of material tend to learn how it’s danced before they learn how it’s counted.”

A Little Distance

“I have to confess that I’m not paying all that much attention to the current guitar scene. Partly because guitar music sometimes reminds me of ‘work’, and I find that I can often appreciate and be inspired by music on a different level when it has been created using instruments which I don’t know how to play. Subconsciously, perhaps, I also feel like I’m more likely to come up with something original if I can maintain a little distance from whatever guitar trends might be fashionable on social media and whatnot.

Having said that, the last thing I heard which struck me as utterly unique and exciting was the microtonal duo Angine de Poitrine. It’s hard to tell whether or not they fall into the ‘young’ category, for reasons which will be abundantly clear to anyone who has seen live footage of them, but they certainly feel new, haha!”

An edited version of this interview appeared in Gitarist 422 (May 2026)

My interview with The Aristocrats bassist Bryan Beller is currently available in De Bassist 77 (July-September 2026)

Thanks to Steven Faber for his help preparing this interview