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Do you ever feel more like a tape recorder than a musician ?
Do you feel great about your musicianship ? David's comment on a previous post struck a chord with me:
quote:
otherwise you'll become like me and just be a clone.
I'm in the clone club, unfortunately....I would imagine lots of guitar players feel this way for a number of reasons - but I'm pretty sure until I can tastefully improvise over chord changes in real time, I will always feel this way...and I haven't yet put enough time into that skill (working on it now).
Anybody else feel this way ? Other thing is to just have enough repertoire "down cold" so that you can pick up the instrument and play confidently and continuously for a reasonable time frame (whatever that is for you)....another skill I'm currently working on.
I'm sure many of you have the two skills above - but guessing some of you don't yet...please share on the topic if you're so interested : )
Posts: 14841
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Do you ever feel more like a tap... (in reply to joevidetto)
Mclaughlin said it is IMPOSSIBLE to be anybody other than yourself. But the best was Steve vai in guitar world 1988 may issue. He gets asked about the popular “Yngwie clones” at the time (remember he had to fill Yngwie’s shoes in Alcatrazz to a very disappointed crowd). He explains about a guy in high school that bought the same guitar and clothes as VAI and was copying his licks and finally tried to steal his girl!
But he said when you copy someone and make errors that eventually “work fine”, you ARE developing your style. He said if some kid is in his room copying Yngwie all day that that was totally cool. Sometimes you need to “lose yourself” in the image of another in order to discover who YOU are. Finally, Vicente said that Paco is the “mirror” in which all us flamenco guitarists see ourselves. Hopefully you get the idea from these insights as to where I am going.
In my case, my main influence is Gerardo Nuñez, who is basically an amalgam of Paco style and older Jerez influences. He has deep knowledge of falsetas of Javier Molina, Montoya, and others like Morao or Parilla. But I feel I learned more about PACO things from him than I did on my own. In the end my own music has the stamp of what I learned in Sanlucar and people notice it. I don’t mind that…it is like carrying a legacy or tradition along, which is actually important in the Flamenco genre unlike say Rock or Jazz where you had better be fairly original.
I challenge for folks to locate my rip offs of Cepero, Paco, Riqueni, and Nuñez in this:
RE: Do you ever feel more like a tap... (in reply to joevidetto)
While I can hear things that remind me of compositions of the guitarists/composers mentioned, I must admit that the main thing that connects this buleria to the gentlemen above, is that it is breathtaking until the last second.
Thank you always for the inspiration.
P.S. Of course I would like to play something like that, but the high virtuosity is not in my possession sadly. I learned it the hard way trying to master the Jucal buleria many years ago... and no, not in this lifetime.
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