The new blood

[Boota]

I just got back from hearing a band of 14 year olds practice and I have to say I am more psyched to play than ever. I have fun playing, but until I saw them I had forgotten exactly how much fun it used to be. None of them have been playing long and they aren't really all that good yet, but they are having a blast. But anyway...

The reason I was there is because they invited me over. The guitarist is the nephew of a friend of mine and he let them hear some of my band's music, and they decided to cover one of our songs. I think that is the coolest fucking thing in the world! Sure, they murdered it and played it all wrong. The guitar player is still a few years of serious practice away from being able to hit my solo. The drummer has been playing for less than a year and has trouble keeping time. The singer is in the pit of puberty and his voice isn't working for him the way it eventually will. The bass player is only playing bass because someone told him it was easy because it has only four strings. But none of that is the point. I fucking loved it! It was great that these kids dug our music enough to try to learn one of our songs. They want me to bring the other guys over and check them out sometime, once they get a little better.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and I was definitely flattered.

 

[LadyJeanne]

That's really cool, and it sounds like both you and the kids were having a blast.

Bask in the glory, bask away...

 

[Guest]

Wonderful!

I love to be a part of things like that.

I direct student music and theatre activities; concerts, musicals, stage and such. I'm currently in the middle of another show.

I enjoy teaching basic skills and also shaping the more advanced students so they can perform independently. We perform high quality shows, sometimes using students in the cast as young as elementary school age.

Despite years of experience, I am constantly amazed at how talented kids can be.

The look on their faces, their own empowerment, their absolute kick-ass joy when they get it is positively incredible.

Garage bands are so important. It takes determination and a willingness to get along with people who maybe aren't as talented as others in the group to make 'em work.

I'm thinking about them practicing so hard to cover one of your songs, Boota. And not wanting you to hear it until it was close - trying so hard to impress you? How incredible to be part of their inspiration to get together and play.

Way to go.

 

[gauchecritic]

I'm not musical, I sing flat, I play three chords badly (you know which ones) and can play only the right hand part of a very few piano pieces. My eldest two sons perform quite regularly, in front of audiences, bass, vocals and guitar (with no formal teaching).

Watching them (and their compatriots) is just completely enervating. Even with the smallest amount of skill, just the raw need to be performing is great to watch.

So how many times did you refrain from tellling them how they could improve Boota? How many times did you stop yourself from dragging an instrument from someone to show them?



In case anyone is watching, putting yourself out on the internet is a very worthwhile thing to do. The eldest lad has gleaned interest from an agent with this method.

 

[Boota]

I think what I liked so much about it was that it took me back to the days when I was starting out and every day there was a huge breakthrough. I still have those breakthroughs, but they are fewer and farther between simply because I've been at it so long. That look on a kids face when something they've been striving for just finally clicks is awesome. It's like that with anything, even though I'm talking music right now. I remember the days of strumming the same chord over and over for hours just because I finally figured it out and I liked the sound of it.

I know they must have dedicated quite a bit of time to working on that song. It has some unusual chord progressions in it, mixed with a lot of single string work, and the transitional bridge is a fairly difficult run of arpeggios. My drummer uses a double bass kit and their drummer only has a single bass, so he had to work out a way to do those parts on his floor toms. While it wasn't the "correct" way to do it, it showed a lot of creativity and ingenuity, and that is more valuable as a musician anyway. Even playing a song incorrectly is a learning step. When I first started I learned how to play Motley Crue's entire Shout At The Devil album completely wrong just from listening to it. LOL. But it helped to train my ear. I told the other guys in my band about it and they are really excited to go over and hear what these kids can do.

I knew going in that they were going to play one of my songs, so I decided that I wouldn't volunteer help unless they asked for it. They didn't ask, so I just applauded them when it was over and thanked them for inviting me. When we get back into rehearsals I'm going to invite them over some night. That will be a no beer night. LOL. I know that I learned a lot from watching older and more experienced players.

Gauche, congratulations to your son on getting interest from an agent. That can be a very big step and open a lot of doors. I started using the internet for the band in 1998 and it is starting to pay off a bit. The company we use has a man on the Grammy committee and he is running a campaign for us to get us on the ballot for 2006. They seem to think we have a legitimate shot at making the ballot even though we aren't signed to a label. Actually winning a Grammy while unsigned would be a huge bargaining chip, but I'm not going to count those chickens just yet.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Aside from the flattery, I always thought it was just so cool to hear someone else play a piece of someone else's music just to see the way they understood it and interpreted it. Music is one of the few art forms that seems to benefit from committee work. People take a piece of music and play it and hand it off to someone else who hands it off to someone else and along the way it gets polished and reinvented until it can turn into something really good.

I've had that happen to a couple songs I wrote and it's just terribly cool to watch.

I mentioned before that a record I'd played on in 1969 was sampled by Jay Z on his Black Album and used as background for a song. That's the closest I've come to musical greatness, I guess.

 

[shereads]

This interests me: that people who compose music don't mind having it reinterpreted by other musicians, in fact you enjoy seeing where they go with what you started.

It seems so out of character for a writer, who wants every word and paragraph break to be just-so.

Is the creative process so different that it produces a different kind of "pride of authorship?" Or is it just that there are no jam sessions for erotica writers?

(Sudden image of Dr. M, Boota, Gauche, and some local teenagers in someone's garage, riffing porn. Sweetsub brings some of her students, just in time for the reading of Boota's orgasm. )



Edited to add: I suppose it makes sense that a composer has to be generous with the people who interpret his work; the work doesn't really exist between performances, so in a way the composer is a co-creator with any musician who takes an interest in the song.

 

[Guest]

Excellent quesiton -

It's a different art form.

More like kinesthetic art, I suppose. To be most enjoyed it must be fluid and constantly changing.

When my students learn new music I have to break them of the habit of taking everything the composer wrote for them as gospel.

I often say things such as, "Hey, he's been dead for two hundred years, he doesn't care if you feel that section of music should be just a bit faster or slower. How do you feel the music should be played?"

(Small aside here - this can be a problem with Suzuki students - often they have difficulty developing their own style.)

And yet I know conductors who take the tempo marking as a sign from God and actually use a watch to count it off before starting the group.

It is a sign of respect to perform the music as intended, yes. And often it is the best way for that piece to be sung, played, etc.

But music as performed must contain something of the performer, or it is nothing.