Tosin Abasi: The 8-String Guitar Was Never a Gimmick
Animals as Leaders' guitarist on building a genre from scratch, the discipline behind the flash, and why he teaches as much as he tours.
When you picked up the 8-string, people called it a gimmick. How did you know it wasn't?
Because I wasn't using the extra strings to show off — I was using them to write music I couldn't write otherwise. A gimmick is something you do once for attention. This was a tool that opened up a whole register and let me play basslines and chords and lead at the same time. The proof was in the songs. If the music didn't hold up acoustically, stripped to one guitar, then yeah, it'd be a gimmick. So I always test new ideas that way: does it still work with just the instrument and a voice in the room?
The technical level in your playing is extreme. How much of it is practice versus natural ability?
It's almost all practice, and I hate that people don't want to hear that. There's this fantasy that virtuosos are born, that the fingers just know. Mine didn't. I practiced four, five, six hours a day for years, and I still practice technique daily even now. The 'talent' is just the willingness to be bored — to repeat a thing a thousand times until it's not a thing anymore, it's just part of you. Anyone who tells you it's magic is selling you something.
You teach a lot. Why is that important to you alongside touring?
Because somebody taught me, and they didn't have to. The thing about instrumental rock and prog is that it can feel closed off, like a secret club for people who already know. Teaching is how you leave the door open. Every kid I show a hybrid-picking exercise to is a potential artist who might do something I never thought of. The genre only grows if you hand people the keys.
What's the next frontier for the instrument?
Integration — guitar and technology finally talking to each other naturally. Not replacing the instrument, but extending it. I can already trigger synths, control lighting, loop in real time from the guitar. The next generation won't see a boundary between 'guitarist' and 'producer,' and the music that comes out of that is going to be wild. I want to be there for it.