Tuesday, June 07, 2005
I know the pieces fit, cos I watched them fall away.
Had a rare and unexpected night off last night, was due to give some guitar lessons but that ended up being defenestrated so had time to recharge the batteries after a weekend of jet planes, bourbon and hotel rooms. After dosing up on current TV (Big Brother - sheesh. If people are so keen to look in on the lives of other people, why don’t they just lurk in bushes with binoculars like other common-or-garden voyeurs?) I went for a drive and listened to the White Sunday CD, which I hadn’t done for ages. I felt on top of the world; it's easy to lose sight of what your own music does for you. If you repeat a word over and over and over it loses all meaning - I think the same can happen when you rehearse and gig the same tunes over and over (no matter what order you put them in your set list!), so it's cool to distance yourself from all the hands-on elements of actually playing them and just sit there and listen.
I guess I'm usually so into the guitar parts (not to mention getting my groove on onstage) that the sum of the parts doesn’t add up to the sum of the whole - for me at least, but I saw the bigger picture again last night. I must remember to do that more often. I've stopped listening to what I've recorded as far as solo's go, seeing as I prefer to indulge my improvisational tastes whenever we gig (to a certain extent.. If a solo works then I try to stay within the same musical framework, but pick and choose different ideas to develop and work around; there's nothing I hate more than repeating parts parrot-fashion. Where's the fun in that?) but you have to keep sight of what the song is all about. If it's an uplifting track, there's no point in trying to do cerebellic, mathematical melodic progressions cos it's got to be all about the heart.
Usually I'd be wary of just flapping around inside pentatonic boxes (which is a kind of dumbed-down version of repeating things parrot fashion) but sometimes that's exactly what a song requires. Well, it's a useful tool to have at your disposal, as long as you pick and choose when and where to use it. I guess it would be nice to write a perfect lead line, one that was intricate but perfect and had to be played correctly every time (I'm thinking of the opening lead line of "Fade to Black" by Metallica here), but I try to deal with emotion and feel, which is a right bastard to pin down in a set series of notes and re-produce with the right feel every time. I find it's better for me to take all the adrenaline and energy of being on stage with Dan pounding away on the drums like the crazy rhythmic freak that he is, and try to channel this through the guitar. It's not good to impose rules and limits on yourself when you do this, much better to just open the throttle and see what happens, depending on my mood and environment. It keeps it honest.
So anyway, it was good to drive around listening to the White Sunday CD last night.
I guess I'm usually so into the guitar parts (not to mention getting my groove on onstage) that the sum of the parts doesn’t add up to the sum of the whole - for me at least, but I saw the bigger picture again last night. I must remember to do that more often. I've stopped listening to what I've recorded as far as solo's go, seeing as I prefer to indulge my improvisational tastes whenever we gig (to a certain extent.. If a solo works then I try to stay within the same musical framework, but pick and choose different ideas to develop and work around; there's nothing I hate more than repeating parts parrot-fashion. Where's the fun in that?) but you have to keep sight of what the song is all about. If it's an uplifting track, there's no point in trying to do cerebellic, mathematical melodic progressions cos it's got to be all about the heart.
Usually I'd be wary of just flapping around inside pentatonic boxes (which is a kind of dumbed-down version of repeating things parrot fashion) but sometimes that's exactly what a song requires. Well, it's a useful tool to have at your disposal, as long as you pick and choose when and where to use it. I guess it would be nice to write a perfect lead line, one that was intricate but perfect and had to be played correctly every time (I'm thinking of the opening lead line of "Fade to Black" by Metallica here), but I try to deal with emotion and feel, which is a right bastard to pin down in a set series of notes and re-produce with the right feel every time. I find it's better for me to take all the adrenaline and energy of being on stage with Dan pounding away on the drums like the crazy rhythmic freak that he is, and try to channel this through the guitar. It's not good to impose rules and limits on yourself when you do this, much better to just open the throttle and see what happens, depending on my mood and environment. It keeps it honest.
So anyway, it was good to drive around listening to the White Sunday CD last night.
# posted by AK @ 11:28 
