Question & Answer With Andy McKee - Playing Guitar

A Simple Jew asks:

Watching videos of you playing guitar, I am absolutely mesmerized. Without any other musical accompaniment, you take an instrument and effortlessly unleash its song with such a passion. As a musician, to what degree do you feel like you are playing guitar and to what degree do you feel that it is playing you?

Andy McKee answers:

A good question! I find that the guitar is the easiest instrument for me to communicate with, so I am very grateful for having picked up the instrument when I was 13. I get a lot of my inspiration from using altered tunings on the guitar. Typically, I will tune it to an open chord voicing that I like and begin to from ideas from there. It keeps it very interesting. Imagine tuning a piano differently from it's standard! What if suddenly a C was an E. I like this sort of approach to composition and it helps me to try different things on the guitar.

So to answer your question, the guitar itself definitely helps me compose and be creative. If I had picked up a different instrument, I might be writing very different music.