Jon Gomm - Passionflower

March 10, 2012 11:39 AM

Jon Gomm plays the guitar and sings.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (11 comments total)

It takes a lot of finger strength to pull off that vigorously for six and half minutes. I thought it was impressive.
posted by TheRedArmy at 11:50 AM on March 10, 2012

I liked it. Any idea what the setup is?
(The Gear section says:
'Coming Soon! This website is brand spanking new, so give me a chance already. :)'
but it looks like it's been up for 6 months.
Looks like a trayfull of stomp boxes.
The pickup doesn't look like one of the standard Lowden ones. Dual?
posted by MtDewd at 12:25 PM on March 10, 2012

Great stuff. A combination of Adrian Legg and Michael Hedges - thought Hedges couldn't sing worth a darn.
posted by rotifer at 12:53 PM on March 10, 2012

This guy could probably be the most annoying housemate in the known universe.
posted by squalor at 1:57 PM on March 10, 2012

This is great — some of the most innovative guitar playing I've seen in a long time. Clearly there are many unusual challenges involved with this performance, but just to point out one: to do that retuning so quickly and so often, he has to very quickly judge the pitch by ear. If he were to ever turn the knobs even a bit too far or not far enough, the whole thing could be thrown off.
posted by John Cohen at 2:18 PM on March 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

This video made me miss Michael Hedges quite a bit.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:31 PM on March 10, 2012

Jon is a great talent, and one of the nicest guys I know. He's been working, building a solid reputation on Twitter and elsewhere for some time, but his current burst of exposure is thanks to Stephen Fry tweeting about him, which seems to have been picked up all over the place!
posted by benzo8 at 2:59 PM on March 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

If I was his luthier, I would send ninja assassins after him. Seriously, dude.

Not ordinarily a style of music that interests me, but the performance was riveting. Kudos.
posted by ardgedee at 4:17 PM on March 10, 2012

For some reason I was reminded of this Tim and Eric jazz skit.

I do like the idea behind using the tuning knobs while playing, though.
posted by Corduroy at 5:10 PM on March 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm thinking the quick tuning is done with scruggs tuners, which were developed for banjo. they have stops that you can set to quickly tune between two notes.
posted by maximum sensing at 6:04 PM on March 10, 2012

Bravo!
posted by XhaustedProphet at 8:36 PM on March 10, 2012