Photo Aprile Ferrer

Guitarist Avi Bortnick, born in 1963 in Petah Tikva, Israel, was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was immersed in the sounds of late 1970s funk, rock and soul. After moving to California in 1983, Bortnick began to play with various African and Caribbean bands. Later, as a graduate student at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Bortnick started the band "What It Is", which became popular in the South East touring circuit, though the band was never signed to a major label.

Photo Aprile Ferrer

He is well known for his long musical association with influential jazz guitarist John Scofield “Uberjam” band, playing rhythm guitar and electronics composing and producing. In addition to playing with Scofield, he has played as a solo artist and with a wide range of New York-based artists, including Jim Weider’s Project Percolator, Erik Deutsch, Forro in the Dark, Shitty Shitty Jam Band, Rene Lopez, the Ghost Train Orchestra, Jihae, Betty Black, Bunga Bunga Party, and Jason Blum. When living in the San Francisco Bay Area, he played with Zigaboo Modeliste, Bobby McFerrin, What It Is, Jeff Narell, and Kotoja.

Photo Aprile Ferrer

He is known in musician circles for his rhythm guitar playing and ability to blend in a variety of musical configurations. Bortnick has a diverse style encompassing jazz, Caribbean, Brazilian and African styles. This varied background enables Bortnick to blend syncopations and inject "da funk" into every corner of the world. In addition to his life as a guitarist, Avi is an experienced acoustical consultant, working part-time at Shen Milsom & Wilke. He typically works with architects in the design of buildings in which sound is an important consideration. In addition, he has developed the iPhone/Android applications Time Guru metronome and the VoxBeat iPhone multi-track looper app. His first solo record is Clean Slate. He lives and gigs in New York.

Photo Louis Obbens

How's your musical routine practice?

Like most musicians, I practice more when I have a gig coming up that I need to prepare for or be in shape for, and my practice routine changes depending on the gig. When I play with Jim Weider’s Project Percolator I have to solo a lot, so I work on single-note exercises (scales, arpeggios, playing over chord changes, etc). When I have a funk gig, I’ll make sure my rhythm chops are in shape (checking my time feel with the Time Guru metronome app). But anyway, here’s a typical routine: warm up for 10 minutes by playing a bunch of bebop jazz melodies, like Donna Lee, Au Privave, and Scrapple from the Apple. Then a scale exercise that I got from a clarinet book that goes through every major scale, and it’s relative natural and melodic minor. Then some string skipping exercises – all with a metronome. Then I’ll practice whatever new thing I’m working on. The latest is the George Garzon triadic chromatic approach concept. I often practice improvising over chord changes, and sometimes practice acoustic guitar, reading fingerstyle arrangements and sometimes classical pieces.

<a href="http://avibortnick.bandcamp.com/album/clean-slate">Clean Slate by Avi Bortnick</a>

Which work of your own are you most surprised by, and why?

I’ve done a bunch of music for commercials, and I can be unpleasantly surprised by how bad and cheesy my own compositions can be. But as far as surprised in a positive way, perhaps my song Tomorrow Land (on the John Scofield Band record “Uberjam”).
First, it’s a very short tune that I thought needed and extra section, but John thought it sounded good as is, so that’s the way it stayed. And I now agree, that it feels complete even though it’s short. Second, the way the bridge happens was composed by just playing the bass notes first, and then fitting the melody around it. Normally, this is not an optimal way to compose, because the melody should come first and lead the way, but for some reason I got lucky and it flows very naturally, with the lead phrase into the bridge echoing a part of the A-section melody.

John Scofield Uberjam Endless Summer -2014 San Sebastian Jazz festival
John Scofield (guitarra), Avi Bortnick (guitarra), Andy Hess (bajo), Terence Higgins (batería)

What's the relevance of technique in music, in your opinion?

To play, you need a certain level of technique. You don’t need to know all techniques, or have what people think of as “great technique.” You just need to have technique that works for you and delivers accuracy and consistency. This is much more important than speed or dexterity.

Why do you need music? Can we live without music?

We don’t need music like we need food, water and companionship. But the question is a little off to me, because it’s impossible to imagine human society without music. It’s an inherent part of humanity and one of the great pleasures in life. There are certain societies that try to ban it (like in the territory ISIS controls), but that will never last. There are certain things that you just cannot continue to suppress.

Unreleased Soundcloud Demos

Tell me one impossible project do you like to realize?

