The Trent Reznor approach to making music...

[aarono]

Living in a small town for the summer I'm having some difficulty finding musicians or anyone with an instrument for that matter to just play with. I'd like to find a group of 3-5 people I enjoy playing with as well get along with. In my experiences so far I'm running into tons of people that expect of you but never give back.

They want you to play the music they like, listen to the songs they want, and play the style they want but when you ask to perhaps try some genres you like it's a brick wall. The close-mindedness that I'm encountering with others is a bit disturbing. The courtesy to listen to a couple of hours of the music they like to see their tastes and then to have them say they hate the music you listen to is kind of gross to say the least.

I was reading Trent Reznor's wikipedia a while back and recall that he started making his own music on all instruments as he felt it gave him the most creative control over what he wanted to play. I was curious how prevalent this is in the music community.

Obviously this is a less common path as it requires a larger musical knowledge/skill to be able to communicate clearly your ideas on several different instruments. There's also the Steely Dan school where you have a core group of 2-3 guys who generate all the material and record it themselves or use session musicians (in the case of AJA for instance).

[Hollywars]

A lot of stuff are one person projects. Periphery was originally a one man project, as was Chimp Spanner. Look them up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72RP8...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvAmUmZMsSs

Just a clip of him playing it along to a cd. He's a funny guy, you should talk to him about how to do your own projects and stuff.

www.myspace.com/periphery

[superbassman2000]

same with squarepusher IIRC

I have always been a fan of writing the music first, then forming the band around it where original bands are concerned

[pnut166]

Dave Grohl took this approach in the early stages of the Foo Fighters - he recorded all instruments himself, I believe, on the debut album, before there was even a band, but their lineup eventually stabilized. Al Jourgensen (Ministry) sort of takes the "Steely Dan" approach, and gets together with one or two other musicians on a project; as such, he often has 5,6,7 "bands" going. You could count Dave Mustaine in this class as well; he IS Megadeth, really. Mostly just hires session / touring players with each album / tour over the last several years. Static X IS Wayne Static + one (currently) other person. A Very common approach in Country music - write the album, then hire the musicians to play it. Lots of other examples out there .

[Late Boomer]

Originally Posted by aarono

Obviously this is a less common path as it requires a larger musical knowledge/skill to be able to communicate clearly your ideas on several different instruments.

What do you want to do, musically? It seems to me like the mother of invention is handing you a golden opportunity to expand your own musical horizons. It's possible to set up a functional home recording studio pretty cheaply. You can experiment with instruments on the cheap, too: used guitars, keyboards, and percussion (or drum machines) aren't too terribly costly. The worst that would happen, if you go this route, is that you'll end up expanding your own musical vocabulary and skills. The best? You might find out you don't need a bunch of other local musicians. Beck, the Alan Parsons Project, Steely Dan, and a bunch of other acclaimed musicians have gone this route.

[J-Building]

Check out The Ready Aim Fire!. They're (He's) a local band that is the brainchild of one man, Dave Trautz. He writes all the drum, bass, keys, vox, and guitar parts and for the most part, records them all too (though he did collaborate with his boss to record his debut album).

myspace.com/thereadyaimfire

[tycobb73]

McCartney did this with Maybe I'm Amazed.

[honestjohnny]

Smashing Pumpkins has been basically Billy and Jimmy from the beginning. He just found some musicians with personality to play live in order to create the "band" image.

[baalroo]

I honestly can't imagine just being a "bass player," it's just not for me. I LIKE playing bass, but I also LIKE playing guitar, and drums, and mandolin, and banjo, and keys, and harmonica, and trumpet, and noise loops, and samplers, etc, etc, etc. IMO a bass guitar is just a slab of wood that has fairly large diameter metal strings stretched across it... there's no real particular reason to focus all of my attention on that single noise making apparatus.

I feel that generally speaking, the basic knowledge and ability one can gain from playing an instrument is fairly universal. I can't tell you how many times I've picked up an instrument for the first time after watching someone else play it for a bit and start messing around with it when someone says something along the lines of "I didn't know you were a <insert random instrument> player!" I can generally pick up an instrument and get the "gist" of it pretty quickly, because I've spent the last 15 to 20 years focusing on playing MUSIC rather than playing any particular musical apparatus.

HOWEVER, the old saying "jack of all trades, master of NONE" truly does apply, and you HAVE to be comfortable with that. I've never been interested in the Wootens and Malmsteens of the world, but if you ARE then realize that diversifying will slow your advancement of mastery on a particular instrument. You can hand me any instrument you can think of and tell me to sit in with a band, and I'm fairly confident I can find a way to make it work and make it musical... but even on a bass (which I've had more time with than any other instrument) I'm never going to really blow anyone's mind with my abilities.

SO, if when you listen to a song you are most drawn into how the music "meshes" and the choices that are being made on a compositional level then multi-instrumentalism might be for you, but if you generally key in on the nuances of how particular musicians in the group are playing their instruments... and aren't all that interested in the rest, then maybe stick with mastering one instrument. Of course, everyone (generally) does both, but I think we also often have tendencies one direction or the other... and the stronger that tendency the more obvious a path you should follow.

[aarono]

I had a jam session with a guy the other day who I thought would be a great jam partner/writing partner.

Well, I jammed with the same guy today. Didn't go too well.

Went over there for a BBQ that he tells me about last minute and pouts when I don't show up right away. I give him some cash to cover the cost of food and offer him a bottle of wine which he says he doesn't like. Ok, perhaps music will turn things around.

We get into the garage and there's about 3-4 people just hanging around. He picks up his guitar and just plays random riffs for about 20 minutes (he's just loving the attention from everyone in the garage). I ask if he wants to work on the song we started but he can't remember how it goes. I play the bass line for him to help recall it but he can't draw it from memory.

He then tells me to start playing a Rage Against the Machine song. I tell him I don't know how it goes so he looks at me like I'm from Mars and then begins to tell me how to play it like a tab. "You put your index finger on fret one of this string here."

He takes my bass and starts to play it looking at me like I'm a pile of **** for not being able to play it perfectly on my first try. I ask him if he'd like to try a song that I've been listening to a lot lately.

I play him "Lady Writer" through songsterr and he tells me it's gay and that he won't touch it. I ask why and he replies, "I don't play leads". I said why not just give it a shot and again he goes on some rant how he doesn't play leads and will not learn how to because he is a rhythm guitarist.

I just looked at him and told him I had to go. Guitards lol.