Don't want to be influenced, etc . . . ?

In practice the other day, our guitarist said something that I've heard a couple of times before from other musicians. The gist of it is that he doesn't like to listen to too much music, because he doesn't want to be 'influenced' by it.

Maybe this is why he's not that good.

I just don't get this. Perhaps some people feel that because of their own inherent genius, they don't need any inspiration. It's no wonder that every musician I've heard who has said this kind of thing is not that good a songwriter.

IMO, people who use the 'Don't want to be influenced' line are more interested in themselves than they are in music. It's a kind of narcissism.

And remember, as TS Elliot said: 'Great artists don't imitate; they steal.' How am I going to learn how to steal unless I listen to other musicians?

[Sideshow Aj]

Originally Posted by jhan

Maybe this is why he's not that good.

Harsh.

[kreider204]

Ya, that's crazy. Anyone who teaches in the arts, whether it's music, painting, theater, whatever, will tell you that creativity and originality do NOT mean creating in a vacuum. That's why, e.g., painters spend so much time on studies (like copying stroke for stroke the Mona Lisa) as they are developing - they learn from great artists, assimilate ideas from them, and eventually synthesis and expand on them finally to create their own style.

[kreider204]

Also: a musician who doesn't like to listen to music?!?! Crazy ...

[ggunn]

Originally Posted by jhan

In practice the other day, our guitarist said something that I've heard a couple of times before from other musicians. The gist of it is that he doesn't like to listen to too much music, because he doesn't want to be 'influenced' by it.

Maybe this is why he's not that good.

The corollary to that is the point that I have heard some musicians espouse, that they don't want to learn any music theory because it will somehow poison their creativity. Silly ideas, both of them.

The more we learn about music, the better musicians we are.

It's CRAZY man!! Can't tell you how many musicians I've met who don't really listen to much music. IMO, these are the people who are more interested in themselves than they are in music. A lot times, these are the 'basement genius' types who think they're going to create the next masterpiece all by themselves in their basement with Garage Band. Usually, their music sucks.

I feel like asking these people: 'Do you actually listen to music?'

In an interview at his house, Mike Portnoy was showing the interviewer his music collection. When asked about it, he said something along the lines of, "I'm a fan first, and a musician second.' That's always how I've felt. I'm a music FAN first, and a musician second. Love of MUSIC comes first for me. A day doesn't go by where I'm not listening to something, even when I'm deep in the process of creating my own music. I couldn't exist any other way.

Originally Posted by kreider204

Also: a musician who doesn't like to listen to music?!?! Crazy ...

Couldn't agree more.

There are FEW people with enough natural talent to get by solely on instinct without knowing any theory.

Originally Posted by ggunn

The corollary to that is the point that I have heard some musicians espouse, that they don't want to learn any music theory because it will somehow poison their creativity. Silly ideas, both of them.

The more we learn about music, the better musicians we are.

[Modulator]

If you don't want to sound like your influences, you need to listen to MORE music in varying styles and assimilate as much as you possibly can, so your style becomes an amalgamation of a myriad of players.

If you aren't listening to anyone else, you're probably just taking longer to discover things that other musicians have already discovered and refined.

[T40Chump]

Being influenced is the absolute best way to develop a unique style. Your friend is mistaking influence for copying a style.

The number of influences a person has will ultimately affect his outcome as a musician from a stylistic point of view IMO.

Let's take an example; musician's #1 and #2 are huge fans of the Beatles and both were inspired to pick up bass because of Paul McCartney. Initially, both developed into Paul clones because sounding like Paul was all they wanted.

As they matured, #1 got into Entwistle and #2 began to dig Timothy B. Schmidt. This created a diversion of styles between the two. As time moved on they began to get their own ideas, discover new artists (who further influenced them) and eventually became two distinct and different bassists; each with their own distinct style. It all started with Paul, but it didn't end there.

Ultimately, having influences is the best thing that can happen to a developing musician. I can claim the most common ones as bassists who have shaped my idenity. I started in metal with Steve Harris, but then Entwistle, Jamerson, and McCartney worked their way into my style along with bits and pieces I've pulled out of my @$$ over the years.

Sorry for the long post, but I had to say my bit.

All my opinion of course....

B

[Deluge Of Sound]

Originally Posted by T40Chump

Being influenced is the absolute best way to develop a unique style. Your friend is mistaking influence for copying a style.

The number of influences a person has will ultimately affect his outcome as a musician from a stylistic point of view IMO.

Let's take an example; musician's #1 and #2 are huge fans of the Beatles and both were inspired to pick up bass because of Paul McCartney. Initially, both developed into Paul clones because sounding like Paul was all they wanted.

As they matured, #1 got into Entwistle and #2 began to dig Timothy B. Schmidt. This created a diversion of styles between the two. As time moved on they began to get their own ideas, discover new artists (who further influenced them) and eventually became two distinct and different bassists; each with their own distinct style. It all started with Paul, but it didn't end there.

