Virtuoso Romanian guitarist Erlend Krauser originally came to prominence as the guitarist for the renowned big-band leader James Last. He joined Last’s orchestra in the early ’90s and stayed with him until his passing in 2015.
These days, Erlend is best known for his YouTube performances with the Kemper Profiler amp, as well as his portfolio of solo albums that feature beautiful compositions and staggering guitar playing. His most recent release, The Time of Talking Hearts, is available via his website.
From a technical perspective, Krauser plays overdriven electric guitar with his fingers, similar to Jeff Beck, Ritchie Kotzen and Matteo Mancuso. He mixes plucked notes with hammer-ons and pull-offs, whammy-bar scoops and two-hand tapping. It's an impressive display of high musicianship, exhibiting a masterful command of technique and expression.
In this unique video, Erlend demonstrates expressive and detailed soloing over a backing track in D minor. Against this track he gives us two extended performances full of intervallic tapping and legato lines with detailed articulation.
Erlend discusses his compositional process, highlighting how distinct elements can impact the sense of mood, emotion and drama as the music unfolds. Alongside the performances, he breaks down his playing approaches and technical concepts with four concise unaccompanied examples (all transcribed below).
These include articulating large intervals with tapping, mixing bends with tapped notes using multiple fingers, and adding expression with the whammy bar. He also explains how he interacts with a backing track by pushing and pulling his sense of time, moving on and off the rhythmic grid. Again, all of these examples are in D minor.
John has performed with artists as diverse as Billy Cobham, John Williams, Frank Gambale, Paco Peña, Biréli Lagrène, Stochelo Rosenberg and Carl Verheyen. John has toured the world with both Carl Palmer and John Jorgenson and has written for Guitar Techniques and Guitar World. His appreciation of fusion guitar makes him ideal to transcribe Erlend's playing
Example 1: Large intervals with tapping
One advantage of using both hands to articulate notes on the fretboard is that you’re not restricted to the reach of just the fretting hand. Here Erlend uses fretting and picking-hand hammers and taps to execute some beautiful intervallic ideas to create a smooth legato sound brimming with subtle whammy-bar scoops and vibrato.
You’ll need to keep a watchful eye and ear out for extraneous open-string noise: Erlend uses a combination of left- and right-hand muting, assisted with a string dampener at the end of the fretboard. The notes here outline an implied D minor tonality (D-E-F-G-A-Bb-C).
Example 2: Tapping, bends and whammy
Here Erlend demonstrates an effective method of embellishing a note by combining tapping with bending, and then quickly replacing this tapped note with a second tap, one or two frets higher to match the range of the previous bend. He then quickly releases the bend to end at the same pitch.
This is much easier to see than describe, so make sure to pay attention to the video example. The end result is not dissimilar to the bends John McLaughlin employed during his Mahavishnu period, although Erlend has uniquely modified this approach to incorporate tapping.
As Erlend points out, much of the heavy lifting from a bending perspective is undertaken by the fretting hand, rather than the tap. Once again, you're based around a D minor note pool.
Example 3: Whammy bar scooping into a note
While this musical example is short and sweet, there is plenty to take away. Erlend holds the whammy bar between his third and fourth fingers, allowing him to use the heel of the picking hand to assist with muting. This also gives him the option to articulate any picked notes with his thumb, first or second fingers.
With just one solitary D note to listen to, you're focusing on the minutiae of the articulation. Krauser depresses the bar before picking and then releases the tension to bring the note back to pitch. Once there, he adds vibrato to add color. All of this expressive detail happens in just a second or two!
Example 4: Whammy bar vibrato, scoops and dips
This example is focused on the expressive detail within Erlend’s beautifully melodic and nuanced phrasing. Pay attention to the small but critical modifications he makes to his picking-hand technique, either by holding the bar between his third and fourth fingers or by releasing his grip slightly for a rapid turn of the wrist to provide a more extreme scoop into a note.
Erlend also employs the back of his second and third fingers on his picking hand to bounce off the bar, mixing these techniques effortlessly and gracefully all within four short bars. Again, you're in D minor, although the note selection implies a harmonic shift to G minor (IVm) and A7 (V7).
Erlend Krauser in action
Hymn Of Joy
Erlend plays the first song from his latest album, The Time of Talking Hearts. His emotive tapping, legato, vibrato and whammy bar skills are to the fore in this exquisite performance.
