UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

I’ll start with five questions I get asked a lot. I’ll fill these in more and clean them up and make it easier to navigate later.

Send questions via the Contact page.

QUESTIONS:

1. What scales are you using?
2. How long have you been playing guitar?
3. What is your composing process?
4. Where do you get your inspiration?
5. How did you make these drums? Are they MIDI or live?
6. Why “prototype”? (coming soon)
7. Why did you take 10 years off music? (coming soon)
8. Why “Dan Wallace” and “Dan Jacob Wallace”? (coming soon)

1. What scales are you using?

I’m asked this (or similar) a lot on videos for instrumental songs in which the guitar is playing the main melody or lead line. For instance, “Fireworks Interlude #1 (Prototype).” Here are song links for the usual platforms: https://tr.ee/Ibi8W9My20

I don’t often think in terms of scales. Rather, I pick what notes or (especially) phrases I’d like to hear next, or that feel right. As I find phrases I like, I’ll play with those and juxtapose them and so on. Really it’s more like what we do as songwriters when we strum chords and hum, looking for notes and melodies that have a certain emotional impact.

If you listen to “Fireworks Interlude #1 (Prototype)” a few times, you might start to notice that there are themes that repeat, either in the same way or in some variation.

I don’t have anything against someone using scales (or some other organizational system). I just don’t work that way. Often, I don’t know what chords I’m dealing with, either, though I am more likely to think in terms of chords than scales. Again, it’s mostly about the overall sound and feel.

2. How long have you been playing guitar?

Hard to say. Here’s a short attempt.

I started playing guitar right after turning 14 years old. I practiced intensely for a few years but found myself composing more and more for non-guitar instruments. By the time I was 18, I had drifted from guitar, and in fact music in general (I became obsessed with learning languages). Life events were such that I didn’t get to do much music again until I was 20, at which point I focused mostly on composing music for instruments other than guitar.

Skipping ahead. At around age 25 (1997), I became obsessed with the music of Caetano Veloso, and then others of the Tropicalia (and related) movement. I wanted to learn some of his songs, so I started playing nylon guitar a lot. I started getting ideas for songs, which I resisted at first (“I’m not a songwriter!”), but I soon embraced it as unavoidable.

(I’ve recently started releasing some of those early songs, more about which elsewhere. I’ll mention one example: “Wormhole of Love’s Regret (Prototype),” currently on my Bandcamp Prototypes Volume 2 album, but I’m playing it with a piano sound because my nylon guitar is broken, which maybe is better anyway so it’s not so on the nose: https://danwallace.bandcamp.com/track/wormhole-of-loves-regret-prototype. The lyrics are new, as I was not writing lyrics at that time.)

So, I was playing guitar regularly again. I then started heavily exploring pop (etc.) music. I discovered Jacques Brel, Aimee Mann, and many others. I started writing songs obsessively. In 1999 (I think), I moved into a garden apartment alone and began recording to 4-track, then 8-track, then I got a computer. I was prolific and exploring many styles of songwriting. I was playing mostly nylon guitar still (even when I wanted a distorted sound), but started playing electric again. But I did not practice beyond what was required for recording and live shows. For guitar solos, I still relied on what I’d developed as a teenager, but with less skill.

Skipping ahead. In 2012, I sold nearly all my music equipment. (I hadn’t played guitar regularly in a good while, by the way.) I decided to maybe probably almost certainly perhaps quit music for good. I was now obsessed with philosophy and was writing essays. I moved to New York City to study philosophy at Columbia University. I continued writing essays (obsessively). In 2019, I was in Milwaukee, still writing essays but thinking a increasingly about music. In 2021, I had two guitars, both broken. Family bought me an electric guitar for $300 and a computer so I could start making music again. I started practicing guitar again and making videos (I learned about Instagram, TikTok, video “shorts,” etc…. How much had changed since 2012!).

I’d wanted to make videos before but didn’t know how; now I know how, thanks to my iPhone and free DaVinci Resolve. You probably found me from a video on social media. Yeah?

kipping ahead. Over the following months, I began turning again more and more to non-guitar music. As I write this (in November 2025), I haven’t played much guitar over the last few months, or even really the last couple of years. I practice when I need to record something. I need to get warmed up, though. It’s good to have it ready if needed.

That is the story, more or less (I’ve skipped a lot), of how long I’ve been playing guitar. As I said: it’s hard to put a number on it.

3. What is your composing process?

It varies — there are a few ways I work. I might need to make videos for this looking at specific songs. I can say that I think about it in terms of inspiration and craft, though those things can’t always be separated. I’ll fill this in more later.

4. Where do you get your inspiration?

I think it’s mostly mysterious. Sometimes I’m mindlessly noodling on guitar and suddenly blurt something out and think, “oh, that sounds cool, let’s develop it.” From there it’s a matter of craft. But that’s just one way it can happen.

Also, it seems to me that my music started to mature around age 20, after getting obsessed with movies. I think what influences me there is the incredible amount of craft that goes into a movie: the pacing, editing, framing, storytelling, and so many other elements that have to come together. I remember watching 14 movies in one weekend. I was reading books about movies and filmmaking. I thought about pursuing that instead of music, but then started telling people “I’ll do music until I’m 50, then I’ll switch to filmmaking.” I’m 53 as I write this. Still doing music. But I do make these little music videos.

Another little story about mysterious inspiration. I didn’t have internet in 1986, when I started playing guitar. But I had guitar magazines. I occasionally read about the weird and wild music of Frank Zappa. I imagined what this music must sound like. I would go to bed and imagine his music as I tried to fall asleep (I’m bad at sleeping). Not long after, I got to hear Ship Arriving too Late to Save a Drowning Witch. I thought, “I like this but it doesn’t sound like the music in my head. I better find something else by him so I can hear the music in my head.” Soon after that, it dawned on me: If I’m hearing music in my head that I can’t find in the world, then it’s MY music. I better write it down.

While it’s true that I started making stuff up on the guitar right away while noodling (“oh, that sounds cool, I better remember it…” — I call this daydreaming on the guitar), in my memory that’s when I started really thinking in terms of something like “I’m going to compose.” I was also probably influenced by the movie Amadeus, which I recall seeing on TV.

Oh, and I can now say that, in the music I was imagining at the time, there was (I believe) a strong counterpoint component and an implication of tertiary harmony. See, I’d also been blown away by Bach. I think I was (partly) imagining a weird version of Bach. Or something. My song “Heap Variation” might be in the ballpark. It has an element of fugue and is built from the basic material in the chorus of “The Heap.”

And who knows what else.

5. How did you make these drums? Are they MIDI or live?

I’ve gotten this question a lot, especially (but not only) regarding the second half of “Angry Bebop: Haunted Mouths (Prototype),” the first version of which I posted to Bandcamp in 2023 (see below for a video with the song). For recordings I’ve released since 2020 (following a nearly 10-year break from music), I nearly always play in the drums via a MIDI keyboard and then (if needed) manually adjust to get the feel I’m looking for. Sometimes I input hits with a mouse, but usually just here and there. In other words, they’re programmed.

How this plays out can vary across songs, but that’s the basic idea and is how I did “Angry Bebop…” If you’re curious to know more about that song, I’ve posted a “how I made this song” video to YouTube:

I’ve only been asked this about songs I released after 2020. For my older albums—the most recent of which is 2010’s Den of Maniacs—the great majority of the drums are live, played by George Lawler. I still programmed guide drums before sending tracks to him; what we did from there is, I think, a separate question.