vic
Is there a limit to musical "growth" ? Have been wondering about this for some time.....reason is I have noticed that I have become almost immune to absorbing new trends/styles in music (for the lack of a better diagnosis) and feel so much more comfortable doing, playing and composing the stuff that I did 20 years ago....could be ageing as well ! ?
DonovanB
The only growth I've had is sideways...
I think if we stop learning then we may as well stop existing. What would we strive for then?
vic
DonovanB wrote:
I think if we stop learning then we may as well stop existing. What would we strive for then?
It's not that bad..one just sometimes feels that your best work was say 10 years ago...when you were more creative and I guess,more enthusiastic as well.
PeteM
I don't think there's a limit. Hey, I'm discovering new things musical every day. My New Year's Resolution is to learn to play metal stuff. What's life without challenges eh?
vic
What I do enjoy nowadays is to take an oldie from the 50's or 60's and dress it up in a modern cloak, so to speak. Stuff like Under the Boardwalk sounds fresh again with a reggae beat ?
BMU
No limit, there's always someone who can kick your ass at what you thought you were good at. (Ok that's true in my case anyway. Five minutes on Youtube and I'm depressed for days HAHA.) And then there's all the other theory, techniques and beyond that all the other genres out there. I mean you have Steve Vai listening to Bulgarian wedding music for inspiration, there's a youtube video lesson where he talks about it, very interesting.
PeteM wrote:
My New Year's Resolution is to learn to play metal stuff. What's life without challenges eh?
Now that is cool. Post clips when you've fulfilled that resolution! I should learn to play acoustic fingerstyle but there's just not enough time to get good at everything! "You can do anything, you just can't do everything."
Keira-WitherKay
of course there is NO LIMIT by which one can grow..................
even if we stay in an older or dated style one can always learn within that genre how to play better or with more feel............
and yeah in my experience i found ....and it's proved on recordings that many younger players can be highly technical, but they lack the maturity to have great feel .......... so even once you know all you can technically or theoretically luckily music is not a science but an art which means HOW YOU USE THAT ABILITY is as important as having it ..........
so yeah one never stops learning ....... and someone said they not absobing new styles that are on radio . but hey we all choose a genre in which we want to play ......jazz/folk/blues/fusion/rock/pop/experimental/world music/classical/
and i do hold by the saying .."JACK OF ALL TRADES MASTER OF NONE"
all the greats stick to what they consider their style/genre ...find their voice and become brilliant at it .....
rather than try and do the cover musician thing and try play everything ...which results in then playing multiple styles but all in a mediocre fashion............
and it's not cos those artists can't play many styles just your musical life ......is way way too short to become fabulous at more than one style ..
and yeah bring in influences ... clapton is heavily influenced by reggae and he uses it in a few songs ........... but he's not trying to be a reggae artist just borrowed that influence to enhance his blues genre... but he still plays it in his way not like marley would have............... with his blues style........
so yeah pick a genre and excell at it ..and within that one genre you will never stop growing or improving ........ and never stop loving being a musician
PeteM
@keira - to each his own - maybe we don't want to be "a master of one". I'm having fun learning and playing all genres at the moment. I enjoy writing my own stuff and also enjoy paying homage to the greats by playing their music. Imagine if we were all striving to only play our own stuff - we would never get to hear Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky etc. being played live by an orchestra. I reckon a violinist sitting on the second bench of the second strings is as important to music as the virtuosos.
lindsmuse
Learning to read and play a bit of classical after many years of doing the opposite was what boosted my guitar playing for me. But I recommend of course that you get a teacher for this.
I taught myself in my spare time and cheat a lot because of my ear! If I can't work out what the timing is I find a recording somewhere and listen to the timing! I mean after all Paco doesn't read. However classical is not everybody's thing ..
Apparently while I wait to find someone to play duets with(which is what I want) I must duet with a metronome ... ah well ... I don't mind -love the guitar enough to subject myself to this humbling experience
Good luck with the metal Pete - some of it's amazing - don't blame you for wanting to play it!
Jack-Flash-Jr
No limit... but definitely a wave pattern for me... some nice peaks of musical taste and ability expansion followed by (sometimes very long) lows where I feel incredibly stagnant (what I listening to and playing) - sometimes buying new equipment/music jolts me out of that and sometimes not. Always ascending though!
