EP 2: Emil Ernebro on Building Fingerstyle Guitar Technique, Creative Influences, Production & Performing

Jesse Paliotto (00:10)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Guitar Journal, podcast where we love to talk about making music, particularly through the lens of fingerstyle guitar. So I'm your host, Jesse Paliotto. I love getting to hang out with you here. And today I am super pumped to have Emil Ernebro with us. Emil is already one of the most well-known fingerstyle guitarists on the planet with a huge following on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, all the things. Also three albums in his own name and an active schedule of 100 concerts or more.

year. So he's constantly putting out good music and connecting with music lovers everywhere. Emil so glad to have you on today. Thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate it.

Emil Ernebro (00:47)
Thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure to speak to someone who also is very into guitars and guitar playing.

Jesse Paliotto (00:57)
Some would say too much, but yes. You know, one question I wanted to ask just to kind of kick us off is I'd love to hear a little bit of your own musical journey. How did you end up focusing on fingerstyle guitar? It's kind of like a pretty specific niche. And I'm curious, like, how did you settle on, like, that's my thing. That's what I'm going to do.

Emil Ernebro (01:18)
Yeah, it's actually, I started off playing a nylon string guitar, classical guitar. Actually, my first lessons when I was 10 years old was all, you know, musical notation. And I played with kind of like a classical technique with the index and second finger playing melodies on the top two strings. So I started off playing with my fingers, but then I discovered I got a Fender Squier Stratocaster.

Jesse Paliotto (01:44)
yeah. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (01:45)
for my Christmas when I was like, guess, maybe 13 or something. Before that, I hadn't really practiced my guitar. I just played during the lesson once a week, 20 minutes per week. And I didn't really, you know, I didn't think it was too much fun because I didn't really get to play the stuff that I love to hear, to listen to. And of course, that's obviously because I couldn't.

Jesse Paliotto (02:12)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (02:15)
because I was a beginner, but once I just learned the purple riff, you know, and I could play it on the Squire, then it was just all, you know, it was easy to find inspiration to go practice. So I did that for a long time. And then I started playing in school bands. You know, I was in the school band when I was a teenager. And then it's just, you know, I started playing in my own bands and then I discovered, I mean,

Jesse Paliotto (02:35)
Mm-hmm.

When you were playing school band, just really quick, when you were playing the school band, so if you're in US, typically if we say I played in band, was usually either orchestra or jazz band. Was that the same thing? Because you're in Gothenburg, Sweden, so I'm not sure, like, is there a different connotation for that?

Emil Ernebro (02:54)
Yeah, this was actually like two and a half hours north from here, which is a small, small place. The town that I grew up in is called Bengtsfors, very, very, very small. But in the school, was no jazz or... It was just a school band that played whenever there was something happening at the end of the quarter or anything, you know, when there was stuff happening, we were the band backing up someone to sing, backing up, you know, so it could be anything. It could be like...

Jesse Paliotto (03:18)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (03:23)
know, rock stuff, could be a jazz tune, it could be anything. But that was my first... But it was like an audition thing, you know, had to audition for the school band. And I was really, really young. The first time I remember, I remember I get questions on what chords, know, play this chord, play this chord. And the teacher was sitting across to me. And I remember getting on the chart, it was F major seven. I was like, how did I play that again?

Jesse Paliotto (03:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (03:51)
I couldn't play an F major 7 chord. So I said, I don't know that chord. I can play an F chord. So that was my first band. But then after that, discovered my dad had Chad Atkins records and I discovered Tommy Emanuel and Merle Travis, Reed, all those finger pickers pretty early. And then I got into solo guitar because I love to just sit

Jesse Paliotto (03:52)
Hahaha

Yeah, that works.

Emil Ernebro (04:19)
you know, with the guitar and experiment. I'm kind of a I'm kind of a puzzle guy when it comes to guitar. The best thing that I know to do is to just have my guitar in my hand and have time to just discover things. And that's what I started to do. Yeah. So.

Jesse Paliotto (04:36)
Did you go to GIT? For some reason, I think I have either heard you say this online or read something. Did you come over to LA and do that?

Emil Ernebro (04:44)
Yeah, I was right after, we call it the gymnasium, I guess when you're 18 years old, you graduate, went to music school in Sweden for those three years also after the school bands and everything that was much earlier. I went to music school and then right after when I was 18, I had a teacher in Sweden who actually was a student at MI back in 90, I think it was 1996 or 1997.

His name is Olof Kleinfeldt, he's a great player as well. And he said, I think you should check out GIT because there are a couple of teachers there that I think can help you develop the things you're interested in. So in Sweden, we didn't really have a lot of finger style focus in terms of being able to go to a school.

with a great fingerstyle player that also can teach you everything about music theory and reading and everything else that you need to maybe do if you go to music school. So he had a few teachers that would fit me. And so I just went there and I studied at GIT in Hollywood for one and half year. And then I stayed for a while to play gigs and stuff before I went back home to Sweden.

Jesse Paliotto (06:11)
Did you, were you kind of picked, because I feel like a lot of your styles, I've heard you play on YouTube or your albums on Spotify and stuff. There is like a Tommy Emmanuel influence. that, was that happening during that when you were kind of going to school and you're like, all right, I want to consciously play like that. I'm going to learn stuff. Was that later?

Emil Ernebro (06:30)
Yeah, I'll tell you a quick story about Tommy. And the thing is in Sweden back in 2004, Tommy Manno didn't play in Sweden at that time. So nobody knew who it was, but I had seen videos and I had been listening to his stuff for a while. And I decided to, because we had school projects in school.

And my school project, I decided to call it a Tommy Emmanuel project. And it was basically an excuse to be able to play, practice his music, you know, in school because we had a few hours every week to work on our school project. So I called it a Tommy Emmanuel project. And at the end of the quarter or whatever it was, I was supposed to play a concert for my friends in my class.

Jesse Paliotto (07:05)
Okay.

I love it.

Emil Ernebro (07:29)
And I had this idea that I wanted to tell people who Tommy was because nobody knew who he was. He started to play in Sweden back in 2006. So a couple of years after this. So I did that. And then my dad said, hey, Emil, Tommy actually plays in London. We should go to see the concert. And I was like, what? Can we travel to see a concert in London? I was like almost shocked that we could do that because we hadn't done that ever. And my dad loved the music he's playing as well.

So I just, thought maybe imagine if I can do an interview with him and, and my dad can record him recorded this and then I could share it on the projector for my friends at the school project. So I emailed the manager or in through the website, I guess, Tommy's website. And I asked, could I do a short interview? I'm from Sweden. I'm coming to see your concert. And I got the response from the manager who said, of course, Mira said for, you know,

before in the afternoon before the gig and you'll be able to meet Tommy. I went there with my dad and my dad filmed the whole thing. Tommy was super, super kind and, you know, just just a great, great guy. and he he it was I was so inspired from that and I recorded it.

And then I got to see the concert, see that remember. And that was actually a shocking experiment. It was at the Winster Art Center in London and it was 200 people, 200 seats, very, very small place, you know, and it was full. And I was, I got out to see his sound check and he started to play his guitar and he was standing there by his monitors. And I was like, this is the best guitar, biggest guitar sound I've ever heard. It's like, it was like a rock concert. And then.

Jesse Paliotto (09:01)
Go well.

Yes. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (09:20)
And then all of a sudden he said, okay, you can turn on the speaker. So I just heard the monitors and then it turned out on the PA and I was like, what is happening? And so that was like an inspiring moment. And then I got back to Sweden. I played the project for my friends and I shared the interview and yeah, so that was the start of that.

Jesse Paliotto (09:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

That's awesome. I sort of have a similar story with Tommy Emmanuel where I had emailed him years ago. It might have been pre-COVID like, hey, do you mind if I come down and interview you before a show? Cause he was playing locally here, I think in Malibu outside LA. And yeah, just same experience. Like, yeah, sure. Come on down, come before the show, hang out. He was super kind.

Emil Ernebro (10:06)
What is it? What was it at Pepperdine University? it was. Cool.

Jesse Paliotto (10:10)
Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yeah, so I was, yeah, that's exactly right. And then got to hang out with them. Same experience also going in, like when he's doing soundcheck and you're like, my gosh, this is so big. And it's, it's a bigger auditorium. It's, I would guess six or 700 seats. But yeah, just like the biggest guitar sound just like completely blows away the room. Really amazing.

Emil Ernebro (10:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (10:35)
And he I remember him showing me backstage. He's like, I don't play loud like he is like I play like at this level and it was just a normal like you're sitting in a room playing your guitar. But when he goes on stage, I don't know if he doesn't subconsciously or something, but it is like he turns it up. It is it is so big.

