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Mainly music...
Sep. 15th, 2012 11:59 amGigging tonight with the "Wedding Band".
They have put "Johnny Be Goode"
into the second set. It is twenty years since I have played it, so I brushed up on't over the interwebs. And I'm having difficulty in the overdubbed opening guitar intro's final measure transitioning into the verse rhythm riff, and so after one mistake too many I sat and brooded on the nature of mistakes in musical performance, and the creative good that can result therefrom. But to return to "Johnny Be Goode": Chuck Berry is an idiosyncratic player of great originality who pretty much invented many of the still-extant tropes in Rock 'n' Roll and popular music. About the only thing which I can agree on with Ted Nugent (gawdluvhim and all the afflicted) is that proper performance knowledge of Berry's canon should be essential for anyone attempting to master Rock 'n' Roll. And I find to my shame that I no longer have it.
Then again, since my strayings into Jazz have influenced my playing considerably, and I've done little real practice these past six years or so, and that mostly exploring my "voice", I find Berry's particular vocabulary doesn't suit it, if instrumental players can be said to have a "voice".
I shall fudge it when it comes to the gig, and few will know: nevertheless I remain dissastified. I shall have to devote time to getting it exactly right. Other people's notes, hey?
But, as I mentioned earlier, this brought on musings about mistakes.
Eric Clapton once described how dissatisfied he was with his playing on Cream's reworking of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads".
In an old interview (which I can no longer reference, alas) he told of how he was a half beat out of synch with where he felt he ought to be, and throughout the verse he had been playing catch-up.
This "mistake" left us with a true original; an impressive piece of musical invention; and one of Clapton's finest moments, which he recognised and played it the same way thereafter.
In some things we have to make mistakes to break new ground. The problems which then arise are always about unintended consequences. In music, this isn't ever disastrous, as no-one dies apart from the coloratura soprano. In politics, economics, and war it is a very different story.
Go well and take the time to get things exactly right if you can: but it is pragmatic to approximate it for urgent deadlines, I suppose.
They have put "Johnny Be Goode"
into the second set. It is twenty years since I have played it, so I brushed up on't over the interwebs. And I'm having difficulty in the overdubbed opening guitar intro's final measure transitioning into the verse rhythm riff, and so after one mistake too many I sat and brooded on the nature of mistakes in musical performance, and the creative good that can result therefrom. But to return to "Johnny Be Goode": Chuck Berry is an idiosyncratic player of great originality who pretty much invented many of the still-extant tropes in Rock 'n' Roll and popular music. About the only thing which I can agree on with Ted Nugent (gawdluvhim and all the afflicted) is that proper performance knowledge of Berry's canon should be essential for anyone attempting to master Rock 'n' Roll. And I find to my shame that I no longer have it.
Then again, since my strayings into Jazz have influenced my playing considerably, and I've done little real practice these past six years or so, and that mostly exploring my "voice", I find Berry's particular vocabulary doesn't suit it, if instrumental players can be said to have a "voice".
I shall fudge it when it comes to the gig, and few will know: nevertheless I remain dissastified. I shall have to devote time to getting it exactly right. Other people's notes, hey?
But, as I mentioned earlier, this brought on musings about mistakes.
Eric Clapton once described how dissatisfied he was with his playing on Cream's reworking of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads".
In an old interview (which I can no longer reference, alas) he told of how he was a half beat out of synch with where he felt he ought to be, and throughout the verse he had been playing catch-up.
This "mistake" left us with a true original; an impressive piece of musical invention; and one of Clapton's finest moments, which he recognised and played it the same way thereafter.
In some things we have to make mistakes to break new ground. The problems which then arise are always about unintended consequences. In music, this isn't ever disastrous, as no-one dies apart from the coloratura soprano. In politics, economics, and war it is a very different story.
Go well and take the time to get things exactly right if you can: but it is pragmatic to approximate it for urgent deadlines, I suppose.
