this post is only for weenies and rockers and those who are worried that they’ll never find their own voice in their respective Art.
i HAVE always noticed that i seem to play Gilmour’s solos very very differently from the way he himself plays them, and i never could figure out why. i get the notes, but my rhythm is completely different. and yet it works really well somehow… it’s like i’m playing it the way i hear it in my head, see?, and that just happens to be not exactly how it actually is. but it still somehow manages to sound, to me, very Gilmourian… very much like the actual, original solo (and here’s the epiphany: maybe it DOESN’T sound a bit like it at all!? but works anyhow!?). which is to say that it can’t possibly actually sound like him to anyone else, and yet it still captures the same general feel or vibe of the melody. i don’t know how to explain it. i’m like that with a lot of classic songs. i play them my own way. i never really gave myself any credit for that before; i just figured i was fucking it up… even though i was still satisfied that it always came out the way i actually in my head wanted it to. which… geex… means that i’ve actually all along been doing what i WANTED to do: have my own style. that is just weird, man. just weird.
and if i could be a god, then that means that you all are definitely gods.
also something cool: my gouty (debilitatingly painful) finger is on my fretting hand. so i try extra, extra hard, believe me. most of the time, i play with just the two goddamn fingers. somehow, it works out and doesn’t really sound noticeably thin. so i rock, and that’s a good thing to know, should i ever decide to inflict this thing upon others.
the point of this whole entire rambley post (who the hell said i was succinct?!) was that the holy grail of musicianship, or of ANY art form for that matter, is reaching that point where you have decidedly staked your claim to something… and the easiest version of that, for a musician, is to have one’s own style, which is still so difficult that for most people, it’s a serious, lifelong battle against mediocrity, and sadly, most lose that battle.
so i guess it’s very possible that i may have crossed that hurdle after all. like years ago, without ever having realized it. and that’s just fucking profoundly cool and (believe it or not!) humbling.
this whole entry [probably] takes up more than three inches of your screen, so that means that most people didn’t actually bother reading it, and that’s okay by me. i was just having a little bitty epiphany. go on with your reading now.