Emil Ernebro (10:51)
It is very big. It is something that you need to see. can't... I mean the YouTube videos, it's great but you just have to see him live if you haven't. You know, it's a different story. And so of course many kids like me back then was just blown away by his playing and started to learn from his music which was really cool that they can... that he inspired so many to start learning about fingerstyle guitar because he...

Jesse Paliotto (11:02)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (11:20)
He made people aware of the music before him, of course. And that's what he still does. He still do that traveling the world. And he's kind of the biggest person in terms of fingerstyle guitar that actually makes young people discover songs like old Cherakins tunes and stuff like that. no one here in... Yeah, no one in Sweden would have

Jesse Paliotto (11:45)
windy and warm or something.

Emil Ernebro (11:49)
heard those songs if it weren't for Tommy nowadays, you know. So it's, yeah, he is doing the best job in getting the music out there.

Jesse Paliotto (11:58)
You know, it's a, this is a great transition. Cause I'd wanted to ask you a little bit more of like a guitar nerd or technique or kind of in the weeds question around how do you build skills at that thumb pick finger style? Like how did you actually go about doing that? I feel like, you know, when you go out there and you look online, there's not, there is some material, but it's not as common of a way to play. And like, were you just doing alternating bass, Chet Atkin stuff all day or like, how did you get fluent? And you are extremely fluent. If anybody,

goes and listens to Emile's YouTube and watch him play like you are so natural in your kind of transition across scales and solos and chords and all the different things that you do on the guitar. How did you build that?

Emil Ernebro (12:40)
Well, first all, thank you so much for saying that. Yes, started off, I mean, when it comes to fingerstyle, I started off, you know, learning about how to get the thumb independent from the fingers when it comes to rhythms. So that was very difficult for me and it is difficult for anyone, you know, in the beginning because the thumb has never done a different rhythm than the fingers. always do, you know, when you grab something, it's the same time as the fingers. So that's why you need to kind of...

Jesse Paliotto (12:53)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (13:10)
train your thumb. And for me that took a while in the beginning. And I kind of played my own way a little bit, but I discovered, I mean, I could play a lot, speaking of going back to when I was 17 years old, 16 years old, and I played a lot of these Tommy Emmanuel tunes. I could play them technically, but I didn't have the rhythm and the groove of, you know, and I still don't have that

when it comes, you know, if I would compare my groove to Tommy Emmanuel's groove. But still, I mean, I needed the I needed to listen more to what I was doing. So I started off working a lot with a technique. I mean, for a long time, technique, technique. But I discovered later, unfortunately, a little bit too late, I think, in my own opinion, that I that that was not

Jesse Paliotto (13:51)
Yeah.

huh.

Emil Ernebro (14:07)
My problem was not the technique. My problem was that I needed to learn how to play in time. I mean, could play kind of play in time, you know, know, I got when something fast came along or something tricky, I would just rush and everybody almost does that in the beginning. So so and I still need to work on that. But but yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (14:27)
Yeah. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (14:33)
I learned so many arrangements and songs and I created my own arrangements, but I learned so many of these old Chet Atkins students, Mo Travis, Jerry Reed, Tommy Emmanuel. And I got the tools to be able to create my own things. I listened to Lenny Breaux and Ted Green. Nowadays a lot of Joe Pass and all those jazz players as well.

Jesse Paliotto (14:58)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (15:03)
You you kind of get something from everyone and the more you learn from other people, the more tools you get, you know, naturally in your playing. So I think it was just playing a lot of tunes early on that made me, you know, become more relaxed when it came to fingerstyle. But the soloing part like or the single line stuff, that was like a whole journey by itself, you know, playing

Jesse Paliotto (15:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's-

Emil Ernebro (15:32)
thumb and index finger, thumb, index and middle when it comes to playing solo lines. So that was kind of a different thing that I developed at the same time.

Jesse Paliotto (15:43)
Was it very conscious, like, I'm gonna analyze this or somebody maybe gave me instruction and I'm gonna like develop this technique or was it like I've heard Joe pass on, you when he's done, you you watch some of old recordings and he's like, you know, I just, don't even know what I do. I do two fingers when I'm doing finger style and he doesn't really have a methodology. Like, did you just kind of kind of evolve or did you really come at it with a really organized way?

Emil Ernebro (16:06)
I learned that I couldn't, it was not a good thing for me to watch someone play and then think, okay, that is the right technique because that player is so good. So that must be the best way to do it for me too. And I, that was not good because I ended up learning. Well, it was good in one way because I tried it. I tried it and discovered my own technique, but

Jesse Paliotto (16:33)
Mm. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (16:35)
I spent like a lot of time playing with a pick and thought, okay, George Benson plays with a pick like this in this weird way and he's George Benson. This has to be the best way to play. So I tried that for a month and I was miserable. so I needed to try different things and you should try different things. But ultimately everyone is different. Your hands are different. Your feel, everything is different from one person to the next. So try a lot of different things, but don't spend

Jesse Paliotto (16:41)
Right. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (17:04)
two months on one technique, forcing that technique on your own playing. Try to see if you can find something that comes natural to you. And I listen a lot to Brent Mason and Jim Nichols, Jim Nichols, wonderful player from the Bay Area. And he plays thumb and index. He plays Chet's style, but he also plays bebop. And I love to blend styles like that. I kind of try to do that as well in my playing. That's what I love, blending country music with jazz and blues.

Jesse Paliotto (17:27)
Okay.

Emil Ernebro (17:34)
and everything in between. And so that's why I naturally gravitated towards those players that kind of did that, soloing and index finger. And after a while, it naturally came along. Then I analyzed my right hand later for instructional videos and stuff that I when I teach. So I know, I learned later some kind of rules that I do subconsciously that I've developed.

But now I understand why I do them. And so I can help others to develop the same style if they want to start soloing with thumb and index.

Jesse Paliotto (18:06)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. You kind of discover your way there and then kind of in hindsight can say, OK, this is what I'm doing is I'm alternating or using pull offs in order to kind of create speed when I'm using these fingers.

Emil Ernebro (18:20)
Yeah, yeah.

Exactly. I remember asking a teacher at school at MI because I heard George Benson or I mean Brent Mason playing thumb, index, thumb, middle or actually it was these two fingers. So thumb and then middle and thumb and ring finger. Like that. think. Yeah. And he is so fluent with that. It plays beautifully. And I practice like that for a while. Scales and stuff. And I asked my teacher, do you think this is a good way of playing?

Jesse Paliotto (18:41)
Interesting, okay.

Emil Ernebro (18:54)
And he said like, why wouldn't it be just play? You know, and I was like, I was analyzing too much. think you thought at that time, just play and you'll find your own way, you know, so, and it ended up playing with thumb and index mostly.

Jesse Paliotto (19:11)
Yeah, yeah, that's encouraging. So I feel like one of one of the things I can get in my head about as a guitar player, and I imagine a lot of other musicians can even other instruments or whatever, is you start to worry like if I practice this, am I going to mess up my playing? Like I'm going to all of a sudden teach myself a bad habit because I tried to do the Brent Mason thing. And so it's very kind of encouraging to hear you say, hey, I tried it didn't work. I moved on to the next thing and I found my way. Like it's all good. Just keep playing.

Emil Ernebro (19:37)
Yeah, exactly. shouldn't be afraid. Exactly. You shouldn't be afraid to try it. But if you feel like you're starting to after two weeks, just you're forcing yourself to do something that's not natural for your hand, then I would go to something else. But I've seen players like Adam Rafferty, Adam probably you know who he He changed his technique in the past few years. And he's been playing his whole life and now he plays different than way different than he did.

Jesse Paliotto (19:50)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (20:07)
a few years ago. you can still change and develop and that's a good thing to know that you don't have, you're not stuck in your playing once you try something. But for me it was a little bit like that a few times I stayed a little bit too long on different techniques that I thought was better.

Jesse Paliotto (20:29)
Yeah, even Joe Pass. You know, funny enough, I really love Joe Pass. I'm, you know, learning. I'm trying to learn a lot of his stuff right now. And I have, I'm going to make myself hated with certain Joe Pass fans. I actually don't like a lot of his early playing because it's very pick based and it's very fast. And it's like, it's kind of in the seventies vein of like goings for speed. It's like that cake song. He's going for distance. He's going for speed. And, and then later he switches to finger style.

Emil Ernebro (20:44)
Mm.

Jesse Paliotto (20:57)
And it's very, it's a lot more, in my opinion, a little bit more melodic. And, and I love that. And so it's interesting, even like this iconic, like the great jazz fingerstyle guitar player made a massive change in his technique during his career.

Emil Ernebro (21:12)
Exactly. Exactly. And I agree, actually, I love his later playing when he played a lot of solo guitar with his fingers. And of course, I love the solo jazz guitar. So Joe Pass is naturally one of the greatest in that field. But his technique, he could play with a pick incredibly well. he kind of, you know, when he...

