Playing Music
 

When it comes to music you never stop learning (unless you want to!).

I`m a guitar tragic, and buy a few magazines here and there. There`s the occasional nugget of wisdom or insight that keeps you inspired, so i thought i`d post some....


Slash printed way back in 1992, regards learning the guitar...

"A lot of people feel like they have to reach a certain point, and that point is always hanging over their head. They`re always trying to reach it, but its a lot more difficult. Wherever i was, was fine. I just kept working hard at it..."

I find this a HUGE thought. How many of us want (so much) to play like all our heros? But i can`t be Hendrix/Knopfler/Page/Hammet all in one life time - i find this Slash quote, good to focus on - be happy with who you are, what you can do & sound like, and take it further step by step.


Tommy Emmanuel printed in 2007...

"The guitar is a challenging instrument. You pick it up one day and you think `I`m the king of this, I`m gonna whup this thang`and the next day you pick it up and you feel like a total idiot, like a fool, you know? So its a humbling instrument...."

If this guy can feel like that sometimes, well... - don`t beat yourself up if nothing sounds right and your having a bad day. Some days you just gotta do something else eh? Or just practice scales, get technical, or listen to someone else...


Editor Australian Guitar printed this month 2008...

..There`s no right or wrong way to play guitar. There`s no ultimate guitar or amp that cannot be beaten. Its about finding something that works for you and playing the hell out of it until it really sounds your own. Then, as we do around the office on a daily basis, its just a matter of defending your selection of skills, sounds and gear amongst your peers! And daydreaming about the next piece of gear to add to your rig...

I can relate to a lot of that above!



Thats just 3 Gems of wisdom that spring to mind, of course sometimes the polar opposite opinions are just as valid. I know this is all guitar stuff, but maybe it can apply to more instruments, or even singing?
Music inspires Life!
:afro:

no one can be Hendrix/Knopfler/Page/Hammet except Hendrix/Knopfler/Page/Hammet
people really should just try to play like themselves
playing like someone else is a waste of time...there is already someone doing it....

All that matters is that you're ENJOYING IT, no matter what level you're playing at.

I know guitarists who seriously beat themselves up if they can't master some highly technical piece within a few hours, which to me is plain stupid.
Try to find your own style and do it your own way.

As a REALLY famous blues player once said to me when I was asking his advice many years ago: " Play from the heart and from the guts, play from the balls - if you don't have the feel, the soul, all the technique in the world won't help you sound good. Don't try to do too much, any fool can be flashy and complicated, but it doesn't mean a thing."

Amen to that.

I take the approach that if you're not getting better at SOMETHING, you should be, regardless of what that thing is, songwriting, technique, theory, anything.

And personally, I have something of a distaste for comments that talk about 'playing from the soul'.

Playing from the soul doesnt mean what most people think it means. Hell, it doesnt even mean improv. The most soulful pieces of music I can think of were largely written over incredibly long periods of time with incredible care and attention to each and every note, by people who really really knew what they were doing.

Sadly though, most people take 'soul' and 'balls' to mean some innate ability to play a guitar with a few nice slow bends, and that if you mystically channel your head through your arse and into the back of the guitar, you'll know which notes to hit.

And thats just not what its about. Its about CREATING a feeling, not just indulging your own, and thats where being 'better' at songwriting or technique is the best choice, because it gives you more tools and options to do that effectively. Sure, blues people might just focus on the feeling of what they're doing, but they're still doing it in blues scales and chords, and someone had to teach them those to et those feelings. The difference is just their application of an established concept.

Yoko Ono "John always played from his heart. I hope you will learn to do the same."

I've always felt alot can be said for 'playing from the heart'. It will always mean more for me than technical music etc.

Not to be rude, but Yoko Ono is hardly the most credible source of musical advice.

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Now playing: The Beatles - When I'm Sixty-Four
via FoxyTunes

i would trust yoko ono as a musical/artistic adviser over you any day

I lol'd.