Ultimately, having influences is the best thing that can happen to a developing musician. I can claim the most common ones as bassists who have shaped my idenity. I started in metal with Steve Harris, but then Entwistle, Jamerson, and McCartney worked their way into my style along with bits and pieces I've pulled out of my @$$ over the years.

Sorry for the long post, but I had to say my bit.

All my opinion of course....

B

Words of wisdom right here.

[Greevus]

Good luck NOT being "influenced" by other music. If you actually hear it, then it's gonna be absorbed into your holographic memory bank and it will likely come out in your playing. Hell, every songwriter/player on earth has copped/stolen licks and melodies. It's a real ego thing as a young musician to brag about what your influences are. I remember Yngwie Malmsteen early on talking about Paganini and Bach non-stop and then you hear/see him and it's BLACKMORE/Deep Purple. The metal dudes used to love talking about how they didn't listen to metal, yet they sounded like every other band in their little sub-genre. I still relate to Eddie Van Halen saying that he played along with records and when he couldn't cop it, he emulated it. That's how he developed such an arsenal of licks. I met Billy Sheehan and he said practically the same thing. He would hear any instrument and create his own bass riff version of it. Seems the MOST influenced guys are the best players with the biggest arsenal of licks.

[ggunn]

Originally Posted by Greevus

Good luck NOT being "influenced" by other music. If you actually hear it, then it's gonna be absorbed into your holographic memory bank and it will likely come out in your playing. Hell, every songwriter/player on earth has copped/stolen licks and melodies.

I see you getting all warm and runny
At my guitar and the way my fingers burn
But I hate to disillusion you, honey
It's just licks off of records that I've learned

- Martin Mull

Good points.

Originally Posted by Modulator

If you don't want to sound like your influences, you need to listen to MORE music in varying styles and assimilate as much as you possibly can, so your style becomes an amalgamation of a myriad of players.

If you aren't listening to anyone else, you're probably just taking longer to discover things that other musicians have already discovered and refined.

[St Drogo]

Originally Posted by kreider204

Ya, that's crazy. Anyone who teaches in the arts, whether it's music, painting, theater, whatever, will tell you that creativity and originality do NOT mean creating in a vacuum. That's why, e.g., painters spend so much time on studies (like copying stroke for stroke the Mona Lisa) as they are developing - they learn from great artists, assimilate ideas from them, and eventually synthesis and expand on them finally to create their own style.

This.

Plus, being influenced by something doesn't necessarily mean doing something similar. Art is a continuous game of action and reaction. Take the punk thing, that would not have came to be if it wasn't for the huge symphonic band before it. It was a reaction to those bands and therefore influenced by them, but it was nothig like it. Most every genre in music and art I can think of is begun by people who wanted to do something different than what was being done at the moment. You can't do something different if you don't know what you want to differ from.

[LiquidMidnight]

This is a good thread, and I agree whole-heartily with a lot of what's being said. With the not listening to music and not learning theory pretentiousness, one thing I fail to understand is how creative pursuits are somehow sacred and cannot be prone to the same cognitive development and learning paradigms related to other things in life. These "I don't want to listen to other artists/learn theory because it will stiffle my creativity, man" statements are analogous to a medical student saying, "I don't want to learn physiology because it will hamper my ability to perform surgery," or a judge saying, "I don't want to read up on the case law concerning this issue and see what precendent has been set, because it will stiffle my ability to come to a legal conclusion." If someone is losing creativity just because he or she heard a song on the radio or learned how a mixolydian scale relates to a V7 chord, maybe that person isn't all that creative to begin with.

I know I may be opening up another can of worms with this statement, but in my experience, most of the best people writing and performing original music have spent an ample amount of time cutting their teeth on cover material. Most of the people who picked up an instrument and went straight to original music often don't have the songwriting or musical chops to do anything remotely interesting, because they've never been challeneged to learn other people's material in order to develop their chops. There are some exceptions to that (e.g., U2), but in my experience those people are exceptions.

[megadan]

He's basically arrived at the opposite conclusion that he should have.

I could make a pretty long post about why you need to listen to a wide variety of music in order to be a good musician, but it can basically be summed up by this quote:

You can be a reader without being a writer, but you can't be a writer without being a reader.

[smeet]

If they really want to be original and uninfluenced, why are they playing 6-string guitars tuned to equally tempered 12 tones per octave? And what about major and minor chords?

Did they come up with all that on their own? I didn't think so. Imitators.

[blendermassacre]

I think I can see where he's coming from, to a point. Listening to one band / type of music while writing can assimilate your music more than it can add to it, sometimes. Not listening to any music so you can be "original" doesn't make sense.

[Scottgun]

I've heard it several times in resistance to formal training or learning theory. Every time I heard it the guy stunk. This isn't far from what Robert Fripp said: that anytime he heard a musician talking about expressing himself, he knew it was going to suck.

[KrisH]

Back in the 70s when Jethro Tull's "Bungle in the Jungle" was hot, I read an interview with Ian Anderson, who said pretty much the same thing -- when he decided to write an album, he would stop listening to other music altogether until it was done because he didn't want anything he was listening to to creep into his compositions. I think it's obvious he spent lots of time otherwise listening to all sorts of music, though.