He becomes a grand piano when he's by himself playing with fingers and just sounding beautiful and can still play, you know, tricky and fast lines, of course, just using his fingers. But it's just a different way, you know. And yeah, I like the later stuff too.

Jesse Paliotto (21:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's where I hear the magic when he plays is that grand piano. You're like, that's just incredible.

Emil Ernebro (21:58)
Yeah, yeah, it sounds wonderful.

Jesse Paliotto (22:05)
So this is a great transition because I also wanted to ask you about pro guitar. And so, you know, if I just kind of connect the dots of talking about like how you learned your technique, I'm going to guess a lot of that shows up in what you do there. But maybe you could talk about what it is, who it's for. I would love to hear some about that.

Emil Ernebro (22:24)
Sure. Well, first of all, I'm a big fan of guitar instructional videos and I have always been. all these Hot Licks videos, like the DVDs way back, I mean, I got, I don't know how many I have, I spent my money. I usually spend on music, maybe, you know, a couple of skateboards, but mostly it was stuff like that. Like, you know,

Jesse Paliotto (22:44)
Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (22:54)
records or instructional videos. So I learned I love these videos. You get kind of like something you get you see you learn from someone who has so much much experience in so many different things and plays in a certain way. And even if you don't play that style is really cool. I watched heavy metal videos. know, I watched a lot of different plays in different genres and I was

I thought it was so inspiring to do that, to learn from these videos. And of course I had my teacher to like, this guy is doing this. What do you think about that? And he could help me, you know, so it was really good. So I started, you know, way back teaching a long time ago, private lessons. And then when I got back home from the US, I started kind of developing that part and doing more lessons.

for a lot of people every week but then I started traveling or playing a lot of gigs all the time so I kind of had to take a break from those lessons to perform but then I thought because I missed that I missed that stuff to teach and I thought nowadays people learn a lot from the internet instead so I just I got in contact with two people who developed this application for tuning like a tuner

Jesse Paliotto (23:54)
Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (24:18)
app in the phone. And so they have the technical skills to build anything, you know, and so they're really good at that stuff. So they asked me to join them and to make a little fingerstyle platform called proguitar.com. And it was actually I just started posting lessons on there and different things that I've been working. And the thing is, I write out a lot of stuff that I do, even if it's stuff that I can't chair because of, you know,

Jesse Paliotto (24:19)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (24:48)
songs that I can't share because of the licensing for that song. I still write my arrangement out, most of them, because I want to save them for myself. And I like having them saved for me or having them on paper even. So I write out these concepts and these things that I've learned and then most of that stuff I can teach at proguitar.com. you can go on the site.

Jesse Paliotto (24:53)
Right.

Emil Ernebro (25:15)
and it's called proguitar.com and then slash academy and you go there and you can just sign up for a monthly subscription or a yearly subscription or you can buy single purchase lessons and it's mostly fingerstyle guitar it is mostly high high or advanced lessons most of the lessons are advanced so we're trying to maybe later on get more beginner lessons as well because we want people to be able to do that but most of

The concept in the beginning was this is a site for people who have been playing for a while and wants to specialize or learn more about fingerstyle guitar. So I kind of put the level pretty high, but I still have some beginner stuff on how to start getting your thumb independent from your fingers. You can learn from the beginning, but there's a lot of information on there. And we're trying to develop it and make it for everyone.

Jesse Paliotto (25:52)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (26:15)
you know, as much as we can. So it's really fun to be able to have that community and also the social media channels Pro Guitar Official, called, the Instagram and TikTok and everything. And it's super fun because I get to connect with players from all over the world who's learning the stuff that I'm talking about. And it's just really fun. I spend, if I'm not on the road or playing somewhere, I am working from home, either recording things

Jesse Paliotto (26:45)
Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (26:45)
working on lessons or not writing out notations, notation and tablature and stuff. And so that's one of my kind of fun things that I love to do, you know.

Jesse Paliotto (26:58)
I love that. I have been a customer. I will say this is not, Emile didn't pay me to say this. This is legitimate. I have been on the site, used it. It is, in my opinion, like the best resource that I have found online. If you're trying to use a thumb pick and do anything beyond just the boom chicka. I feel like Tommy Emmanuel has some great courses on Truefire. He also has his own channel. He's got his own stuff.

Emil Ernebro (27:05)
haha

Jesse Paliotto (27:23)
What I encountered with him is a lot of it was if you want to play Tommy Emmanuel songs, it's phenomenal. But I really appreciate it on pro guitar that I also love jazz. And so the idea that I can blend some of the more traditional thumb pick technique, which comes from a Chet Atkins sort of the boom chicka background into how do I incorporate stuff that has more of a jazz edge to it, does more scalar? How do I figure out fingerings when I'm trying to do things that are not just pattern based? I thought the stuff was awesome. So I would like

If I can do two thumbs up on a podcast, I would do two thumbs up right.

Emil Ernebro (27:55)
Thank you so much. Yeah, I'm so happy to hear that. we tried to, I tried to add not only songs and stuff like that, but also more kind of a concepts that you can use in your own playing. And it can be anything, you know, it can be talking about chords or it can be music theory. It could be, you know, anything that you might be able to use in your overall playing, not just this song.

you know, play it this way. More like maybe you can use this arpeggio and this scale over this sound, know, stuff like that as well. So I try to blend a little bit of everything. And I'm just curious, you know, like I said before, I'm very curious about music and guitar and it's never ending. That's that's what's, it's kind of a cliche, but it is really incredible how the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know and how much

Jesse Paliotto (28:24)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (28:52)
you how much you there is to learn you know it's never ending so no matter how good you get so so I love just working on this stuff I just finished an arrangement today actually I made it's a song called the old Christmas it's called Come All You Faithful it's like I think it's a hymn from the beginning and I just made a jazz arrangement of it and and I posted it on online

Jesse Paliotto (29:05)
cool.

yeah.

Emil Ernebro (29:21)
earlier today. Yeah. So if anyone wants to learn some Christmas new for the holidays, they can check it out.

Jesse Paliotto (29:22)
nice.

Yeah. man. The hard thing about learning fingerstyle guitar for the holidays is by the time you're like, I should do that, you're a little too late. You're like, I got to put a bunch of time on this if I'm going to do this in two weeks.

Emil Ernebro (29:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, I posted a few arrangements like in last year, I think it was and it was some kind of a tricky, tricky Christmas arrangement and people said you should have been posting this in January. I couldn't be able to learn. Yeah. And yeah, and I agree it takes some time. I'm too late. But this is actually kind of a simple, not super simple, but most of this arrangement is actually pretty easy to play. so this is you have a month if you want to check it out.

Jesse Paliotto (30:07)
And that that song is very like on the beat and it's very traditional. think most people would know the melody as soon as you start playing.

Emil Ernebro (30:07)
Until Christmas.

Yeah.

Exactly, exactly. It's very simple. I just added some embellishments and chords and a little bit more jazzy sounding things, but overall it's kind of just a beautiful melody that I wanted to arrange. And it's also, speaking of the licensing, it's public domain, it's old. So I could make a lesson and talk about it without having to think about anything regarding that stuff because it's really tricky nowadays, of course.

Jesse Paliotto (30:31)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (30:41)
With the licensing, we can't share anything that we don't have a license on. I'm very... I don't want to do something that I'm not allowed to do. So I try to share music that I can.

Jesse Paliotto (30:58)
Well, let me ask you about that. It's just interesting since it comes up. Do you find that usually the barrier is like, especially on YouTube, they're going to auto catch anything that, but usually it's recording based. Like if you post part of a recording and they do the algorithmic match against an existing copyrighted piece of music, they'll pull your thing. I think social channels do it as well. Is that mainly kind of where you run into it or is it just kind of your own sense of like, I don't want to be a bad actor. So I'm going to like, what, what really do you run into on that?

Emil Ernebro (31:25)
Yeah, when it comes to YouTube, can post arrangements on YouTube and stuff, post, you know, of you playing it because YouTube takes care of that. In other words, they, like you say, they can monetize it and share that money. If there's any money that comes in from the video that will be sent to the person or hopefully to the right people. And I hope we can trust YouTube on that, that they're doing an okay job.

Jesse Paliotto (31:42)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (31:54)
You never know where the money ends up, but hopefully it ends up to the right people. So, and I'm okay with that. I think that's great that that because I can still share my arrangement. I don't earn anything from it, but I can still share it. But when it comes to notation, music notation and sharing a tablature and notation, I could I'm not allowed to do that. So that's that's the tricky part. You can't do that without the license.

