Ariel Posen

With his long-awaited debut album, How Long, now out in the wild, the Canadian songwriter joins us for his second Guitarist masterclass, sharing the tricks of his well-stocked pedalboard and his go-to guitar tunings

- David Mead

Most of the songs on Ariel’s new album have been written for over a year. When the guitarist was over in the UK last spring, many of them had already featured in his live set and it was a spur of the moment phone call while Ariel was in London that finally set the wheels moving for getting them recorded.

“I made the decision to call my friend Murray Pulver, who I co-wrote a few songs with,” he tells us. “I said, ‘Listen, man, if we don’t do this, I’m possibly never going to do it. Let’s do this record. Do you want to produce it? I’m going to book out some studio time.’”

Ariel had around 10 or 11 songs ready to go, but strenuous self-editing in the studio whittled the tracks down to seven, plus some extra instrumental interludes.

“I’m glad I did it that way, because it’s not that these songs had never been played or that they were never workshopped in any way. They’d been seeing some miles, so I had a good idea of how I wanted them to sound,” he tells us. “Then, of course, we did pre-production with the guys right before we went into the studio – just to iron out the kinks and make sure the arrangements were solid.”

The result, How Long, is a remarkable album with some solid guitar playing and masterful songwriting throughout. And because the guitar tone is so darned good, we were eager to explore the gear that Ariel used in its production…