I expect a ton of disagreement on this article, and encourage anyone to voice their disagreements below.
Style doesn't exist.
The building blocks to Jazz are the same building blocks of Punk, and country, and rock, with only a little variation.
Jazz is built on using the full chords – any regular reader has seen that I always use four note chords to explain something – because it's easier to visualize and understand that way, therefore you should learn how these work anyway.
Rock music is based on a simplified version of that, usually triad or dyad chords, but the progressions are the same, and believe it or not the way you should approach improvisation is the same (the Internet is filled with shortcuts that should be ignored.)
Country is built on the same foundation as rock, only without the dyads, and the distortion, the rhythm and bass line is what drives country.
Blues is formed in the way the chord progressions happen, based around the dom7 chords.
So to truly understand music you should be able to play all style, and if you have aspirations of professionalism you'll want to know it all.
A studio guitar player won't be hired if they can only play one style – whoever is hiring you would then have to hire a pile of different musicians depending on the song, they want someone who can play everything.
A freelance guitar player will find way more work if they can be hired for any type of gig.
I tell my students you need four things to become a good guitar player.
Technique/Chops
Music Theory
The ability to read music
Good Ears
All four of these things can be learned forever – with the possible exception of reading music, until your reading can keep up to your chops (ie you can sight read anything you'll ever be able to play.) It can be improved.
The illusion of style is given by how the notes are approached, learn the notes, then learn to approach them from all the angles.
The only exception in this article comes with classical, which is a very different beast from Modern Guitar.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
The illusion of "Style"
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style
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5 comments:
I would definitely disagree. Musical style and charisma is part of the mystery of music - music may have technically "solveable" problems, but you can't teach someone to play with emotion. There is definitely an undefinable and difficult to explain "vibe" to the really great musicians that even the most technically adept players don't have.
I couldn't explain it much better than that, but it's what makes Eric Clapton better than even the greatest studio player.
Music is an expressive art form and involves a lot of emotional investment - it isn't just notes, scales, relationships between notes and "how they're approached" - it's got a magical quality to it that shouldn't be ignored. It's how the individual artist works within the systematic constraints of the 12-tone system and our Western expectations of music that makes them great. You're saying something akin to saying: "All painters use the same colors. So there's no such thing as style."
That said, I can see where you're coming from. But if you really think that there's no such thing as style, yikes - I wouldn't want to play music with someone who thinks that!
I'm not saying at all that this is no creativity, in fact - I am known as a teacher for pushing the creative side of music a lot. What I'm getting at is that there is little to no difference between different styles, or genres of music as far as what you actually do with the guitar. Using the example of Clapton that you have, I may be wrong on this but I believe Clapton was a great studio guitar player before he went solo.
What I am saying is those guitar players who play only rock because that's all they listen to will limit themselves a lot.
What you're getting at is what I call "creativity" which I defiantly believe exists, infact I'm supporting that in this article by saying that one should not limit themselves to playing only one style of music.
The illusion of "genre" might be a more appropriate title, then?
The illusion of "genre" might be a more appropriate title, then?
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