note sure if this is a making music thing or a technique thing..
I'm guessing a bit of both...
so here goes...
we all have our native styles.. places where we are really comfy to play and write
those of you that know me will know that as a guitarist I'm most happy riffing and shredding
rock and metal from the old stuff to the new.. the shreddy Van Halen / Satch / Vai / neo-classical Malmsteeny style..
and of course my main guitar job is prog rock..
those of you that know me really well would know that I adore funk and blues too
as a writer composer I'll work in all the styles above plus my other main music job is movie trailer / media music composition..
this is mostly hybrid orchestral / choral stuff with synths and huge drums..
these guys do occasionally take me away from the orchestral stuff though..
not so long ago I have to do a rock car chase thing [which was a major home game] and also quite recently I did an authentic swamp blues thing for them [which was pure joy for me]
the trailer / media music house I work for called today and threw in a proper curve ball..
Rockabilly.. I have never played this before.. not even for fun..
even better... they want 3 pieces by Nov 19th [which is fkn nuts]
so.. I have to learn a style well enough to compose it and play it pretty convincingly..
and it is seriously out of the ol' comfy zone in every sense
it's a major away game for me
do you guys spend much time out of the comfort zone??
play every note as if it were your first
Comments
kinda where I'm at right now with the Rockabilly stuff is listening to lots of reference material and noodling on a guitar..
I've worked out the tones [amp / cab choices sorted] and config'd them in the Axe-FX
I'm almost ready to start writing I think
one of the great things about prog I think is it's breadth..
prog tends to borrow hugely from other places and then place this stuff in it's own proggy little world..
so you'll hear classical [ELP], jazz [Trace], blues [Floyd], metal [loooods of bands including us lot in places], funk [sort of but mostly coming from the drummers], folk [Tull], country [Yes in the 70's], pop [later Genesis] and all sorts more..
and then it has it's own peculiar ways..
as a prog player myself I've always though of prog as being a sort of pot that everything else gets bunged into
and then it's over cooked into something unfashionable.. lol
I've always enjoyed learning pieces on guitar written for other instruments..
I mostly did this with Baroque and Classical pieces for cello, harpsichord, church organ, violin etc..
it's like solving a puzzle and forces you to invent new ways of doing things..
I learned a lot from this
soooooo much fun.. and I am absolutely shite at it..
but it really makes me smile
I imagine it makes that bit of guitar time quite valuable..
hope your wife is ok...