My Guitar by Mark Wingfield

Mark Wingfield will also release a multi-layered solo guitar album
(Limited edition CD, only 300 copies will be produced).

Your pre-orders and purchases will help Mark raise funds for a new guitar.

Scroll down for more information.

Pre-Order link:
https://markwingfield.bandcamp.com/album/my-guitar
4 already recorded songs are available for immediate download, the full album will feature all tunes played during the stream, Expect 65+ minutes of music..)

All buyers will also receive 24bit files of te live streaming concert.

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Mark Wingfield - My Guitar (Limited edition CD, only 300 copies will be produced).
NEW GUITAR FUNDRAISER

MARK WINGFiELD - guitars, soundscapes

Your pre-orders and purchases will help Mark
raise funds for a new guitar.

4 recently recorded tunes are available immediately after purchase. The full album (over 60 minutes of music) will be completed with some of the tunes performed during the live stream, plus additional bonus material.

The CD will be shipped around October 31st, 2025.

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From Mark Wingfield:

I would like to let you know that I am looking for a new guitar, to be able to play what I am now hearing in my head, and I would need a guitar with some very specific characteristics.

I am joining the forces with my good friend Leonardo Pavkovic of MoonJune Records who is helping me with the fundraiser, as per all info above.

What I am looking to have in the new guitar?

• 26 frets instead of the usual 22 or 24. The extended fretboard needs to leave enough room for the minimum distance between the neck pickup and the bridge pickup that a sustainer needs. This requires a very precise design.

• A cut away shape in the body that give easy access to these higher frets.

• Made from 100% maple to create the tone I am imagining.

• A neck built with enough stability that I can do the kinds of tremolo arm pitch bends I need to do without tuning problems. My current guitars have limits in this area.

• A specific neck shape, fretboard width and radius that combines the scale, radius to make various techniques more playable.

• A specially shaped lower fretboard edge for some unusual techniques I want to use.

• A specifically designed range of controls for the hex pickup, passive guitar pickups, sustainer and expression pedal output. The controls need to be positioned so that they don't get in the way of my use of the tremolo arm, but at the same allow easy access to the right controls while playing.

• A very specifically angled area at the top of the body above the bridge to optimise picking ergonomics for some of the things I want to be able to play.

There is only one guitar builder I could find in the UK who has the skills and that I felt I could work closely with to build this guitar the way its needs to be. This is Tom Waghorn of Waghorn guitars in Bristol. Tom and I have spent a lot of time going over every detail and measurement of what is needed. He is prepared to put his formidable skills into creating a guitar that can do all of this. That guitar will allow me to continue to push the boundaries and create the next musical chapter.

So if you are a fan of my music, and you'd like to hear what my next chapter is going to be, I would like to invite you to help me achieve that by contributing towards the fundraiser for this instrument.

Anyone who has followed my career knows that I'm always trying to push the boundaries of what I do. This has always been at the core of my art. The reason for this is my pursuit of sounds I hadn't heard anywhere except in my head.

By the age of 20 I was determined to find my own style, whatever it took. In the ensuing years I went to extreme lengths in my determination to do this. Spending hours flailing my hands wildly on the guitar even to the point of drawing blood so that I might stumble accidentally upon some new tone or unusual technique (which I did).

I studied music from around the world, spending countless hours on the guitar emulating singers and other instruments from traditional music from many countries around the world. I sought out obscure libraries and recordings of lost folk and tribal music. I spent countless hours using guitar synth playing trumpet and sax sounds to force myself to play like those instruments.

I worked on many unusual practice exercises, like playing long musical phrases where I had to make every single note have a different tone. I even went so far as to deprive myself of sleep so that I was so tired I could fall asleep while playing the guitar in the hopes that I might discover some new ideas in that realm between being awake and dreams (It worked).

At the same time I was pushing the boundaries of what I could hear, play and compose harmonically and melodically. My interest has always been the boundary between the rules of musical tonality and atonality. That boundary, for me is where a lot of the magic lies. But it's not easy to find new ground there. Something which breaks the rules of what music theory tells us should work and not work, and yet still sounds melodic and even beautiful. This is an area I have put as much effort into exploring as any of the others I mentioned.

Finally the sonic world. Ever since it was possible to do so, I've been exploring what new sounds the guitar could make. As some of you might remember, I was one of the very first people to use a laptop as part of my guitar rig to augment my guitar sound back in 2007. This was because the sounds I was hearing in my head were not available from hardware. This was the start of a deep exploration into how technology can be used to craft new sounds.

Anyone who has followed my career knows that what I do never stays the same. Every new album presents something new, a progression of concepts, composing, production, guitar sounds and playing. Each album you could say is a new chapter in the longer story I'm telling. And I already know what the next chapter is going to be, I can hear it in my head.

Just as I've pushed the boundaries in other areas, I've also needed to do this on the guitar. Developing techniques to pull vocal like tones out of the guitar. Moving the pitch in fluid and unusual ways and many other unusual techniques.

But I have now reached the limits of what my guitars (or any guitar I can find) can do and this is preventing me from moving. Standard guitar designs are getting in the way on a number of different fronts.

THANK YOU ALL!

Widely acclaimed as one of the UK's foremost jazz guitarists. Guitar Player Magazine: "Mark Wingfield has created a unique electric guitar vocabulary... his playing is characteristically deep, nuanced, and inventive" "Unique...one of England's most accomplished players." "Consistently brilliant and forward-thinking”.

"Eno-esque ambient soundscapes...to ripping rock-tinged abandon..." JazzTimes

markwingfield.com