And getting a license from a publishing, you know, it can be very tricky because like way back I have a Christmas jazz, Christmas guitar album. It's called Winter Jazz. It's on Spotify, but that record, I thought I would love to do just a fingerstyle book with these arrangements because I love these songs. And I arranged them in a way that I thought was nice. And I thought, this would be great to say, because I always write them out anyway in my computer, just for me.

or for maybe a couple of private students now and then, you and then I tried and it was like, try to make in a book, trying to get the license for these songs. And it was like, it could be like one song could have three different publish. I don't know if it publishes, but people owning it. So 23 % was owned by this company and someone else had 7 % and the rest a third company. And then you needed to contact everyone.

Jesse Paliotto (32:55)
Yeah.

yeah.

yeah.

Emil Ernebro (33:20)
They of course you need to pay. Some of them might not even answer because it's me, one people asking that they don't care. They talk to big book, know, publishing. They don't even want to answer. So it was actually impossible, almost impossible to do it by myself. If I was going to do that, I needed to be, you know, behind kind of someone who

Jesse Paliotto (33:29)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (33:48)
already does that when it comes to books and you know, so I couldn't do it myself. I was that was kind of terrible because I didn't want to earn money on it. I just want to have a book, you know, so and I couldn't even do it, you know. So. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (33:51)
Yeah.

Right? Yeah, yeah.

that's frustrating. That is frustrating. Yeah, you almost need somebody who's in the publishing industry that can navigate all the weird stuff there.

Emil Ernebro (34:06)
I think so.

Yeah, I think so. think it might be. mean, maybe I should contact. There is a website, I think, does that for you. They say they claim this. They do do it. But you don't get a lot of a lot for it. But that's like the digital versions. So and I haven't I haven't used that. But maybe one day I'll try that. I don't know. See.

Jesse Paliotto (34:29)
Yeah.

If we find a link, we'll drop it in the show notes for later. Whoever that company is. What I'm curious, like based on, well, let me, let me say one thing to go back. What, what you started with some of that around pro guitar and the story of the teacher who would point out different lessons, heavy metal lessons, whatever, you know, I really appreciate you saying that. Cause I think that is one of the things that maybe you can get lost with online courses is that it's still helpful to have somebody that you're taking lessons from that can guide you around the corners. Cause

Emil Ernebro (34:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (35:04)
or just inspire you or bring you back to center when you're off in like random land, like in your head about I'm learning the, you know, the, what was it? The George Benson picking method. And I don't know if I like, you know, sometimes you need somebody to like talk you off the cliff and get you back into what you're trying to really go for with your, with your instrument. So I really appreciate that. Cause I think the balance is really good.

Emil Ernebro (35:14)
Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah, well, I agree. mean, the balance is great. I've always had, almost always had guitar lessons, taking guitar lessons. The last years, maybe 10 years, I haven't like had lessons on a regular basis, but I still take lessons sometimes. I contact someone and just, I'm curious about this and I take lessons. But in my younger years, I had lessons with wonderful teachers and many different teachers.

And the combination that, you know, to have someone in front of you that you can ask anything is kind of the best way. That was the good thing about MI that they, all the teachers had open councilings that they had every week. So you could go into someone, you know, from the base, the BIT program, and you could sit down with them and ask anything. Or you can...

bring a camera and film something that you want to work on later, or you can go to the vocal institute, you can do anything like that. And for me, so I was at school all the time because, you know, if I had a free spot in my schedule, I just went to a room with, you know, Scott Henderson or Alan Hines or someone like that to sit down and ask anything. was that, that is a good thing with that school. It's just very, very easy to stay inspired.

Jesse Paliotto (36:28)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (36:45)
And so I was lucky to be able to have the opportunity to go there. So yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (36:52)
That's incredible. They need to do day passes just let people like, can I just wander around and sit in on classes for a day? That's what I want to do.

Emil Ernebro (36:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be great. That would be it's kind of strict. These schools, you know, you can't you can't really go in there. It's kind of I wish I wish you could just get out like something just go in to take a few lessons for a day. But yeah, it's tricky.

Jesse Paliotto (37:04)
No.

Yeah, especially in today's today's environment. Another thing I wanted to add a little bit of a left turn, but I wanted to ask you about recording in albums.

Emil Ernebro (37:17)
Yep.

Jesse Paliotto (37:28)
It's interesting because it feels like you do a ton of music. You obviously have a lot of styles that you can play in. I think is there three albums I think is is how many you have right now. But it appears you also play a lot with other people. So I'm curious like how do you think about recording albums are those important to you. Is there more stuff you're like man I would love to make more but I just don't have time. I'm like I'm just curious about all of that.

Emil Ernebro (37:48)
Yeah, yeah, so I have a couple of few records. I don't really I don't have the records on Spotify. Most of them. I don't have my first album on there. I don't have my second album on there. I have a few songs from my album with Philip George, the harmonica player. We had have an album, but we've we've been selling physical CDs for the last three years, four years.

Jesse Paliotto (37:59)
Okay.

Emil Ernebro (38:15)
And they still sell, know, because people are there, you know, I don't know if they want to support us or if they have a CD player, but they still buy records of their accounts that maybe people want some memory from the concert too, or, know, I don't know. But we actually sold out our record. But I mean, nowadays, I think if I would do a CD today, I'm not sure if I would do a physical CD. and I have for me, it's like.

Jesse Paliotto (38:28)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (38:44)
I'm starting to get more... I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I have so many recordings produced in small studios or in my studio here that are fairly... I mean, if I would make a record record, I might not record it here. I might go to a bigger place that or bigger, but a better place with someone who actually does that all the time.

and I can just play and then I don't have to think about the technical parts of it. But nowadays, it's like many people ask me, I want that song that you have on YouTube. I want that performance on my playlist. And how can I get that? And I say, well, it's just YouTube, you know. But I'm starting to, I mean, I would love to have maybe like a channel on or my Spotify.

Jesse Paliotto (39:26)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (39:41)
where I have albums that are, people know that this is not my official CD but it's performances, I mean, kind of like a record on YouTube with the sound. So I'm thinking about posting and sharing my arrangement because it's basically, it's so many and why not share it if people want to listen to it. So I'm starting to get more kind of relaxed when it comes to just, why not just share it even if it's not the...

absolute perfect sounds sometimes on some recordings. The playing is still okay because I wouldn't release anything that I wasn't fairly happy with. So I'm thinking about that and sharing more of my stuff online. right now there's just a production CD. It's actually in my name, but it's for film and TV. That record. Me playing hymns and stuff. Not hymns, but

Jesse Paliotto (40:37)
Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (40:38)
a couple of hymns and Swedish traditional songs. It's called Nordic Traditions. And I play on a Telecaster and I play the melodies as beautiful as I can. But if I would release a record by myself doing that, I would have improvisations on there and the soloing. This is just me playing the song, the melody and doing some embellishment. But I don't improvise. I arranged it, you know. And so if I would release it, I would I would have soloing stuff on it, you know.

Jesse Paliotto (40:41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (41:06)
But that record is still on Spotify. So no, I don't have too many of my recordings on Spotify, but I'm thinking about releasing much more and maybe making a few records in the coming years. Again, one more with my harmonica duo, Philip. He plays chromatic and blues harmonica as well. And then I have a duo with Lucas Brar, who is one of my friends from Sweden, one of the greatest guitar players I think in the world. He's one of my favorite players.

Jesse Paliotto (41:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Emil Ernebro (41:37)
And he has his YouTube big YouTube channel. Also, if you want to check out Lucas Brar Lucas and then B R A R Amazing fingerstyle guitar player and And he comes from the classical world, but he plays plays jazz and makes funny videos too He's very funny guy. And so we want to release a few songs as well I have a mandolin player that I work with sometimes Eric Iglisum incredible player. We like to release stuff

Jesse Paliotto (41:43)
Okay.

Okay.

Emil Ernebro (42:05)
So I have so much stuff that I want to release but I haven't really had the opportunity or time to do it in the past few years now. But I'm hoping to do it more.

Jesse Paliotto (42:18)
Yeah, the I got to speak with Tim Lerch I don't know if you're familiar with him. Yeah, he I was it was interesting because he had mentioned that for he has solo fingerstyle albums. I think they're just called solo guitar, volume one, volume two, volume three, volume four. And he did something similar to kind of what you're describing with the YouTube channel where he when he had recorded his YouTube's over the years, he said, I recorded them in really high quality audio. The camera work was like it was just a webcam. The camera wasn't great.

Emil Ernebro (42:22)
yes, yes.

Jesse Paliotto (42:48)
but he had run through Pro Tools. And so he actually had like high resolution audio recordings. And so he just went back and like grabbed a collection of 10 YouTubes that he had recorded performances of and then turned that into an album. Pretty much what you're saying, just maybe different format.

Emil Ernebro (43:02)
Wow, that's great. That's exactly what I'm thinking about. By the way, Tim Lerch's such a great player. He is one of the greatest when it comes to... He's been, you know, working on a lot of the Ted Green stuff. Ted Green was one of my favorite players. He is one of my favorite players. He's not alive anymore, unfortunately, but he was so great. And Tim has been picking up so much of that stuff.

