Old recordings of yourself

[shizack]

A g**tar-player friend called me the other day and asked me to bring my nice tape deck over. He had found some old tapes of us playing with different musicians from WAY back (1991) up 'til relatively recently (2000) and wanted to get them on CD. He and I both started playing in about 1989. Of course there were some trainwrecks of Addams-Family magnitude, but we were both amazed at some of the licks/lines we came up with back then - esp. the '91 tapes. We are both in separate local/regional gigging bands now and our technique has improved considerably, but we both said things like "I don't know if I could come up with a lead/bassline like that nowadays."
Has this happened to you? How do you recover the "freshness" but keep the theory and technique?

[Puarija]

Originally Posted by shizack

Has this happened to you? How do you recover the "freshness" but keep the theory and technique?

At the risk of exposing myself for a terrible player, I'll speak about my own experience.

I listen back to some cassettes from the times when I first started out up to the 2 or 3 years after that, and there is some stuff I think sounds awesome, and lines I'm amazed by. Then I realize that every time those things occurred, it was by accident. I didn't know what I was doing, and the lines that came out were just by chance.

Because of that, I don't think there is a way of getting it back.

Granted, maybe YOU wrote good stuff that you knew you were writing, but for ME, most of the really cool sounding lines I wrote were purely accidental.

[De Teng]

Well...yeah, I know what you mean. Not that my experience goes back to 1991 (when I just was 11 years old) but I recently discovered some old songs with a horrible drummer. That was two years ago, but I was delighted by the bassline. A similar reaction from me too '.. did I wrote that? sounds cool nevertheless'...

It gives a bit strange feeling when you can't think of things which you already haven't played. But in that time you probably couldn't come up with basslines, which you play now. I see it as a continually way of changing, and improving intonation, skills and taste.

90% percent of what I have written in the past (let's say... three years ago or more) is what I don't like. My skills have improved a lot (thank God for that... I sucked before that... looking at it now) and the lines are getting better.

Perhaps you're going to say the same ten years from now?