Inspired Part 1

Stevie Ray Vaughan stands on stage tearing huge concrete slabs of sound out of his Stratocaster, hat pulled down over his eyes, big globs of sweat pouring down his scrunched up face. At times it looks like the guitar is just going to snap under the pressure. Every note of every song is played like it’s going to be his last. Although I never saw him live, I’ve seen a lot of video and I’ve never seen him slack off, not for a single millisecond.

I’ve seen Buddy Guy live three times. The first time I saw him was in a small club where I was only ten feet away from him the entire show. At one point Buddy bent a note, a long sustained scream of a note and we locked eyes, from ten feet away it was like we were connected by a high voltage wire. The note sustained and his eyes stayed locked on mine. After what seemed like a beautiful eternity he smiled and let loose with a fountain of notes. I’ll never forget that moment. Oh, by the way, Buddy was in his 60’s at the time and he never slacked off for a moment either.

Wynton Marsalis came to our town and gave a clinic and a concert. At the clinic, geared towards teens, he called for players to come on stage and perform for him. A bunch of younger players clamored on stage and one adult, a local sax player, Dick Adams. Everyone performed a short scale or melody for Wynton, who made a few comments about their tone or technique. When he got to my friend Dick, Wynton made a positive comment about Dick’s sound and then something about his humility. That’s what struck me the most as well, Dick Adams is a fine sax player who has tremendous ability and never holds back, and I thought that it showed enormous humility for him to stand up there with those kids a third his age and be willing to ask for pointers.

I am inspired by people like this, people who come from all walks of life and do what they do with intensity, focus, honesty and a sense of humility. Not going through the motions, not mimicking emotion or intensity, but honestly attempting to express themselves’s through whatever medium they choose.

I am also deeply inspired by those who are always seeking. Not satisfied with where they’re at, not sitting around fat and comfortable playing their patented “beef stew” licks, but always striving to learn new things and to improve their abilities.

Some players, like my friend Grammy Award winning drummer Steve Mitchell, are always happy to be playing music. Steve could easily sleepwalk through most gigs and still sound great, but he is always alive and focused on making great music. So many of us musicians who’ve had the opportunity to perform thousands of gigs over the years become jaded and bored with our music. It’s so easy to just go through the motions, to fake it. (Like counting the notes going out into the space and attempting to calculate how much you’re getting paid per note while comping during the keyboard solo.) It’s so easy to simply play the notes and chords while rarely, if ever investing anything of yourself in the music.

This, it seems, is the real challenge as we grow and learn to perform at a high level. Not to lose that sense of awe for what we can create with focus and intensity. To play every note like it might be the last and not to lose your love for the music as you use it to make a living. One of my teachers once told me that in those moments when I was disillusioned with my music, to think back to and connect with the feelings that brought me to music in the first place. To look at it through a child’s eyes … "no one dreams of going through the motions of playing music" he said.
To be continued…

Musical Archaeology on YouTube

As a teenager growing up learning the guitar and music in the 1970's and 1980's I couldn't have dreamed of the information resources that we now have at our fingertips. Hours spent dropping the needle (yes, that would be the record player's needle) on to the intro to Hendrix's Purple Haze led me eventually to a decent version of the intro. Of course 5 minutes of watching him play it would have made it all so much easier to understand and ultimately more educational. At that time however it wasn't likely that I would get to see video of him playing, let alone have the chance to rewind his performance the 10 times it would take to understand what he was doing...

Fast forward to today and not only can I find 8 live videos of Hendrix performing the song on the first page of a YouTube search, but also a host of Hendrix fans offering their own videos of how to play the song and its solo. The accuracy of the fans offerings aside, this is an amazing resourse, a community of people showing you the way they think its played. This is something that every student should be taking advantage of.

Of course the wealth of information to be found on YouTube isn't confined to rock, but every style of music you might be interested in. For instance, I just did a search for Klezmer (Secular Jewish Dance Music) on YouTube and found video performances and even a few lessons. File sharing allows people from all walks of life to share the things they love, it's like having an enormous group of friends from which you can borrow videos on an endless variety of subjects, indefinitely.

For the serious student of music, musical archaeology should be a part of your weekly practice schedule. Peeling back the layers of time and peering in at great players performing their music at the peak of their careers will teach you so much about music, about them and about your instrument. If you're studying blues slide guitar, watch blues players play, view their lessons and live videos. Make a study of it. How do they move, what chord shapes and tunings do they use and what scales. When you're working on learning a new song, just getting the notes right is great, but learning the types of fingerings the player used to perform those notes, what model instrument or amp they used to get their sound is all incredibly valuable information.

Of course you will often find that the camera cuts away just as the player peels off that 16th note run from hell that you can't figure out, or the video goes psychedelic as he or she plays the coolest chord in the world. It's not a perfect view into the past but it is incredibly educating at its worst and totally revealing at its best.

As a guitar player I have created a short list of important guitar figures I think you should dig up, some modern and some old. Some you might have heard of and many you probably have never heard of. I've tried to avoid the most obvious. My list does include some greats in different styles, but also musical freaks who do things no one else does and so are worth looking into. Some I just think are funny, either way it's better then watching videos of cats playing piano. Please ad to my list via the comments box, thanks. Enjoy!

In no particular order:

Pat Metheny

John Petrucci

Leo Kotke

Jeff Beck

John Scofield

Roy Buchanan

Buckethead

Allan Holdsworth

Manuel Barrueco

Kurt Rosenwinkle

Stanley Jordan

Yngwie Malmsteen

Eric Johnson

Michael Hedges

Eliot Fisk

Ry Cooder

Chet Atkins

Albert Collins

Andres Segovia

Danny Gatton

Steve Morris

Jr. Brown

Joe Pass

Bill Frisell

Andy McKee

Lenny Breau

Ani DiFranco

Micheal Angelo Batio