Charlie Hunter

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Charlie Hunter Trio

Charlie Hunter is an American jazz, rock and fusion guitarist. He grew up in Berkeley, California, where he graduated from Berkeley High School and took lessons from guitarist Joe Satriani.

Hunter is best known for playing a custom, eight-string guitar made by luthier Ralph Novak of Novax Guitars. He plays the lead guitar on the top five strings (tuned ADGBe) and bass guitar (tuned EAD) on the bottom three strings simultaneously. With the addition of a Hughes & Kettner Tube Rotosphere (a Leslie rotary speaker simulator), his unique style produces a sound similar to that of a Hammond organ -- an instrument he set out to imitate.

In 2006, Hunter removed the top guitar string and had the neck of his guitar reworked and now plays a modified 7-string on the formerly-8 string body. Hunter has mentioned that because of his small hands, he had to move out of position to make use of the 8th string and thus wasn't using it much. A change in Hunter's style away from the organ sound into a more blues and distortion based sound happened at the same time. After removing the 8th string, Hunter retuned all of the strings up a half-step: F-Bflat-Dsharp on the bass and Bflat-Dsharp-Gsharp-C on the guitar.

Hunter believes in free trade of his live shows. Live shows can be streamed or downloaded in various formats on archive.org.

Previously, Hunter played a seven-string guitar in Michael Franti's political rap group, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. In 1992, they were one of the opening acts for U2's Zoo TV Tour.

While Charlie's style has many jazz elements mixed through it, it would be wrong to think of him as having just taken jazz and adopted it for 8 string guitar. He is an innovator in more ways than just his choice of unusual instrument.

Apart from picking unusual tunes to re-work (such as several Nirvana songs) he also pushes the boundaries in terms of format and use of the instrument from a sonic perspective. Without conforming strictly to the forms of jazz he certainly subscribes to one of its founding principles: take the music and bring it past where you found it.

Since the debut of his self-titled Charlie Hunter Trio in 1993, Charlie Hunter has recorded 17 albums. During that time, Hunter has worked with and recorded with many artists, including Miles Perkins, Scott Amendola, Will Bernard, Skerik, Jay Lane, Dave Ellis, John Ellis, Mimi Fox, Peter Apfelbaum, Stefon Harris, Kurt Elling, Bobby Previte, Greg Osby, Chris Lovejoy, Leon Parker, Josh Roseman, John Santos, John Schott, D'angelo, Calder Spanier, Mos Def, Norah Jones, Adam Cruz, Phil deGruy, John Mayer and Willard Dyson, to name just a few.

He also has been working on the soundtrack for a French Film entitled Outre Mer with Garage A Trois, a jazz fusion band. Confirmation of the existence of the movie is pending and there is speculation that the soundtrack history of the album is an invention by the band members.