Tim actually has a duo with one of my old guitar players, Jamie Findlay, from who I had as a teacher in LA. And so, yeah, we have a kind of a connection. I took a lesson from Jamie the other day, by the way, speaking of lessons, and I learned some stuff. But anyway, yeah, that's great. I should talk to Tim. I've been asking him actually, I asked him to be, to interview him for Pro Guitar, actually. And we kind of lost track because I was away on tour and then I would...

Jesse Paliotto (43:33)
yeah.

Yeah.

All right on.

yeah.

Emil Ernebro (43:57)
didn't get back to it. yeah, that's cool that you mentioned that because I'm going to ask him about it then.

Jesse Paliotto (44:04)
Yeah, it's I mean, it appears like I would guess that in your seat, like you're playing gigs, you come back, you're going to work on the pro guitar channel, record stuff, do workout arrangements. And so is it fair to say, like when you're working on songs, you're really working on a song at a time as opposed to, you know, maybe what people did 40 years ago, which is they worked on an album. Like I'm going to sit down and write 20 songs. I'm going to keep 10 of them and I'm going to go into a studio, record the whole thing. Like it's much more individual song by song process based. Is that fair?

Emil Ernebro (44:34)
Yes, and I think that's across almost any genre now. mean, people release or at least maybe a couple of songs or a few like an EP or something. It's smaller now. They release songs like that. I think that's I mean, for me, when it comes to what I do is that I when I arrange something or create something on the guitar, I just try to follow what I'm inspired by.

And that's when, if I really love the song that I'm kind of, you know, putting my own mustache on, so to speak, if I do love it, usually the arrangement is better than if I would just take a song and think this is probably a song that people want to hear.

Jesse Paliotto (45:16)
never heard that phrase. That is a great phrase.

Emil Ernebro (45:31)
The arrangement usually is not very good. So I have to really love the song to make a good arrangement. And that's what I do. So I like to answer your question. don't think about, at least nowadays, I haven't made an album in a long time now or a few years actually. And so then I just go from song to song what stays, what keeps me inspired. And I suggest to people, people ask me,

a lot when it comes, they email me and ask me, how can I develop my playing and how can I develop, you know, become a better player and what should I focus on? And there's a few things that I say. And one of those things is stay true to what you love. Because if you don't love the stuff that you play, sometimes guitar players get into kind of a habit of playing stuff that they

think that other people expect them to play or want them to play and they don't feel inspired. But if you just focus on the song and you don't have to think big and think like in three days, I'm going to be able to play this, this and this. That doesn't work. But if you focus on one phrase of Joe Pass, maybe.

Jesse Paliotto (46:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (46:57)
And just develop that and that inspires you that you love. Then that thing can grow into something much bigger than you thought. So just straight, stay true to yourself when it comes to what music you arrange and what you play and yeah, play what you love basically. And that's what I'm trying to do. That's why I go from song to song. So one, one week is it can be like an old jazz arrangement, you know, old jazz standard. And the other week it can be like a

John Denver tune, you know. So, yeah. Yeah, I can do just something that you love. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (47:30)
that's right. I think I saw that on your channel.

Yeah, that's funny. It is very, I would say, of the, kind of going back a few paragraphs to when you were talking about, there's so much in guitar that you can learn. It's what makes it really amazing. It also can be kind of terrifying and overwhelming. I know I've kind of like vacillated between like...

existential dread over the just I'll never learn every there's so much out there in music like you're going to barely get through this much. But it's also amazing. It makes makes it like this huge adventure and there's so much you can do. And I feel like with kind of learning guitar if you're starting out today particularly there's so much available to really like dial it back and be like I'm learning this thing. That's all I'm doing right now. Like there's so many videos or so many you know.

Emil Ernebro (47:56)
Exactly.

Exactly.

Jesse Paliotto (48:15)
Potential things I could go and look up and try and learn today But I got to like shut a lot of that off and just do this just learn the one Joe pass like today and focus

Emil Ernebro (48:23)
Exactly. That's great. I'm really happy that you say that because this is one of the things that people, think many people think that they get stressed, stressed when they are working on something and it takes a long time. A small thing. can be two bars of something. And they, they feel like I've sit, I've been sitting in with this part of the song for, you know, one and a half hour. What a waste of time they think.

Jesse Paliotto (48:39)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (48:53)
But that's the thing is that I learned that I think I learned too late almost. I wish someone had said that to me that it's never a waste of time. you spend three hours on a phrase that is one second long or two beats, if you do that, that little part will help everything else that you play. And I think it was Steve Morris actually said the same thing. Focus on the stuff that you find difficult.

in the tune that you play. Focus on that. And for some reason, the other stuff will get easier too. You know, go to the problem and work on it. And it's never a waste of time. But I agree with you. many people, like they think that I need to, there's so many things out there. But if you keep your eyes on the road and do one thing that will help everything else. So you don't have to feel stressed because, you know, it's so much to learn.

And it's okay. Just focus on one thing and that will help everything else.

Jesse Paliotto (49:58)
Yeah, one random trick. I don't know if you found this to be true. When you get into those moments, when you're like, spent two hours trying to learn this freaking alternating base on windy and warm for for Tommy Emmanuel arrangement and you're just trying to get the thing and you're like, I'm tired. If I like after a couple of advice, shut off. like, OK, I'm done for today. If I go to sleep and I come back tomorrow, it's like my brain did stuff during the night. like, it's easier today. It's like there's. Right.

Emil Ernebro (50:22)
It's crazy. I agree. That is a crazy thing. That happens to me all the time. It's like I'm focusing on something and then you're so into it it doesn't work and then you leave the guitar and you come back the next day and it's so much easier. I agree. It's...

Jesse Paliotto (50:37)
Yeah. It's like sometimes you got to just back up and be like, all right, I'll come back tomorrow. Like, I don't need to do this today. I can wait a day.

Emil Ernebro (50:44)
Yeah. Yeah. And people also, I think people should know that most players, it might look effortless what they do, but they've been working so much on small things and people think sometimes that when they see other people play that they forget the work behind it because they only know how they are struggling. They don't know how, you know,

Jesse Paliotto (50:58)
Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (51:14)
Robin Ford has been struggling with that improvisation over that tune. Rick Pieto, course, Rick has a great interview with Pat Metheny where Pat Metheny says, it's a funny sequence in that video. Rick says, it's so effortless when you play that.

Then all of a sudden in the interview, he kind of stops and says, I don't like how he used to word effortless because it is not effortless. I've been working my ass off. And he says it kind of in a more humble way, I think. he, he, he,

Jesse Paliotto (51:48)
Put a lot of

Yeah, right.

Yeah, in this moment it appears effortless, but there's this backlog of effort that I've been putting in for a long time.

Emil Ernebro (52:04)
Yeah, exactly. of course Rick didn't mean it by that. Rick meant it looks effortless. And of course it does. But I agree that we have to think about sometimes that everyone is struggling with these small parts and after a while it might be looking effortless, but it's not. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (52:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that's completely the truth. I wanted to ask a little bit, but I think you may have already answered a few minutes ago, because I had seen something in your bio that you work on soundtracks. that is it the Nordic Traditions album that you're referring to there, or is there other soundtrack work that you do?

Emil Ernebro (52:41)
Yeah, I've been working. Sometimes I get recording work that I can do from home. this studio that you see here, this is one room and it's in our house and I've been here for two years in this studio and I don't have a lot of stuff. I have a couple of good microphones and an OK computer and a preamp and with that today you could do so much.

Jesse Paliotto (52:52)
Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (53:11)
You know, that's a great thing with today's technology that you can really, I can put on guitar work for almost any project that's going to be on TV or anything, you know, with and I can do it from home. So you don't have to, you know, go to a big studio to record that stuff. So sometimes I get asked to do stuff like that. It could be a documentary on TV that they need certain things for. I have been doing projects like that.

Sometimes it's music for a certain, like the production music CD that you mentioned, the Nordic traditions, that's more for film. And sometimes it's work for other people's projects, whatever it might be, like adding my guitar on that specific song or that part of that sequence. So yes, I do that from home and it's something that I enjoy to do. I don't spend...

Jesse Paliotto (53:48)
Okay.

Okay.

Emil Ernebro (54:10)
I don't do it every week because I focus on really focus more on the educational stuff and my own performances or work and stuff. So, but I still do it a little bit a few times every month. There's something that I, that I record for other people. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (54:30)
Yeah. Well, and I have to ask, because somebody will ask, when you say, can be able to record for TV, for film, for recordings in my home with two mics and a preamp, what are those two mics and that preamp?

