Inside Jocelyn Gould’s Jazz Guitar Tone
StewMac’s Gene Imbody sits down with award-winning jazz guitarist Jocelyn Gould for an in-depth look at her musical journey, her stunning Benedetto guitar, and the techniques behind her signature sound. Learn about her musical roots, her approach to touch and phrasing, and hear her incredible playing throughout. Jocelyn is playing on StewMac's new amp kit, the VF-18, inspired by classic circuits from the golden age of American tube amps. Check it out!
Video Transcription
[screen opens with Jazz Guitarist Jocelyn Gould playing guitar]
Gene Imbody: Welcome back to The Bench, folks. As you know here at StewMac, we're all about sharing building and repair techniques and showing off amazing new tools, but it's not every day where you get the chance to sit down with a world-class player who really brings the art of lutherie to life. So today we're super happy to welcome Jocelyn Gould. She's in town for the Ohio University Jazz Fest. She's an accomplished guitarist, a JUNO award-winning recording artist, and a relentless touring musician. So Jocelyn, thank you so much and welcome to StewMac.
Jocelyn Gould: Thank you for having me. It's so wonderful to be here.
Musical Background
Gene Imbody: Do you mind sharing a little bit about yourself? Give us a little your history.
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm from Central Canada, Winnipeg. Have lived in New York, I've lived in Toronto, kind of lived all over, but I tour all over and want to play as much guitar as I can with my life.
Gene Imbody: You certainly seem to play a lot, especially I can tell by your frets you play a lot. So you went to school in Michigan, right? You got a master's degree in Michigan?
Jocelyn Gould: I did, yes.
Gene Imbody: Okay, great. And what age did you start playing guitar?
Jocelyn Gould: I started as kind of just a self-taught guitarist as a teenager. My older brother showed me how to play power chords and I asked him how long it would take me to get as good as him and he said, "You can try, but you'll never be as good as me."
Gene Imbody: Does he still play to this day?
Jocelyn Gould: No, but I'm still trying to prove myself. But I was self-taught through whatever my brother was able to show me. He was self-taught too. And I didn't start listening to jazz or studying the guitar until I was 20 years old.
Gene Imbody: So I think I saw another interview with you too that your love of jazz started with a jam session you saw in college?
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah. So I was a science student. I was doing a science degree. I had never played the guitar in front of people before.
Gene Imbody: Really? Okay. No.
Jocelyn Gould: Except a couple of times when my mom dropped me off downtown and told me to busk. Oh, really? So I did, but I just was so ... I didn't like it at all. I was like, "I'm never doing that again." So I was in my third year of a science degree and a couple of my friends who were music students brought me out to their jam session and I just was already listening to all these great blues players. So I was listening to improvised music and just got blown away just by jazz music. So I completely switched, quit science and started taking guitar lessons and like actually learning what is ... Okay, I know this is C, but what does that mean? So I was late to learning about music, how it works, but not late to having it in my ear.
Jocelyn's Benedetto 16B
Gene Imbody: So you're a Benedetto endorsed player, right?
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah.
Gene Imbody: Yes. Tell us about that. How did that come about?
Jocelyn Gould: My mentor, Randy, is a Benedetto player and he started playing their guitars, I think in 2016. He started telling them about me in 2016. That was when I moved to Michigan. He started saying, "You know, I've got this student, she's going to be really good and you should consider having her play one of your guitars." A couple years went by, I was able to win a couple guitar competitions and they reached out to me in July 2019 and just said, "Hey, would you be interested in having a conversation?" I'm really an excitable person. So I wrote back, I was like, "How about I buy a flight down there today?" So a few days later, I was on my way to Savannah.
Gene Imbody: Awesome, yeah- that's great.
Jocelyn Gould: Left with this!
Gene Imbody: So when you got on board with Benedetto, did you try different models or is this the one you picked specifically?
Jocelyn Gould: I went down to the shop and they have a showroom, so I tried a bunch and I'm a little impatient, so I wanted one that day. There was an option to have one made and I was like, "Well, I'll just have one of the ones that's already been made." And a 16B works great for me, just a slightly kind of smaller body than the big boxes. I love the sound out of the carve top and it just was a perfect guitar for me to be traveling around with.
Gene Imbody: Yeah. So is this your main guitar now?
Jocelyn Gould: It's actually my only instrument, yeah.
Gene Imbody: I respect that. This is a great one. This is a 16B? Is that correct?
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah.
Gene Imbody: And you tour all around the world with this, right?
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah.
Gene Imbody: You travel by yourself a lot?
Jocelyn Gould: Yes.
Gene Imbody: Okay. So you don't have a tech or anything? I don't. I don't. What do you do to make sure that this guitar survives all the different climates you're in?
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah. Well, I have a great custom made Calton Case. That's sort of the first step that it can get on and off the plane safely. Honestly, I find myself adjusting the action a lot, but it's an incredibly playable instrument.
Gene Imbody: It's pretty stable?
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah. It's really not too often that I get somewhere and it's out of whack. It's really if I kind of just adjust my intonation, adjust my ... And I'm a little obsessive with my action. I'm always moving it. Even on gigs sometimes you'll see me like, "Oh, I need a higher needed love."
Gene Imbody: That's great. When you're home, do you have a luthier or repair person that you work with at home for bigger stuff, refrets, nuts, structural work?
Jocelyn Gould: I actually, I visit the Benedetto shop about once a year and so far that's all it's needed. I bring it in and Damon Mailand does whatever we're talking about and yeah. And these cracks have kind of appeared over the years. You can see one here, one here, one here, one here. I freaked out when I saw this initial crack. This was the first one.
Gene Imbody: That's understandable.
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah. I sent a photo over to Benedetto and I was like, "There's a crack in the wood. I've ruined my instrument." And they were like, "No, actually that's not a crack in the wood.This is the lacquer kind of aging and as it actually ages and these cracks develop, the sound will actually become more mature and resonant." So I found that so fascinating.
Playing Techniques
Gene Imbody: Let's talk tone a little bit. I've noticed you have a unique positioning when you play the guitar and I've even noticed you have kind of a method of hybrid picking where you play with the pick, but you tend to use your fingers to kind of strum upwards too.
Jocelyn Gould: Well, do you have two hours for me to get excited about tone and sound? I am really, really interested about innatural sound and I want to just be able to create the most beautiful sound coming out of the instrument just by myself, even unamplified before I then go to an amp or add anything else. And I sit in a very particular way with my instrument. The reason that I sit how I do is because I want the back piece of wood of the guitar to touch as little of me as possible so that the sound, rather than getting absorbed, if the guitar is up against me, it kind of mutes the back piece of wood a little bit.
Gene Imbody: Yeah.
Jocelyn Gould: The sound will get absorbed, but I get a more resonant sound if I'm not touching it and the sound can bounce off the back as a lot of classical guitars.
Gene Imbody: Sure. Yeah. It's like a classical style of playing. I think for much of the same reason too. They want that projection, especially they're rarely playing plugged in.
Jocelyn Gould: Right, right. And I record with a mic on my guitar and I actually use quite a bit of the acoustic sound in my mix on my albums or anything.
Gene Imbody: Wow. Okay.
Jocelyn Gould: So it's a really important element to my sound to have this acoustic aspect. So I at one point decided to learn from George Benson's style of picking. He kind of almost approaches from underneath and it's sort of like a wrist movement. I'm a little more neutral. I try to keep a neutral wrist and actually that's a big part of a technique that I'm working on right now. I find sometimes I have a bit of a tilt here. So I'm really working on neutral wrist and I use all three of my other fingers for picking as well. Most guitar players or many guitar players don't use their pinky. I grew up in a small town and just no one ever-
Gene Imbody: No one stopped you.
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah. No one said don't do that. Yeah. So it just became a part of what I do. I think I was just like, "Well, this is here, so why not use that?"
Gene Imbody: There's no wrong or right to it, you make it work. Do you play with your nails or the pads of your fingers?
