Charlie Ballantine on Creativity, Practice, and Finding His Own Sound

Charlie Ballantine is a jazz guitarist and composer from Indianapolis, Indiana, known for blending jazz with rock, folk, and Americana. His emotional, storytelling style has earned him comparisons to top guitarists like Julian Lage, Bill Frisell, and John Scofield, and All About Jazz named him one of the top 200 living guitarists.

He studied at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music with mentors like David Baker and Cory Christiansen. Charlie has released several albums, including Life Is Brief: The Music of Bob Dylan, Reflections/Introspection: The Music of Thelonious Monk, and personal projects like Love Letters, Graffiti (2024), and East by Midwest (2025).

Charlie tours across the U.S., playing music that focuses on feeling over flash. His unique playing style—using both a pick and fingers—was inspired by Chet Atkins and Merle Travis. He also teaches and leads workshops to help young musicians grow. Charlie stands out as a creative and respected voice in modern jazz, continually evolving while staying true to his passion for music.

We caught up with Charlie to discuss his practice routine, advice for aspiring jazz guitarists, a light bulb moment he had that helped develop his own voice, his current guitar gear, and much more.

🎸 Q & A

What does your current guitar practice routine look like?

I vary my practice routine drastically and frequently. I used to have a rigid warmup, but I always felt like I had to get through it all before I really played music or did anything creative.

So now I typically start with something creative, whether it’s improvising on a standard, composing, taking a key center and improvising within that key randomly, or just picking up the guitar and playing a chord and seeing what comes out naturally.

I don’t really do any technique work anymore. I just try and build my technique with different metronome exercises and learning more music - whether that’s jazz standards or other musicians' original music that I’m preparing for concerts.

What advice do you have for guitar players that have more of a rock background, but want to learn jazz?

I think I’ve fallen into that purely by accident by having different listening tastes than a lot of other jazz musicians.

I grew up listening to Hendrix, the Beatles, John Mayer, Elliot Smith, Dylan, Jeff Beck, etc. so that music was already apart of me before I got into jazz or even started playing guitar.

My only advice would be to leave those channels open to allow yourself to enjoy all types of music on a deep level and to not judge things based on genre, a musicians technical ability on their instrument, or any outside influences from other musicians opinions on things. Also listening to the great jazz guitarists that have other musical influences present in their playing like Frisell, Scofield, Wayne Krantz, Nir Felder.

What’s one technique, habit, or concept that helped you level up as a player?

I've had a few “lightbulb” moments over the years that really helped different aspects of my playing.

A big one was the concept of inventing my own exercises, rather than playing scale sequences or a scale in thirds or playing triad/arpeggio shapes.

I started developing my own exercises to create a situation where it didn’t necessarily sound like I was practicing. You can take a piece of an exercise like thirds, and then incorporate another interval so, alternating between thirds and fourths.

You can also take those two intervals and alternate the direction - so doing one ascending and the next descending. Also, working with the metronome and doing them in duple and triple figures - so the beat alternates as well. You can expand the concept to 5th, 6ths, and 7ths as well. This helped me develop a creative approach to exercising scales and harmonic shapes and also developing my own voice and language on the instrument.

Your picking technique often combines a flatpick and your fingers. How did you develop that technique, and what advice do you have for guitarists looking to work that into their toolbox?

I’m sort of a rare case where I started playing in a fingerpicking style and didn’t actually start using a pick until I was about 20.

So there was a period of time where I was much more comfortable with my fingers than a pick, so when I started using the pick, my fingers were pretty active out of habit.

I also spent a lot of time in Nashville in my younger years because my dad lived there, so I followed around guys like Guthrie Trapp, JD Simo, and Johnny Hiland - and everyone down there has a versatile right hand to get the chickin’ pickin’ sound.

My advice would be to spend time without the pick, and only using your fingers to play chords, melodies, improvise. Develop the relationship with your fingers to the instrument and explore the versatility of finger style picking. Also, abandon the thought that there is a correct way to strum a chord, pick a note, play an arpeggio. Our right hand is our fingerprint and nobody has the same one, so it’s a great way to develop your own sound and tone.

What gear (guitar/amp/pedals) are you using lately—and why?

Lately I’ve been mainly playing a Nash Tele through a 68 Princeton reissue. My dad is a musician and there were always a ton of teles around growing up so that’s always felt like home to me.

I switched from a deluxe to a Princeton in the last few years because I love the warmth and the natural breakup you get with Princeton’s. I can base the tone more off of my attack and how I’m playing rather than settings on the amp.

For pedals, I use a Hall of fame reverb, one flashback delay for a short analog delay, another flashback for reverse delay, a tube screamer that I leave on with the distortion low (mainly to eq the bass and mids), a Boss tremolo, and a Ditto loop pedal. If I’m on a gig that is open to weirder sounds I have a mini Moog ring mod I like a lot.

Your music often blends jazz, rock, and Americana—how intentional is that blend versus just a natural byproduct of your listening?

It’s totally a natural byproduct of my listening. Anything I hear that moves me I’ve always tried to emulate, whether it’s a great jazz guitarist, an indie songwriter, a blues musician, or literally anything.

I think in order to capture a genre, artist, or any kind of aesthetic in your playing, it has to start with a deep love and appreciation and maybe even obsession with what you’re going for. It’s really hard to incorporate a country sound or a rock sound if you don’t love listening to that music and if you haven’t spent countless hours absorbing it.

When you sit down to write or compose new music, do you start with melody, harmony, rhythm, or something else entirely?

Typically I start with a melody and sometimes a chord melody so I can hear the harmony underneath the melody in some way.

I’ve always felt like I write for a drum and guitar duo. I have the harmony in mind underneath the melody and I’m either working with a metronome or drum track to figure out the feel. But I think great songs always come down to the melody. It’s the most important aspect of songwriting and is the only aspect that can stand alone and still sound like something special.

What’s one lesson you wish you'd learned earlier as a guitarist?

I wish I had learned that failure and struggle is a natural part of the artistic process. That there’s always an ebb and flow relationship to how you feel about your playing, how you feel about the gigs your doing, the songs your writing, your tone, and how other people view your music and what your creating.

The only thing that matters is that you keep going, keep creating, keep pushing towards the sound in your head and great things will happen.

What’s been your biggest challenge as a guitarist and musician?

I think my biggest challenge for a very long time was embracing who I am as an artist and figuring out where I fit into this art form; not knowing if I’m a jazz guy, folk guy, someone who does covers of pop songs, or if I even really belong anywhere.

I think I started realizing at one point the things I viewed as my weaknesses were really what set me apart and gave me my own sound. Realizing that I may not ever take the greatest solo ever on moments notice, but what I have to offer is just as valid as all of the incredible musicians I’m constantly surrounded by.

What’s next for you musically—any projects or goals you're working on?

I’m currently preparing for a tour where we will be playing the music from my album “Life is Brief: The music of Bob Dylan” which we released 8 years ago. I’m also planning to release a live record and solo acoustic record in the next year.

⚡ Lightning Round

One album every guitarist should listen to?

Pat Metheny - Trio Live 99-00

Desert island guitar and amp?

Tele and Princeton

What guitarist should everyone know about?

Antoine Boyer

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