Emil Ernebro (54:42)
Yeah, you might be able to see the mics that I'm using. I'm not suggesting that these mics are the best, but they work for the stuff that I do. This Neumann Small, well, it's the smallest large membrane mic and it's a Neumann TLM 102. This is, I think, the cheapest of the Neumann mics with a big membrane.

Jesse Paliotto (55:05)
Okay.

Emil Ernebro (55:11)
What is it called in English? Mem-rain? Yeah, the thing in here. can't remember. Maybe it's diaphragm. I'm sorry, I don't know. yeah, so it's like a small condenser microphone and I have two of those and I have a couple of dynamic microphones as well. Like regular, like SM57 and a couple of other things that I can put on the amp. But...

Jesse Paliotto (55:13)
the diaphragm or the.

Yeah.

Okay.

Emil Ernebro (55:37)
But those mics and then straight into a very very simple sound card that still works. I'm gonna upgrade that probably next year because my old computer which I record on still is probably... Yeah, I'm gonna have to update that stuff soon. But I think it's called... It's a Steinberg small 4 channel. You know, it's a very very... I guess it's like 200 bucks or something.

Jesse Paliotto (55:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, That's incredible.

Emil Ernebro (56:08)
Yeah, and then I use Pro Tools and I have a couple of good plugins, maybe a reverb that I use and when I record my guitar it's usually maybe a little bit of compression, mostly no compression at all, but sometimes a little bit of compression, a little bit of EQ sometimes, yeah, usually a little bit of EQ and then a reverb and that's usually it, maybe something else sometimes but...

Jesse Paliotto (56:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (56:36)
It's very quickly mixed. Yeah. And then it's raw files also, and then they can do whatever they do want. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I use. And it's really cool that that's what I love about the technology. There's so many things that you can do very easily now. But of course, it's not easy to get to a place where you get asked to do it.

Jesse Paliotto (56:38)
Yeah. Yeah, I think it.

Yeah, right. They can remix it and add stuff if they need to.

Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (57:05)
That took me many years to like some of these. You just have to know a lot of people that, you know, and after a while it gets easier to get work like that. But recording stuff, it takes a long time to develop, I think. And I guess social media for me has helped with that, you know, getting people to know who you are or what you play, what you can do.

So, yeah, but in terms of recording, you can do so much with so little. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (57:39)
So it's a fair warning from Emil. You can't just buy two Neumanns and a Steinberg sound card and immediately get recording contract. You actually have to earn the gigs, 100%.

Emil Ernebro (57:48)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the good thing is, but a great thing, I try to encourage people to, if they don't get asked to do stuff on their project, make your own stuff. That's what I do most of the time, make your own recordings of anything. And that's the most fun, I think, to do work on something that you really love the music. Because sometimes some project, you might not love the music, you know, and it's not as fun to play on.

Jesse Paliotto (57:52)
That is the truth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Emil Ernebro (58:17)
But you still do it because you need to work. But the most fun I think is to just record stuff that you love to play.

Jesse Paliotto (58:29)
Yeah, yeah, I fully agree. Yeah, if you, if you can actually funny speaking of Tim Lerch, she talked to that about a little bit, like at this stage, he's like, I can afford to just do what I do because I've gotten known for what I do. But a lot of times earlier on, you got to do what other people want you to do. And whether you like the music that much or not, if you want to get a paying gig, that's sometimes what you have to play.

Emil Ernebro (58:51)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Have you been recording? Have you some recordings? Yes, as well to be able to record from home.

Jesse Paliotto (58:58)
No, not much. used to have some stuff. Actually, an old friend had gifted me some recording gear years ago because he had been super into it, did a lot with country music and was sort of offloading his studio. But I haven't been really recording as much. So I kind of ask out of my own personal curiosity as much as for anybody else who might have wanted to know what you were using.

Emil Ernebro (59:04)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, sure. and I'm happy to help with that stuff. I get emails a lot from people wanting to record their guitar and many people think that I have these fancy preamps and expensive stuff, but it's very, very simple stuff. know, yeah. So you can do...

Jesse Paliotto (59:28)
Yeah.

Yeah. Even with electric, you're using like pedals and stuff rather than using a lot of software.

Emil Ernebro (59:45)
Actually electric guitar I usually mic the amp and I have like one app. I don't know if you can show you That little lamp over there. So it's a Thunder Princeton reverb from 2015 or something 14 and I just put my mics any mic on there that I think fit for the sound and Go straight into that Without reverb on the amp usually I usually add the reverb after sometimes I use it

Jesse Paliotto (59:54)
yeah? huh. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (1:00:14)
on the, I actually pick up the reverb from the amp because it's a great reverb but it sounds a little bit sometimes, you know. It's not very silent. But then I put the mics on there and then straight into the sound or the preamp or the sound card or whatever it's called and then into Pro Tools and I use Pro Tools for the rest. that's, yeah. Very, very simple, simple setup.

Jesse Paliotto (1:00:38)
right on.

Emil Ernebro (1:00:42)
If anyone wants to check out the sound for the electric guitar they can check out my YouTube video of me playing the song Surfer Girl. That's probably one of my latest recordings with the electric guitar.

Jesse Paliotto (1:00:53)
Okay.

awesome. I realize we're a little over on time, but there's a few more what I'm going to call quick hit questions. I thought I could close this out with if that's okay. All right.

Emil Ernebro (1:01:08)
Yeah, you know, when I interviewed Tommy Emmanuel, now I don't want to sound like I compare myself to Tommy Emmanuel. don't. But when I interviewed Tommy when I way back, I had the last question was quick 10 quick questions. And I remember I asked him, I asked him, Steve Vai or Joe Satriani? And he said, Joe, Joe, Joe, he said, And then I said,

Jesse Paliotto (1:01:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, what do say?

Emil Ernebro (1:01:38)
And I asked him beer or wine. I don't know why I asked these questions. And he was like wine, of course. Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, I hope I'm excited to hear the last 10 last questions.

Jesse Paliotto (1:01:46)
He's a class.

Well, the first one was who was Joe Satriani or who was the other guy who said? So Steve, I are Joe Satriani.

Emil Ernebro (1:01:56)
It's Steve-I.

Yeah. yeah. man. actually for me, it's Steve Vai because I was so inspired. he, he, when I, yeah, yeah, I love such an explain too, but I, I say Steve because he, when I heard a few recordings when I was a kid, he was the first like kind of guitar hero in that style that I heard. So I have to say Steve, yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (1:02:05)
Really? I would have done Satriani. I'm with Tommy on that one.

yeah yeah.

That's funny. there's a, well, same thing probably for me. One of the first like really more complex solos I learned was a Joe Satriani one. So then it just sticks with you. All right. I want to ask, okay, well guess I got to ask beer or wine.

Emil Ernebro (1:02:35)
Yeah, yeah, Joe is amazing.

Well, actually on this one, I like both beer and wine, but in Sweden there's a lot of small breweries, know, lot all over, especially here in Gothenburg. And so I love a good local beer. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (1:02:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

right on. I'm with you on that. I wanted to ask, and I don't know if you use Spotify or not, but we'll just use that as the stand in here. What is in your Spotify right now? What are you listening to or what are you really inspired by musically? Like at the moment?

Emil Ernebro (1:03:11)
that's a great question because that changes, I think, for everyone from week to week, at least for me. But I have on my latest playlist, what I've been listening to lately, I just opened it up here to see. It's The Beatles. A lot of The Beatles. I love The Beatles. The Beatles and there's Joni Mitchell.

Jesse Paliotto (1:03:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (1:03:41)
There is a... I don't know if you've heard the player Emily Remmler. She's not alive. You know Emily? Emily Remmler is for everyone listening.

Jesse Paliotto (1:03:48)
Yeah.

Her recording of Softly as in a Morning Sunrise is amazing.

Emil Ernebro (1:03:55)
Actually, I think that's the best arrangement of that song ever. I agree. Great. If you want to check out, she's kind of like, know, yeah, she sounds like, you know, she sounds like West Montgomery almost. But she has her own way. I love her playing. And for everyone who is interested in jazz guitar, speaking of, we talked about lessons earlier and we talked about the Hotlix videos. There's two Hotlix videos.

Jesse Paliotto (1:04:08)
Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (1:04:24)
with Emily Remmler teaching jazz guitar and those are the best I think the best lessons if you want to learn more about bebop guitar or latin guitar yeah yeah yeah those she was a great teacher not not only a good player but but really great teacher yeah so Emily Remmler and then I listen to let's see here's Joe Pass a funny

Jesse Paliotto (1:04:26)
Okay

Interesting. Okay, good to know.

Emil Ernebro (1:04:52)
recording. Have you heard Roy Clark and Joe Pass? It's like they play, you know, country songs. And it's so funny because Joe Pass plays like Joe Pass, but it's country. It's Hey, good looking. That's, you know, that's the second track on the album. And I love it. It's just, yeah, yeah, you should check it out. And then there's George Benson and Don McLean. Vincent is, I've listened to that lately. I love that song. Yeah. So there's a few songs.

