I'm fairly traditional. I like rock, mostly British rock from the early 60s to late 70s. I play a bit of jazz and used to enjoy playing blues, but I have to admit that none of it suits me like rock.
I'm fairly traditional. I like rock, mostly British rock from the early 60s to late 70s. I play a bit of jazz and used to enjoy playing blues, but I have to admit that none of it suits me like rock.
If we'd known we were going to be the Beatles, we'd have tried harder.--George Harrison
I live firmly in the jazzy americana realm.
tbh nothing is as fulfilling to me as playing some late period Frisell. Ive managed to cobble together some bits; but it's always humbling.
I also LOVE pop music. There's so much good playing by Luke in the 80s on pop songs and I think that stuff is a real treasure.
I'm mostly a live player, and the pleasure I get comes from feeling the audience's interaction almost as much as from the music I'm playing.
So I tend to be happier when I play something laid back, which allows me to look at the people in the front row in the eye and see each one dancing and smiling. My favorite things in a gig are Rolling Stones songs and 70s Punk Rock, plus some hard blues.
When I play the more complex stuff I do enjoy it, but then it's just me and the guitar, I have to think too much and look more fiercely at what I'm doing, so I can't really bond with the public in the venue.
Blues. All kinds of blues. Mostly electric. '60s British blues, blues/rock, boogie, the electric blues masters like the Kings, Muddy, Buddy guy... The same stuff that made me pick the guitar up in the first place.
I find myself playing a lot of rhythm guitar. I like syncopation, jazzy time signatures, and mixed beats. A few examples: I like the band America's more jazzy-sounding stuff (their first few albums, a lot of the Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek compositions, like "Three Roses" and "Riverside"), Steely Dan, and toe-tapping stuff. My recent return to Beatles music has me revisiting 4/4 time, but even songs like Maxwell's Silver Hammer have intricate rhythmic structures embedded in it, which is why I like playing it.
This x1000 for me.Originally Posted by Sérgio
I love learning new things and challenging myself. I love practicing bebop stuff and playing it in the jazz trio and quintet work I get to do sometimes. I can play probably every tune in the Steely Dan repertoire, and it always makes me smile to do so.
But, nothing makes me happier than being part of the sound that is making the people on the dance floor move and smile. I write about it a lot in a blog I do, but the short version is that I call it the "feedback loop," because our music fuels their dancing, which fuels us to play with even more expression and emotion, which further fuels them, etc., etc. I'm lucky, in that my main band plays weddings almost exclusively, so we always have a captive dance floor, full of happy, drinking people. The feedback loop makes me happier than any drug ever could.
Yes! People responding positively in real time to what you're doing is an awesome thing! It's really what it's all about.
I agree completely, but what kind of music do you enjoy playing?
If we'd known we were going to be the Beatles, we'd have tried harder.--George Harrison
In the context of the "feedback loop," it doesn't matter to me in the least. As a mostly-weddings band, we do 80s stuff, Motown, 70s Funk/Soul, current bubblegum Pop, well known Country stuff, the occasional hair-metal thing... it really doesn't matter to me. The joy I get seeing people say, "I LOVE this song!" and shaking their collective butts makes any genre my favorite genre while I'm playing it.
I'm all over the place and have been for decades. I love to learn songs, study about it, read about the players and their gear. I love to learn and play in different tunings as well.
Last week I learned a Beatles song, yesterday a Devin Townsend song from Empath (Open C), and today I was playing a AC/DC tune.
Instrumental gives me more pleasure to play than anything. I'll take song, learn it and record it to a drum track, pull out a base and lay down a bass track with it, and then do an instrumental to that on guitar. I like creating a lead based on the melody to play with it that takes the place of the singing.
Jazz: Charles Mingus, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, Weather Report, The Aristocrats, and on and on.
Rock: Old School, Progressive, Instrumental, Southern, Grunge, Metal, Heavy Metal, British Metal, Thrash, and on and on.
Country: Hank Williams Jr., Johnny Cash, Steve Earl, Johnny Hiland, Waylon Jennings, and on and on.
Blue Grass picking of Doc Watson
Blues: All of it and any of it from Robert Johnson to King Fish, and on and on.
Anything that somebody can guess what it is from all the clinkers in it...
Dude, you gotta change your font. ha ha
If we'd known we were going to be the Beatles, we'd have tried harder.--George Harrison
Hehehe I like Renderit’s posts. But sometimes amore visible font would indeed be of help
In my (nearly) 60 years as a musician I've covered just about every form of popular music available. I started out doing the Everly, Elvis, Gene Vincent stuff; made the switch to the English invasion material; went through a period of James Brown/Sly Stone/Temptations soul music; spent some time as a cocktail lounge performer doing Belafonte/Patsy Klein/jazz tunes; Played some country gigs and polka gigs; and spent a lot of time in an R&B/Blues format.
Of it all, I think I enjoyed the blues and R&B stuff the most as I got to do a lot of original material and played with some really excellent players. I should really say I've enjoyed working with ALL the musicians I've worked with over the years...they have all been fantastic players to work with.
Hits the nail on the head. Me, if I get to throw a rockabilly Elvis tune in with it it's a great night.
"No harmonic knowledge, no sense of time, a ghastly tone, unskilled vibrato, and so on. Chuck is one of the worst guitar players I know" -Gravity Jim
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