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QUOTES

Scott Collins is wildly eclectic, blazingly virtuosic, and fearless in making bold connections between far-flung musical influences. His playing is both finely-honed and utterly unpredictable, whether shredding on distorted electric, sculpting ambience with digital processing, or navigating lines on a bare-bones acoustic. His work (as both a player, teacher, and writer) draws on deep creative, conceptual, and philosophical influences, but never loses sight of its emotional impact.”

— Andre LaFosse

Current Releases:

Take It From The Ground

Scott Collins Guitar

After years of playing in various projects, I wanted to release a recording under my own name that highlighted a lot of music that hasn't been documented before.

My playing on fretted and fretless guitars draws from a wide range of western and non-western music, but improvisation is always a core component at the heart of my process. It's
After years of playing in various projects, I wanted to release a recording under my own name that highlighted a lot of music that hasn't been documented before.

My playing on fretted and fretless guitars draws from a wide range of western and non-western music, but improvisation is always a core component at the heart of my process. It's attractive to me as a performer because there's a real immediacy in giving a voice to something that can only exist in that moment. It's a kind of mindfulness that's communal with the audience and it can create a truly special moment of resonance and transcendence.

The title of the CD, 'take it from the ground', was really an acknowledgement of the recording process. All of the tunes (except the last song) were improvised and recorded as it was performed. The title is about capturing and preserving what happened in a specific room in a specific moment in time. The result is almost an anti-acoustic or post-acoustic recording, that is more about exploring a philosophical mindset than merely showcasing technical skill. Some of these pieces were really challenging to pull off live, but it's more about serving the song and the mood instead of saying, "Look at what I can do!" There's a certain amount of that in any CD release with craving attention, but with this recording, I wanted to create something unique, an immersive environment that transports people somewhere and gets them thinking about the music after it's done playing."

I have to give full credit to Daby Zainab Faidhi with altering the musical direction of the CD. I met her through an international film festival where she had submitted a fantastic animated film called,Ardh Al-Sawad (The Black Land) and approached her about the artwork for the recording. She and I talked through a number of ideas and processes and ultimately she came up with the idea of using a set of stairs as guitar frets and then running strings down them. The starkness of the image really moved me.

I had recorded a number of tracks previously, but I felt like much of the music didn't really work with the new artwork, so I saved a few of the live tracks from the previous sessions and then took the recording in a different direction."

A return to an old process yielded surprising results. I had a few freeware applications on an older Mac computer that allowed me to record multiple layers of guitars and mix them in real time to a stereo file. 'In that late hour' was the first track that was done that way and '21st century blues' was the second. Like the previous tracks, those were improvised and recorded in real-time and that just set the aesthetic for the rest of the recording.
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I Come From The Mountains

I Come From The Mountains

I come from the mountains is an acoustic instrumental duo consisting of Scott Collins on fretted and fretless guitar, and Dean Mirabito on tabla and Middle Eastern percussion. The group brings meditative and cerebral elements to their captivating fusion of Eastern Silk-Road sounds and Western improvisation.

I Come From The Mountains as a name,
I come from the mountains is an acoustic instrumental duo consisting of Scott Collins on fretted and fretless guitar, and Dean Mirabito on tabla and Middle Eastern percussion. The group brings meditative and cerebral elements to their captivating fusion of Eastern Silk-Road sounds and Western improvisation.

I Come From The Mountains as a name, comes from the English translation of the Icelandic phrase, "Ég kem alveg af fjöllum." which means, "I have no idea what you're saying / what's going on."
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Embe Esti


Rough Hewn Trio


KoriSoron



Latest News

If only News was "Knews" or "Knows"

Some shows coming up (See below).  A number of  things in the pipeline.

I struggle with social media as I find a lot of it toxic and not helpful.  I have a more craftsman approach lately of just doing the best work I can and letting people find me as they need to.  That being said, we are in the infancy of the 21st century so I suppose I can go full on temper tantrum and kicking and screaming into putting things up online.  I've been thinking about how with the Guitarchitecture site I was just really determined to say a lot, and now I find it much more interesting to listen.

There's a lot to update on my CV and more links to put in, but for now, i'll move things along as they are.  I have a lot of projects that remain in various states of limbo so getting those out into the world is a priority right now.

If you're here you found me - and I'm grateful you took the time to do so. Thanks for dropping by.

 PS - I've been having issues with my Contact me button.  So if you sent something that isn't spam and needs a reply and haven't heard back from me - I'll offer apologies and just ask you to send it again.

Be kind.  Be well.  Bring light to the world where you can.

Oh my word...

What to say in this upside down world?

A pandemic came and life happened, and things went a little off the rails.

But, after a number of things stalling out for a bit - it's getting back on track, there's gas in the tank, whatever illustrative you want to use.

Before I took a lot of things down, the was something like close to a million words on the old guitarchitecture site, I don't see myself writing anything like that here right now.  I'd rather just play music with Diana Domingo, I come From The Mountains, Embe Esti and the solo stuff I get to eek out on occasion - but for those luddities (like me) that still occasionally want to read something online - I'll have things here eventually.

Some shows coming up (See below) and some other things in the works I can't talk about yet but I'm excited about the music none of you all have heard.

Things I'm into right now:
Pen and paper
Koloss guitars (Surprisingly good once tweaked)
HX Stomp and PodGo (also Surprisingly good once tweaked)
The Body Keeps The Score
Isometrics
Acoustic IRs
Deep belly laughs at inappropriate times

Most of my releases are listed above except for TubTime - which I'll fix when I can but here's a link for now.

TubTime, We Bleed The Sun And Make It Pay


 
SHOWS (Present and Past):