Jesse Paliotto (1:04:55)
No.

Weird.

Yeah. That's awesome. A very close.

Emil Ernebro (1:05:23)
Sorry, you're asking quick question. I'm just long answer. Sorry.

Jesse Paliotto (1:05:27)
No, I'll take any length. Any length answer. These don't have to be quick questions. This also could be a long answer. Is there any musicians that you have recently discovered? Or maybe you already knew about them, but you never really listened to them, and now you're just starting digging them. Like any new musicians on the radar.

Emil Ernebro (1:05:44)
Yeah, yes, I don't think they are new at all, but they are fairly new for me.

And so I listened to them yesterday a lot and the name is the Milk Carton Kids. Yeah. they play, yes, acoustic folk, they play kind of the guitar player. They're both guitar players and they have great voices. sing a lot. you like, yeah, I don't know, Simon and Garfunkel, you will love the...

Jesse Paliotto (1:06:06)
yeah, I've run across them.

Like acoustic folk,

Emil Ernebro (1:06:25)
the way they sing together, but also they play in a way that is not and forgive me because I don't remember the guitar player's name who's usually soloing right now, but he is one wonderful player and he I realized why I love his playing and it's because he's willing to take risks. He could play in a direction and

Jesse Paliotto (1:06:38)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Emil Ernebro (1:06:54)
If it would be me, I would kind of safe, be safe and not continue in that direction. Maybe a certain place. He never, never does that. He continued and it works and some, yeah. And it's, it's, it's a really, really inspiring to listen to his playing. He's played so beautifully. can do. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe sometimes he's.

Jesse Paliotto (1:07:05)
Hehe.

Do you think he's improvising his way there or do you think he's... interesting. Okay.

Emil Ernebro (1:07:23)
he is writing stuff for the arrangement, I'm sure. But most of the solo stuff, you can hear that in how he plays because it's all... It's kind of like... love... think, you know, listening to Johnny Mitchell, Johnny Mitchell sings everything in different way every time. And she's just like you know, like a salmon in the water when it comes to, you know. And he's the same way, I think. He's kind of moving, painting almost like it's like listening to Julian Lodge.

totally different player. But if you listen to a large play, he's kind of, it's kind of like he's painting rather than, you know, I feel like if I, if I would criticize myself when it comes to, and we all have something that we need to work on, but for me, you know, sometimes I feel like I'm stuck because I'm playing, I'm playing too safe, you know, and, and, and, and that makes it not interesting sometimes.

Jesse Paliotto (1:07:53)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Emil Ernebro (1:08:20)
But these players, take risks. Of course, there's like we earlier about, you know, it's so much work behind that, of course. But they are willing to continue the musical line and be musical in the moment, even though some notes can be like, some people would say, that's difficult note to put there. But if you continue and you make it work, then you've succeeded. And that's the aim, you know.

Jesse Paliotto (1:08:30)
Yeah.

Red.

Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:08:47)
So yeah, I recommend people listening to the Milk Carton Kids, really, really good duo. Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (1:08:52)
Yeah, that's a hard thing. because one of the first things that came to mind when you started to say that about the improvisation, Joe Pass, which is going to end up being a theme of the show, is one of his comments about like, never play anything hard. He's like, why? just play? I think he like literally says that sentence, never play anything hard. Just if he's like, don't why do I have to do that? Like, know your chords, know your scales, play stuff you know how play. You don't need to make this crazy. You're like, that's coming from Joe Pass. Like everything you play is hard.

Emil Ernebro (1:09:20)
Exactly. Yeah, I think it's all relative. I think also when it comes to Joe Pass, a lot of the times he means the actual voicings on the guitar. Like if you see his playing, lot of the voicings, there's not a lot of Ted Green voicings in that sense. Like if you listen to Ted Green and check out Ted Green stuff,

Jesse Paliotto (1:09:23)
You're like, I guess it's all relative.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:09:47)
That is some of the most difficult stuff. I have a book, Ted Green Book. I have a few Ted Green Books and you see, know, these core diagrams where there's a neck and I saw the first time I opened it, there was one core diagram. It was the whole neck of the guitar and it was one dot over here and a few over here and a few over here. I was like, how is this possible to even? Exactly. That's what I thought. But it was just he was stretching and your past man usually his

Jesse Paliotto (1:09:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

Is this a two handed thing? What am I?

Emil Ernebro (1:10:17)
chord forms are bar based, you know, but the combination of how he musically puts everything together with his improvisation, of course, it's really, really physically difficult as well. So, but he meant, I think he means mostly the shapes and stuff like that. But he also says things that I don't, he's one of my favorite players, but I don't agree with a lot of things that he says. I don't agree that he says that

Jesse Paliotto (1:10:33)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:10:46)
Don't play in these beautiful open chords with open strings. know, like A add 9 chords and stuff like that. Because you'll be sounding all... everything will sound the same after a while. You should play in keys like Bb, Db, F. Play in these keys because then you'll learn how to use the instrument. And I know what he means because there are many players that get stuck in keys.

And they don't learn about music maybe to, and I was the same way. I still need to work. but I got a teacher once at MI, not just a guest teacher that actually told me, he asked me, what are you working on? And I played an arrangement that I've been working on. And he said, okay, now we'll play it in another key. And it was difficult arrangement, really difficult. And, and I couldn't do it. And I said, no, no, I'm using these open strings to get the melody. can't do it.

Jesse Paliotto (1:11:14)
Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (1:11:43)
And he's like, well, then you don't really know the song. he was really, he was kind of a little bit too hard on me. think he was like,

Jesse Paliotto (1:11:46)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:11:52)
I was in a small room with this teacher and he basically said that what I just played, that what I've been working on for that whole week, that song was not worth anything because I couldn't play it in another key. And that was a little bit too harsh because for me, I went home feeling like I'm the worst player in the world. If I were a teacher,

I would instead of saying that because the thing is I understood what he meant. He meant that if you don't know the changes, then it's difficult to to really know the But if you could play it in B flat, you don't have to play the exact. He didn't mean play the exact arrangement and in that way, he just meant play the song in a different key, but he couldn't really express that. He was kind of, yeah, a little bit difficult as a person, I think.

Jesse Paliotto (1:12:37)
yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:12:44)
He was just a guest really quick, you know, he did a workshop there. Guest teacher. he was not a great player, but he was not the best teacher. But I would, I mean, I would play it, play something. I don't know if you can hear this, but I would maybe play, play something with this voicing.

Jesse Paliotto (1:13:07)
it's cutting your audio.

Emil Ernebro (1:13:08)
That happened the other way the other day as well when I was it's some kind of thing With my mic here that cuts it off when I play but I don't really have to play it but it was like I played open strings with everything and and I couldn't do that so and I couldn't really but but he said that You know, it's not you should learn the song in any key and so he came from a jazz background and of course when he plays

Jesse Paliotto (1:13:36)
Yes.

Emil Ernebro (1:13:38)
But if you ask like a, if you would ask a player like a bluegrass player to play something, they would change key and they, but they use, they want that for the sound. They want the capo sometimes for that specific position, that sound. Otherwise it's not bluegrass. It doesn't sound right. So when Joe Pass says, don't play these open, beautiful chords, play in these keys. He, for me, it's been very important for me to learn about music and learn.

Jesse Paliotto (1:13:55)
Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:14:08)
the chord sequence or the keys and everything and how it's connected. But if you don't have to, you know, stop doing that, one of the things you can do both, you can try to do both and use these. That's why we love the guitar, because it sounds great with the open strings. So I don't mind playing in D major and drop the low string to get certain sounds for a certain tune.

And I think that's okay. I don't agree with that you have to use keys just for that many people play it in that key or if there's horn players play it in a certain key. Yeah, yeah, that was maybe a long answer for that, but...

Jesse Paliotto (1:14:48)
Yeah.

No, it's a really, it's a really good point. feel like the coming from a jazz background or from like a studio background, or if you accompany vocalists, there is this mentality. You got to be able to play in any key because you don't know what they're going to call on the, on the gig or what the vocalist can't sing that low. So you got to move it up. And he did play a lot with, think Ella Fitzgerald and probably other people as well. So I'm like, there's probably a reason, but I'm with you, especially coming from, you know, today's environment where

Fingerstyle guitar involves so much open string stuff. Like it is a blend. gotta have balance. Come on. Come on, Joe.