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Now playing: Maaya Sakamoto - Hikari Are
via FoxyTunes

not to be offensive but what credit do you have? the only way to assign anything in the art world any value is to relate it to other artistic endeavors or artists who/which already have credentials. such as yoko ono. such as not you.

Personal experience with guitar is that one day you can pick it up, and everything will sound perfect, everthing you write sounds great, but the next day... nothing sounds right, even if you're playing it perfect and everything is fine... it's a strange instrument that really reflects moods.

I've found that you need to know stuff to play... you need to know scales and techniques in order to solo (well) for example. Which is why I, after a long time, have resumed guitar lessons... or more specifically, BLUES guitar lessons.

I've been playing with bands for a while now, even recorded, I've written a good setlist of songs with my newest band, but I always want to learn and do more.

I think you need that. You need to WANT to learn more. There is no point playing or learning more if you don't WANT to. You can learn how to play a few songs and never want to play anything else, so don't force yourself to. Don't take lessons just to do it. You need to WANT to do it... and overall ENJOY it, feel accomplished.

I know I'm somewhat skilled with the guitar, but then I meet people who play solos and riffs that I can't play, and it used to put me down. Then I realised, that's what they like to play, I'm content with powerchord songs and improv solos.

You shouldn't go learn to play a genre of music (e.g. blues) unless you like it. If you like it, then learn it, or at least appreciate it.

For example, as previously stated, I'm taking blues lessons, yet my favourate genres are grunge and sludge... not much blues in there, but I appreciate the genre and enjoy a select few songs from it and by God do I respect it. I wouldn't go and learn to play classical guitar, because I genuinely don't like it, though I know I'd benefit, I wouldn't do it so well because I don't like it. So my gems are:

1) Enjoy yourself
2) Want to learn
3) Don't learn something you don't like all the time. You need to do stuff you DO like to get through it (e.g scales)
4) Stick with it. You'll have off days. We all do.

GuitarBizzare, I see exactly what you mean, and I agree fully.

Playing from the heart doesn't mean improv or putting out your own feeling. It's about using that to create one.

and as for cardboard, just because you're not famous within music, doesn't mean you don't understand music or can express thought and meaning of it better than someone who is famous in music.

Opinions are like arseholes, everyone's got one, and that means any famous person in music has one, but it doesn't make them right.

anyone can express themselves through sound, we all do it every day. which forms are considered "superior" are defined by the cultural/artistic elites, since those happen to be the forms they've dedicated their lives to mastering. those of us who haven't done this accept their version of what sounds good/bad because of some vague respect towards their dedication to these systems, and because we don't have their understanding of these systems in most cases we can't offer a critique as coherent as their justifications. i'm not saying that music is good or bad, and only famous people can tell the difference, i'm saying that music is not inherently good or bad, but relies on those with vested interest to bestow value upon it.

There are people who are considered superior, who shouldn't be. And vice versa. And those who are considered superior are often the record exec's and promoters, who only want to promote what's popular and what's selling records, not what actually sounds good. I know many local bands who are really good, really talented, sound great and are very interesting to listen to, but aren't big or signed or play many gigs simply because they're not popular.

I choose myself what sounds good to me, and it's not what most other people like. Not that I listen to obscure stuff to try to be cool, it's what I genuinely like.

You see where I'm coming from?

you're saying a lot of conflicting things. you want to claim that you like the music that appeals to you, which has not been shaped by the opinions of others. so you're basically saying that taste is subjective, but then you're saying that some music is considered good that shouldn't be, so now all of a sudden taste is objective and there are certain principles which everyone should agree on. now if that's true, then what's popular is probably what's good since those are the sounds most people are agreeing on. but you're saying that most of the time what's popular is actually that which doesn't sound good. if you refine this to say that what's popular usually doesn't sound good to you, but is not necessarily bad in an objective sense, then you have to start questioning all the principles you use to judge good music, even your "intuition," which can be seen as a form of cultural conditioning. if, on the other hand, taste is something objective and there are certain qualities which define "good" music, why would "bad" music be so popular? and how can you possibly know that your taste is superior to anyone elses? maybe in that case you really have bad taste and should re-align yourself with the mainstream.

