Troy's Interviewing Style

Masters in Mechanics
#1

@Troy, I was just watching the 2017 MAB interview and was thinking that you’ve got a great style of interviewing. You have an ability to make the guest feel comfortable, you’re very prepared as to knowing their history (you even knew about the song “Long Way Home”), and you ask great technical questions as well. I’m wondering, did you ever formally study how to interview people when you were in college or elsewhere?

Do you think someday when you’ve completely finished accomplishing all your goals regarding “cracking the code” that you might have an interest in having a talk show or a podcast in which you interview musicians and other people in the music business such as producers, sound engineers, and talent scouts for record labels? I bet you’d do well at that.

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#2

Nope no training and always fighting to remind myself to shut the hell up and let the guest speak. Some days are better than others. Batio I know the material well, so “prep” wasn’t even necessary. And it was live which keeps the motor mouthing to a minimum.

Always a struggle!

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#3

I have to second @Acecrusher on praising your interview techniques. You strike a great balance of building rapport (without kissing ass) and keeping everything on track, ensuring that you explore all facets of the subject. But more than that, its obvious that you get a kick out of doing the interviews and are always on the lookout for that next piece of the puzzle. I never thought that I was going to enjoy the interviews as much as I have. The only thing I would say is that the analysis videos that accompany the main interview are so good at bringing my attention to the core points, that I prefer watching them first and then watching the interview with a more informed mind and I can see more of what is going on. Can’t wait for the Gambale interview!

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#4

great interviews!!!

#5

I would also note that Troy’s arms are getting bigger with each interview - clearly the result of pickslanting done well :muscle::muscle::muscle: :wink:

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#6

Haha! Classic!

I noticed that as well, he definitely takes care of himself. If only alternate picking was the key to weightloss success!

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#7

To be honest I don’t think of myself as a great interviewer, and as others have pointed out, I’m constantly over-talking the guests, or interjecting unwanted ums and uh-huhs. It’s a constant struggle. I’m really just the field tech, trying to get out there and grab the specimens / pixels we need in my butterfly net, and cart it back to the lab. As long as I can get that much done, I’ll call it acceptable, over-talking or otherwise!

#8

That has honestly never bothered me. I barely notice it. The really cool thing about your interviews is you ask the questions other people didn’t even know to ask. You ask them how they do what they do and then you have the guitar camera you invented so you can check to see if the way they say they pick is really the way they pick and if it’s not, you tell us how they really do pick, especially regarding how they efficiently and quickly switch strings which was a huge mystery before you set about on finding out how it’s done by the greats. For those reasons I say you’re a pioneer in your field and to a large extent you invented your field.

#9

I used this before in this forum, but I think it’s time to use it again:

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In case the message is ambiguous, I mean: keep doing what you are doing man!

#10

Your Ums and uh-uhs may be unwanted on the recording, but interviews still are some kind of dialogue and thus acknowledgement for the interviewed person is necessary. You could try to record your voices separately and remove these “unwanted” sounds. to be honest, that never bothered me.

Tom

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#11

Indeed. What you can’t see off screen is all the nodding, i.e. non-verbal cues. I do that a lot and it seems to work for the guest while helping deflect my ever-present need to say something. It’s just that I will often forget or get carried away. But when I can remember it works.

#12

Troy, when you produced the seminars (e.g., Volcano, Cascade, etc.), were you speaking extemporaneously or following along to some sort of cue card off-camera? I’ve aways greatly enjoyed your on-camera delivery, and was curious how “planned” each lesson segment was.

#13

Antigravity and Volcano were PowerPoint-type lectures I had given a few dozen times so they were more or less memorized, even as long as they were. This is why the delivery was polished. We filmed each one in a single day, start to finish. This was after months of delivering them so obviously by that point, filming was just hitting ‘record’.

Cascade was done afterward, chapter by chapter, and definitely rambles as a result. It’s also super long, again because it was not slimmed down by repeated delivery over a period of months.

If you ever watch experienced speakers give a talk they’ve given a thousand times, it’s amazing how long they can go with no notes or cues. It’s clear that human brains are just wired for this. In fact the big problem is having it not sound so memorized and “public speaker-y”.

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#14

Totally agree. Yeah, it’s interesting because describing a presentation as “rehearsed” seems to bring both positive and negative connotations. It can mean the presentation is thoughtful and well-executed, AND it can mean it lacks spontaneity and freshness!

#15

This was after months of delivering them so obviously by that point, filming was just hitting ‘record’.

This is interesting, did you give these lectures at schools, guitar stores etc?

#16

Subway platforms, mostly.

Kidding, these were lectures we offered as online webinar type talks for a few months before we launched the subscription service a few years back.

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