Emil Ernebro (1:15:30)
Yeah, got it about. Yeah, exactly. you also when it comes to, but it's a great, if you learn the simple steps to be able to understand how a key and that's what I do. I think usually nowadays in numbers. So if you have, you have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, the chords in the key. And when I hear something, I immediately think about that, you know, relative to the tonic and I can hear the

Jesse Paliotto (1:15:47)
Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (1:16:00)
the chords and when I learn a tune I think in terms of numbers and since I know how the guitar works in terms of where the positions are for each you, nowadays it's not difficult to change key because the guitar is actually very easy to change key because we have the same kind of shapes on the guitar to move it up. So if you just know how to play, say like a 2-5-1

chord progression in one key. If you know that how to just do that anywhere on the neck in any key and you know you can and you work on that to think about the numbers rather than saying the whole chord names every time then it's much easier to start you know being able to just change key on the spot. So it's a great skill to have but don't feel bad I mean so many players that I've talked to that think that they are not doing okay

when it comes to their playing because they can't change key right away. I mean, that's okay to not be able to do that. You can still play beautifully and work on open chords and stuff. And then you can work on that other stuff as well at the same time to get better when it comes to changing keys and stuff.

Jesse Paliotto (1:17:17)
I've never thought about this before, but this is the random thought came to me. I wonder if anybody's ever said that to like a classical musician. Like, can, I can play this violin partita. Well, can you play it another key? Like, I don't, I don't know that they think like that.

Emil Ernebro (1:17:25)
Yeah.

Yeah. No, they don't. They don't think so. It's all depends on his background was probably in a setting, you know, in a jazz band or something where they play Stella Barstalli and they should be able to play it, change key right away or, know, and it's part of that music. And it's a great thing to be able to do that. But to say like, to say to a great performer that has a beautiful arrangement.

to just say that that's not good because you can't play that in another key because the way you play it that's not a good thing too. So I felt so bad when going home practicing there and I felt so you know I felt terrible but I understood what he meant without the stuff.

Jesse Paliotto (1:18:18)
The other thing, and not to beat a dead horse, but just because this is a different angle, that might be interesting how you approach this. When you're playing a concert as a fingerstyle guitar player and you got 45 minutes, an hour, I mean, I think if you're Joe Pass, you're playing for a lot longer than that. Like to keep it varied so that people's ears stay engaged. It's even interesting when going to see Tommy Emmanuel, like it's a lot of guitar. If you're not ready to sit for an hour and a half and listen to a whole lot of acoustic guitar,

it feels like, gosh, this guy, you know, he's playing a lot of the same stuff. And I can imagine like you've got a few tools in your tool belt to keep it varied and key doing different keys and not doing everything and just, you know, G, C and D is one way to do that. So I wonder if that was part of his background as well.

Emil Ernebro (1:19:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. can be definitely to vary it. mean, performing live solo guitar for me, it's because there's a lot of people who are great players, but they're not necessarily performers. And I'm actually kind of, I play concerts a lot and I'm a performer, but I see myself maybe more as a guitar player.

Jesse Paliotto (1:19:22)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Emil Ernebro (1:19:32)
I have colleagues and friends who are solo guitar players and they put on a show, you know, and they are really good at that. always, I play solo concerts as well, but, I vary my program a lot with everything from jazz to maybe finger picking and blues and stuff. And I try to vary it. And I love speaking to the audience, but I don't, I'm not like, I don't put on a show like that.

Jesse Paliotto (1:19:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:20:02)
That's a skill all by itself. And there's some people doing that, like Tommy. And he says, he's been not only watching or learning from musicians, he's been watching and learning from stand-up comedians and everyone. He's been studying talk show hosts. he is like that as a person. And many people...

Jesse Paliotto (1:20:06)
Totally.

yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:20:30)
are like that. me, I think I'm more kind of, I'm hopefully not boring, but I'm not as extroverted maybe on stage like some of those performers.

Jesse Paliotto (1:20:44)
Yeah, yeah, some people are just they're just made for it, man. They love that that energy. It's it's a whole nother world. I got one more question. This is a total guitar nerd question. If you could buy any guitar or piece of gear today, as much money as you need to buy it doesn't matter. What would it be? Anything that you're like, I would just love to get this guitar or whatever.

Emil Ernebro (1:20:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

wow, that's a good question. There's a few things that I would love to have. I think when it comes to guitars, I would love to own an old, either a really good Gretsch guitar, I don't have a Gretsch and I've been listening so much to the old Cherokee and stuff. And you can play anything under Gretsch. You can play jazz, can play blues, you can f***

finger picking country guitar but I've never really been able to you know I never had the opportunity and the money to buy a Gresh guitar that I really really loved so as I've tried many of them but some of them doesn't fit me and and the ones that I've tried that are really really good I couldn't afford them so

Jesse Paliotto (1:21:48)
Yeah, yeah.

What was the model? What was the one that you liked? Do remember?

Emil Ernebro (1:22:00)
The one that I tried the last time that I really liked was in London and it was one of kind of like an early Cherokee signature actually guitar. An early one that I think it was kind of I can't remember exactly the model name but I remember that in my hands it just felt that this is the guitar this is the if I'm gonna have a grudge it would be like something like this.

Jesse Paliotto (1:22:13)
yeah. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:22:30)
So I would love to get a Gresh guitar one day. But I mean, many great players says you don't have to get an old one, get a new one. The new Gresh guitars are great. And so I might need to just try more of the new ones as well.

Jesse Paliotto (1:22:47)
Yeah. So is the problem of trying to find a guitar is just finding places to try them out at. I run into that with the guitars where you're like, I want to try this really nice acoustic. I'm really, really fortunate. L'Rivet is their base of operations now is about a half an hour from me here outside of Los Angeles. They used to be up in Canada and then they moved down and, and I love L'Rivet guitars. And so you can, I can actually

Emil Ernebro (1:22:55)
Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (1:23:16)
drive out there. for anything else, you're like, how am I supposed to go try out a Collings? I guess I got to fly to Austin, Texas, like, or find some shop that's got like one or two of them in stock. It's a hard thing.

Emil Ernebro (1:23:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, Well, Larry V guitars, my first really good guitar was a Larry V guitar. And I bought a guitar center in Hollywood. And I think, no, actually Sam Ash across the street on Hollywood Boulevard or on Sunset Boulevard. And that guitar I sold and I can't believe I sold it because I sold it. I sold it in a weak moment where I thought I didn't need it. And I sold it to a friend.

Jesse Paliotto (1:23:30)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:23:55)
Luckily, because every year I try to buy it back and he says, you're not getting back. But it was an O, is it called? You maybe know the model number, but it's kind of an O-M style and it's O5 something, orchestral model O5 I think. And it is an amazing guitar. Love the guitars, great guitars. and I wish I could, I seriously, I actually ask him every year and he never buy it back.

Jesse Paliotto (1:23:59)
you

I don't know. yeah.

Emil Ernebro (1:24:25)
Ha

Jesse Paliotto (1:24:26)
My favorite guitar is my Larave. It's a D 60. It's like kind of a dreadnought kind of Martin style. It's a little big. want it. I would love like that would be mine if I could get a Like actually Tommy manuals got a signature model with Larave but it's an it's like an OM style That would be on my list for a smaller body to do stuff, but it is like just an amazing sound. It's a great guitar Yeah and plays well

Emil Ernebro (1:24:30)
nice.

That's great. Yeah. I love those guitars. They're really, really good.

Jesse Paliotto (1:24:53)
Very cool. Let's go ahead and wrap it up. Thank you, man, so much for being here, for talking through so many different angles on stuff. Is there anything that we didn't get to hit that you'd like to share? Or is there any place that people want to find you online that would be the best place to find you?

Emil Ernebro (1:25:07)
Well, thank you once again, Jesse, for having me. It was just a pleasure to speak to you. you know, sometimes, sorry for my long answers. You have to cut this, I guess. Yes. But, but it was really, really fun to speak to you and I hope to speak to you once again later on. And yeah, when it comes to stuff that we haven't talked about. Well, the only thing that maybe if someone's interested to follow, follow me and follow my stuff.

Jesse Paliotto (1:25:13)
same.

It was good.

Emil Ernebro (1:25:34)
You can go to just YouTube and you can search for my name, is Emil Ernebro and it's a guitar afterwards. So Emil Ernebro guitar. And then have the same thing on Instagram. Instagram is the same thing and TikTok as well. And then if you want to check out my teaching platform to learn from my lessons, there's also a few other teachers, guest teachers who have made lessons like Joe Robinson,

Jesse Paliotto (1:25:49)
Okay.

Emil Ernebro (1:26:03)
Ariel Posen, Garrett Pearson, few other fingerstyle players. So yeah, if you want to check out that stuff, it's proguitar.com and it's just slash academy. So if you want to check out, yeah.

Jesse Paliotto (1:26:16)
Excellent. We'll put links in kind of everywhere we post stuff from this episode. Thank you again, Emil, for being here. Thanks everyone for joining us. I'm your host, Jesse Pagliato. I love getting to talk music and thank you for being with us today on The Guitar Journal. Have a great week, everybody.