It's one thing to be in awe of your favorite guitar player. It's another to see them play live. It's yet another to try an replicate their playing yourself.
It's something I've very much grown to appreciate the more and more I play guitar. When I first started out, I was probably not unlike most guitar players that grew up listening (and loving) 80's rock and metal - wanting to be the next Yngwie, Vai or Van Halen. Wow - was I young an naive!
Off and on, since about 2000/2001, I've been playing in basement bands, gigging bands and just noodling on my own. I've recorded my own demos, scratch tapes, etc... and I've recorded a CD. As more and more time goes on and more and more songs are learned, I've gained a greater and greater appreciation for guitarists of all genres/styles/etc.
I remember being at a party somewhere around age 20/21 and noodling on an acoustic guitar. There was another dude there that had handed the guitar off to me and after I began playing, he immediately noticed and commented that I (and I paraphrase here) "must play electric guitar". I didn't know what he meant at first, so I asked. Basically he could tell that I was playing single note lines, basically running up/down (with some variation) basic scales... That was a watershed moment for me - I realized that I practiced and practiced and could play the hell out of a solo but couldn't play a three-chord "folk-type" song - your basic G-D-A... Wow... how the hell is that possible??? And more so - holy crap, have I really limited myself that much (albeit unknowingly, but still...)???
Most people (at least as I understand it) learn a few chords first when they start out on the guitar. I had bought a Mel Bay beginner book when I was first learning how to play (maybe 24 or so years ago??). It sucked (sorry Mel). I learned Jingle Bells (single note). I figured, "nope, f*ck this - not for me". I soon -after found TAB books, blah, blah, blah yadda yadda - one thing lead to another (that's a whole other post) and by then I'm learning every Metallica song I can...
Fast-forward a few years... Less stubborn and "snobbish" (musically), I branched out (for various reasons - new bands, new interests, etc.) and began learning/playing new types of songs - DMB, Freddy King, Sly and the Family Stone, The Blues Brothers, No Doubt, Alanis, old punk, new pop...
Anyway, back to the point of all of this... playing all of these songs and going back to practicing and trying to hone the chops (no pun intended), I've come to the conclusion that regardless of the style of music, to play the guitar well and not have it sound sloppy or conversely, stiff, takes a little bit of work. You can "fake it", but its just not the same. You know it, I know it and any discerning fan would know it....
So to cap it all off... do yourself a favor - if you really wanna learn a song, if you really love an artist, do them and their music justice - do yourself justice - learn it well. Do what you need to do in order to learn the piece as it was originally recorded. After that, feel free to incorporate whatever artistic license you desire. But don't use such "license" as an excuse to [at least try to] not learn the piece properly to begin with.
You'd be surprised at how much you can learn by really paying attention to a given piece of music - even ones you think are "easy".
No comments:
Post a Comment