I’d love to have a huge band in the studio – sort of like Phil Spector’s “Wall Of Sound” concept, with a couple of drummers, multiple guitarists, strings, horns, percussion, etc. I would love the challenge of trying to arrange music for something that huge, and I would love to hear the sonic density of that many people playing together. I also would like to do this because it’s so rarely done nowadays. You’re lucky if you’re in the studio with just a rhythm section playing together, since so much is pieced together with overdubs. And I think any musicians involved in something that giant would get a big thrill at hearing that many instruments playing at once.

What are the challenges and benefits of today's digital music scene?

The first challenge is making money off of music. Digital has created an unbelievable supply of music, with everyone, even non-musicians, having a recording studio on their computer (i.e., Garage Band) or phone. When the supply increases this much, without the demand side increasing, the price paid plummets. Very simple economics.

The second challenge is making music that is original. So many people use the same tools – Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Logic, etc. – that the musical outcome can be similar, especially when the default is 4/4 time and a grid that lures you into thinking about music in 4 beat and 4 bar chunks.

Photo Aprile Ferrer

I’ve found that my more successful compositions started off as just a guitar, or even just in my head. Then I use the computer to make a demo of a tune that’s already mostly written. That way, the tune comes first and the technology serves the tune. The benefits of digital are the ease of making demos, sending files, and having access to an infinite amount of music (through Spotify, Youtube, etc). Of course, access to infinite music has a bad flipside: it pulls you away from knowing music intimately, since the temptation is to listen to one thing, and then quickly move on to something else.

Unreleased Soundcloud Demos

How do you feel listening to your own music?

Sometimes horrified and sometimes very pleasantly surprised. Like most musicians who record music, you often get too close to it to hear it objectively. For instance, I really had a hard time listening to the Scofield record Up All Night when it first came out, and could only hear flaws in my own playing. But now I love that record and think it’s very original and bold. So how I feel about my own creations often depends on the distance I have from it – though there’s some recordings I’m on (that I won’t mention) that I think are god-awful, even 25 years later.

Can you describe a sound experience that you believe contributed to your becoming a musician?

I saw the Pat Metheny Group in 1979 at Washington University in St. Louis, when I was 16, and it was an incredible concert with brilliantly clear sound. And it was also a game-changer in the sense that it was a very fresh and unique blend of jazz and rock, that was not rigid or mechanical, and dispensed with a lot of the heavy, macho elements of jazz fusion (like screaming guitars, odd-time signatures, unison runs, and pounding drums).

It had the freedom and looseness of jazz, but the rhythms and harmonies of rock and folk music. At the same time, Metheny’s guitar playing was so fluid and melodic that I sensed I would never be in the same league; the gulf between the point I was at and he was at felt unbridgeable. So in one sense, the experience made me want to give up guitar, but also was so moving and powerful that it made me dig deeper into music.

Where are your roots? What are your secret influences?

My roots are in St. Louis, Missouri, and going to racially integrated schools in the 1970’s and very early 1980’s. Secret, non musical influences – too many to name, but: Orson Welles, Lolita by Nabakov, Vertigo by Hitchcock, Mrs. Rogers (a great sociology teacher in high school), living in Brazil for a year.

Unreleased Soundcloud Demos

If you could, what would you say to yourself 30 years ago, about your musical career?

Try living and gigging in New York; learn to sing; studio musicians are going the route of dinosaurs; know your strengths and weaknesses, and focus on your strengths and don’t worry too much about your weaknesses.

What quality do you most empathize with in a musician?

Strong sense of rhythm and the subtleties of different various quarter note subdivisions (or degrees of swing), not playing too loudly, not playing solos that are too long, melodicism and someone who can write good lyrics.

Which living or dead artist would you like to collaborate with?

Robert Plant.

Unreleased Soundcloud Demos

What projects are you working on now and what does the future hold?

I’m involved with a lot of cool musicians and groups in New York: Betty Black, Rene Lopez, Erik Deutsch and my own trio, the Avi B Three. It’s also looking like the Scofield “Uberjam” band will be touring in 2017, so I’m excited about that. I’m also excited about a couple of developments in hardware and software: Thunderbolt interfaces (like the Zoom TAC-2) that allow for very low latency (4 ms and under) and Jam Origin’s MIDI Guitar that converts notes to MIDI without a special pickup.

People sometimes ask me about putting out another record, but a couple of things work against that: financial disincentives and the sense that there’s already too much recorded music in the world. I do have a lot of songs that could be recorded however, so you never know…maybe another record is in my future. In the meantime, I’ve found it rewarding to contribute to music via my Time Guru and VoxBeat apps.