PeteM
lindsmuse wrote:
Good luck with the metal Pete - some of it's amazing - don't blame you for wanting to play it!
Yeah thanks - by playing it I hope to get a better understanding of it.
DonovanB
Pete then I have some very interesting things to show you, one is Metallica with the Orchestra. That is phenomenal..
singemonkey
Maybe that's the trick Vic. Follow PeteM's example and make a project out of it. You may discover that you can get excited by something that you've never got into before, if you actually sit down and try to work it all out. Bottle-neck blues. Indian classical music. Classical guitar. Malian music. Django-style jazz. Whatever it is, just get a bunch of records and set time aside to work the stuff out. I wouldn't be surprised if you find yourself getting into it.
[deleted]
I recently had a very exciting experience. I've been playing classical guitar for 16 years now. I've learned some of the more complex songs, played them from memory over and over again and I very honestly didn't think there were many people in this city who could teach me further. So, I decided "time to record all this". I discovered how much more I could learn by listening to myself and I learned so much more about interpretation, and THANK GOD I did. I would have been missing out on so much. Not only that, but I was also very happy to see a master class by Julian Bream and he taught exactly the same concepts that I had figured out for myself.
I still have a itch to scratch though and I want to develop classical music into something more accessible to the general public. I want to translate the awe I feel when playing classical music into a musical language/ setting that people are more accustomed to. So I'm really counting on being able to grow musically!
chris77
I agree that most of us, professional musos included, will able to grow for a very very long time because of the way music works. One step leads to the other and the more you know, the more there is to know. There is also a crapload full of genres to explore that makes use of slight variations of the main themes, so there should always be something fresh to pique your interest if you look for it.
I do reckon however that there must be some type of Glass Ceiling.
The first obstacle would be talent. Once you reach the limit of your capabilities thats it. For some it is further along the advancement scale than others, but it exists for everyone.
Secondly there is the human condition to consider as well. We will become more forgetfull and have less patience with ourselves when we struggle with something and sooner or later we will not be able to physically do the things we want. I have a genuine sense of dread when I think that arthritus might one day foil my dreams of playing songs to my grandchildren.
singemonkey
chris77 wrote:
I have a genuine sense of dread when I think that arthritus might one day foil my dreams of playing songs to my grandchildren.
Don't worry man. By then you'll have electric, techno-fingers that'll do the job. You'll be sitting on your hover-chairs around the roaring atomic heater, satisfyingly full from your beef and 2 veg pill, and they'll be marvelling that your guitar is made from real wood, from back when there were still trees. ?
chris77
@ Singemonkey. He-he-he, Brilliant! Will be sure to keep them seperate from the little blue ones...
Bob-Dubery
Sure it's possible to grow or at least widen one's horizons. Take a look at some of the people who have had long careers and see how they kept things vital and stopped themselves from recycling the same old same old by having their ears and minds open so they could keep on bringing fresh elements into what they do. David Bowie's a good example. There are, as previously noted, constraints that each of us run into because we hit the ceiling of whatever talent we have, but the constraints that you can beat are those to do with what you expose your ears and minds to and what you allow to enter into your own personal melting pot.
Another thing to try is to not just confine your listening and experimenting to the guitar. Richard Thompson says that most of his musical ideas, certainly for soloing, come from instruments other than the guitar these days. I got to see him in Cumbria last year, and I recall one solo that he took that was fab but almost not a "guitar solo" because so much of it was bagpipe licks. He set up a drone part (no loop station!) and then layered all these piope licks over the top of that. The only thing that made it a "guitar solo" was that he played it on guitar.
arjunmenon
Personally, i feel that the only limits are the ones that we place on ourselves (that's an Eric Johnson quote BTW).
Having said that, i'm yet to find a muso who thinks that musical growth would be a walk in the park.
A perfect example is discussed in the Scott Henderson interview that Donovan posted on the forum.
Wizard
A music teacher used to shout at us in a wild, animated way:
"When you think you're good - you're not !!"
i.e. As soon as you think you've made it, you've just close your mind to learning
IMHO ... if you're doing it right, then the more you learn the further the target gets away from you.