Jocelyn Gould: Both. So I really want an organic sound that is a combination of the flesh and the nail, and then they kind of are combined to get a sound that I want. And really, I mean, once I'm getting into the nitty gritty of it, I've been also working just with angles because I'm trying to get the scratching. I don't like when I pick and you get that sound. So I'm trying to figure out a way to play right now that I can get an organic sound without the scratching of the round wounds. That's how I've always done it. And I really think in terms of preparing the string, keeping everything loose, no attention in any of your joints, it should really just be ergonomic and you never want to be like bending up. I'm really cognizant of looseness and how I can have a technique that I can do for a long time that doesn't provide strain.
Gene Imbody: It's great that you brought up the acoustic sound of the instrument because even though it is electric and you play it plugged in primarily, lots of folks just assume that all of that sound is coming from your pickup. And while it is a large portion of it, it's starting with the wood.
Amplification & Tone
Gene Imbody: Is there a specific amp or pedal setup you use when you play out something? What do you use when you're home? What do you take on tour with you?
Jocelyn Gould: Yeah. Well, on the road, I don't travel with an amp because I'm flying by myself often. On my rider, I have a Fender tube amp, so usually either a Deluxe Reverb or Princeton. So that's often what I'm working with on the road. Of course, those amps are often quite different just from one Deluxe Reverb to the next. So that's a big thing for me is just to get into the venue and get with the amp and try and figure out the space and the sound.
Gene Imbody: You always make sure you have a little time beforehand to get to know the amp as well?
Jocelyn Gould: Yep, definitely, definitely.
Gene Imbody: Have you gotten into situations where you're just pretty unpleased with the sound you're getting?
Jocelyn Gould: Definitely I do. And I don't always know why. There's so many elements to sound. It can be - Even just the way, sometimes I will hear the board mix or a video from a recording of the show afterward and the sound that I was experiencing often is actually completely different from the sound that the audience is experiencing. So for me, I need to feel, or I have a certain roundness that I'm going for. I want to feel, If I don't feel happy with how it's sounding to me, then I can't play as confidently.
Gene Imbody: Yeah.
Jocelyn Gould: So I definitely stick around the space and sometimes you just don't get it.
Gene Imbody: Yeah.
Jocelyn Gould: Then sometimes it's like for whatever reason you had the most beautiful ...
Gene Imbody: You just plug in and it's there. Yeah.
Jocelyn Gould: It was just there. Just something was on and I think it can even be in just how you're playing.
Gene Imbody: Yeah. What about pedals or anything like that? Is there any effects you use?
Jocelyn Gould: I usually go just straight into the amp. I did just a couple days ago get a '57 Custom Deluxe, so those don't have reverb. So I got a UA Heavenly Plate Reverb and on my social media, everyone's like, "What is that pedal?" I think it's because I never used pedals. I got like 50 like, "What pedal is that? " I am starting to try some different reverbs, but not so much. Yeah.
Gene Imbody: Yeah, I didn't think so. Your tone's very clean and very pure. I can tell you have a specific sound you're going for. I'm kind of leading you somewhere here, Jocelyn. Here at StewMac, we also sell amp kits and we're getting ready to come out with a new one that we're all very proud of called the VF18. Yeah. It's a tiny little kit, very portable, 18 watt tube amp. It's kind of based on a Marshall circuit, but one of the unique properties of it is that it's capable of accepting a wide variety of pre-amp tubes. So you can really sculpt the sound to suit you. And I've had our amp tech here, Devin Metzler, go through one that we've built and kind of dial it into what I think is a tone you'll like. And if you would be so kind, we would love for you to maybe play one, demo it, try it out.
Jocelyn Gould: I would love to.
Gene Imbody: If you like the VF18, maybe you would even want to take it and play it.
Jocelyn Gould: That would be amazing.
Gene Imbody: Okay. Folks, I want to thank you so much for joining us back at the bench here. Thanks so much to Jocelyn for coming to town and making some time to visit us and letting me go through her beautiful Benedetto. We appreciate it so much. Stick around and check out some of Jocelyn's beautiful playing. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you at the bench next time.