Some more good advice here, that works for me anyway.

I guess thats my point with this thread, just inspiring thoughts that help the insecure (occasionally frustrated/bored) musician (such as myself). Nothing works all the time? Most of us have different moods, right? There`s no monopoly on good advice.

Music is very subjective when it comes to phrases like `play from the heart` etc. In a frustrated practice session it might be more helpful to say `focus on the chord notes during this solo...` or whatever. Or maybe to have a break?

Thats why i like guitarist interviews - there`s so many different ways of approaching music, & even though magazines are mostly full of rubbish, just occasionally you stumble across something that is really helpful to yourself.

:drummer:

Thanks for the positive use of something I said, don't get that often, but if you get Total Guitar magazine, I've read some half decent interviews in there... and they tend to have good free stuff too!

eric dolphy said it best -

"when you hear music, after it's over, it's gone... in the air, you can never capture it again"

this is by far the truest statement i've read about actually playing music not songs, but music. the difference is subtle but significant.

you can argue semantics and the objective subjectiveness of an individual's definition all day but in the end it's apples and oranges. sure they're both tasty healthy fruits but they sure aren't the same.

music is special, it transcends itself to become more than the sum of its sounds in the instance it's created and performed. the most you can do is capture a reflection of the music. but the reflection will never be the same as actually being there when it happened, you might think you're close but it's never going to be to the same level.

songs can be just as special but they're made to be reproduced. the emotion contained and projected within the song is controlled and planned out along with every other aspect of the tune. very little is lost between the creation and the reproduction.

it's not to say that one is superior to the other or that one aspect requires more skill only that there IS a difference. same as being dominated by either the left or right side of your brain.

the claim that people need to adhere to established methods in regards to music strikes me as an attempt to cover up an individual's insecurities on their own perception of music within modern society. at the same time claiming that an intangible element of the self will provide everything necessary to create good music is just as pretentiously foolish. it's a matter of striking a balance within the individual, at which point the content of either side of the scales become irrelevant. and to me, having the courage to ignore those pressures is what differentiates the musicians from the people who play instruments.

For me, I go with this thought...

You have to know that you aren't perfect, and that you never will be perfect. All you can do is play to the best of your extent, and strive to learn more, raising the bar with every note.

when i saw les savy fav perform, they played a song i hadn't heard before where the guitarist kept playing faster and faster singing/screaming "this is my body, this is how it works. i try to make it better, but i know it's gonna bust." it was pretty intense, and makes you question the role some of us put on musicians to be more like machines than artists.

can they fake it for just one more show?

I write my own music, and come up with my on lead guitar parts, so I don't search for golden nuggets on guitar in magazines, I believe in my ablities to create.

Would you like a medal? I do the same thing, but I like reading established musician's opinions.

Just ignore him, he's a post stat whore.

I've taken his sig links down so maybe he'll hush now.

I love his new altered sig.

:rofl:

Who're we talking about?

I believe all things are possible, my guitar plays the way I want it to, because the music comes from my heart and because I know my instrument very very well.
Every guitar sounds different also, learn to pick your guitar for your style of music or styles. Learn to teach yourself to play using new idea's no one has ever heard before. In other words be the best you...that you can be. And enjoy it.

For someone who says "Learn to teach yourself to play using new idea's no one has ever heard before.", you're regurgitating a hell of a lot of cliche sayings that don't even make any sense.

Or, in other words: You sound like a tool.
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Now playing: Porcupine Tree - Arriving Somewhere But Not Here
via FoxyTunes

Great song, on a great album!

:rofl:

Good luck to you RockGuitar101 - Thanks for sharing your wisdom with lesser mortals!:p: