Yasmin Williams: Explorations in sound

By Ceili Cornelius, Correspondent • The Nugget Newspaper

Yasmin Williams has had a guitar in her hands since she was young. She originally fell in love with the instrument from playing the popular video game, “Guitar Hero 2.”

“I beat the game and asked for my parents to get me an electric guitar,” said Williams.

Williams started out her guitar journey by playing what she thought she wanted to — hard rock on electric guitar. She quickly realized that was not the style that she wanted to play in.

“I loved writing my own melodies too much, and electric guitar almost felt like it wasn’t enough. There was more variety of what I could do on acoustic, you can really do whatever,” she said. Williams has a unique fingerpicking style that she came up with on her own. She prefers fingerpicking over the use of a pick because of the variety of patterns and sounds that she can create.

Williams also plays lap style guitar which is exactly what it sounds like — the guitar is played horizontally on the lap.

“I basically do a series of hammer-ons and tapping on the guitar, and it allows for more percussion and use of the whole guitar,” she said.

Williams enjoys playing around with various acoustic guitars, writing her own tunes, and figuring out ways to create a unique sound. With her lap-tapping technique, she can play melody and harmony at the same time, making it easy to perform solo.

“I don’t need a band, I just need my main guitar and I can do a lot with that,” she said.

Williams doesn’t just play your traditional six string acoustic guitar. In recent years, she has branched out to playing various types of instruments. She has started playing a Kora guitar, which is a traditional West African instrument. A Kora typically has 21 strings, which are played by plucking with the fingers. It combines features of the lute and harp.

“It’s basically a large gourd with strings and it is quite tall with 10 strings on one side, 11 on the other,” said Williams.

She plays some 12-string guitars too, and has recently gotten back into playing banjo. She also plays the clarinet.

Williams doesn’t bring all these instruments with her on tour, but she always brings what she can.

Williams’ songs are exclusively instrumental, written entirely by herself on her various instruments.

“It is a pretty long process, writing one of my songs; I usually write the melody, then the harmony,” she said.

Often, she has 30 seconds of a sound that she came up with months ago that she will come back to in order to create a finished piece.

“I usually record it on my phone or write it down as sheet music and come back to it. It is like putting a thousand-piece puzzle together and the elements and sounds match up as time goes on,” she said.

Because her songs are entirely instrumental, they don’t really follow a traditional song structure when they’re being written, but when they come out, she says, “they actually do have that typical verse, chorus, bridge aspect to them, with a less rigid song structure.”

Williams has other people name her songs.

“I have friends and family choose the names. I don’t know why, I just have an inability to connect with the words,” she said.

Influences of the blues, R&B, West African music, soul, and Americana can be heard in Williams’ music, but she primarily categorizes herself under the very large “folk music” umbrella.

“I like to say it fits within the folk tradition and is sort of alternative folk,” she said. The pandemic last year forced Williams to cancel her entire planned tour.

However, there was a silver lining: She was able to settle down a bit and record her latest album which has been a life changing record for her. “I was able to get my latest record, Urban

Driftwood, recorded and out into the world and it got really positive press and that is how I got my manager and a bunch more gigs,” she said. Williams was able to turn a rather negative time into something positive for herself and her musical career. “I am really proud of it, and I am glad I was able to put out something hopeful,” she said.

The 2021 Sisters Folk Festival is Yasmin Williams’ first time to the Central Oregon area.

Yasmin Williams enjoys utilizing the entire guitar while playing lap style guitar and fingerpicking.