TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA guitarist Angus Clark is featured in a new interview with GuitarVibe.com. An excerpt is available below:

Q: You've taken song writing workshops and now you're actually teaching at the NGW (National Guitar Workshop). What do you get out of this kind of work as compared to touring or recording?

Clark: "Songwriting is a totally separate craft, and it's something I wanted to take the time to get a handle on. It's important to get some training in it so you can be constructive when working with a band or someone that you are producing. If you don't have control of the formal elements of songwriting, the conversations can be taken too personally, like 'Why don't you like my song?' as opposed to just seeing a song as a thing that you can work on and fiddle with in order to make it better and stronger. So you're more on the wavelength of 'changing this chord to major will improve the overall prosity of the song,' or 'starting this phrase on the and of two will improve the scantion of the line.' Like that.

Writing is incredibly fulfilling, because once you write a song, you never know where it's gonna go. I wrote these songs with the TSO's violinist Anna Phoebe, and the next thing I know, she's playing them on stage with JETHRO TULL, one of my idols!! So again, you just have to put yourself and your art out there, and then good things happen.

As far as teaching at the NGW, I'm doing a week in Virginia. I used to work for them way back and got a lot out of it, so at this point it's more recreational for me. Plus Alex Skolnick from the TSO East band will be there same time as me, so it'll be a good hang."

Q: What should someone thinking of attending one of your NGW sessions do to get the most out of the workshop. Is there some preparation they should do in advance?

Angus: "Just bring your guitar and a good attitude and be ready play, cause I'm gonna make you play!! It's not a competition, it's a workshop. That's how I treat it. I facilitate the students learning from each other, and then I shred for their enjoyment. Oh, and you can wear whatever kind of shoes you want to class, but bring some quality footwear for the stage, cause there's no sandals on stage in Rock and Roll."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Information on the NGW seminar can be found here. More seminar details will be revealed soon.