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

[tZer]

In my former originals band, Chris Plays Guitar, I was free to invent my own bass lines for the songs and express my creativity. one night, while playing one song, I realized "oh crap, that was a Geddy styled lick". A few seconds later, "oh, there's a Mike Rutherford one".

I currently play in an improv-based band where we pretty much make it up as we go. It occurred to me that I was consistently copping lines from everywhere - classical quotes, The Thompson Twins, Rush, Yes, Black Sabbath, Michael Jackson... you name it - as we evolved through jams I couldn't help but hear the opportunity to quote these GREAT lines.

Now that was amidst bar after bar, section after section of 'original' grooves and lines I was creating on the spot, but being able to puzzle-piece in the line from "Lies" or "Sledgehammer" or "Roundabout" - was nothing short of thrilling!

As a part of my 'schtick', I'll walk up to my mic and thank the bass player for whose line I was currently copping as I was copping it.

*Killer groove rolling* - "I'd like to thank Mr. Chuck Rainey for this really great line! Here's to you Mr. Rainey" *proceeds to deliver the line from Aretha Franklin's "Rock Steady" and the groove goes to a new level.

Another great thing about allowing your influences to show is that in the midst of a really great jam when I begin quoting a line, someone else will pick up on it and answer that quote - now more than one of us are using lines from the same song, yet in an entirely new context. Sometimes we'll fully embrace the moment and the entire band will go ahead and cover some of the current song being quoted - but again, it's always done in a fresh context or style that is unique to our group.

 

[Daveomd]

Can you imagine practicing karate and refusing to study with a teacher or being a surgeon and deciding you want to do it your own way because you don't want to be influenced by other doctors? There are only so many chord progressions that sound good, that's why you hear them so often. But there are a million ways to arrange them and fit different melodies over them. The more influences you have the less you will sound like you're stealing from one.

 

[Corey Y]

I understand and sympathize with your point tZer. My introduction to performing music was academic, playing trumpet and marimba in the school bands (symphonic, jazz, marching, drum corps). Now I strictly play in popular styles and most (though not all) of my knowledge in those instruments are self taught, but I still retain an organized, music theory based mindset when it comes to performing and writing. Also, my parents had a wide variety of records in the house while I was growing up, so I was never one of those people that could restrict themselves with laser beam focus to one genre or sub genre. I'm a voracious consumer of sound, I play music because I love listening to music. I never worried that I was copying any of my "influences" while playing jazz trumpet because the things I admired about them weren't a "riff" but more a technique or a tone. I suppose that's what I find odd about people worried about being passively/subconsciously influenced by other music. So many guitarists and bassists I know are obsessed with replicating tones from famous musicians they idolize ("what fuzz pedal does _____ use on the solo for _____ ?") , but seem paranoid that any good riff they come up with must be "from something". I don't know how often anyone else has had that conversation in a band, but it seems like a fairly common one for people in band my age (31) and younger. Someone plays a chord progression or riff of some sort, someone else comments "hey, that's good, what is that?" or "that's really good, it must be from something, right?". Then everyone proceeds to shuffle through their mental encyclopedia of songs and venture a guess and it ends up somewhere around "well it's sort of similar to _____, but in another key, the rhythm is a little different and there's a different note in there too". That's just a lone riff, devoid of full arrangement and instrumentation in a song.

I'm with you on coming up in music with the mindset that you take the sound of the artists you love and then make it your own. Everyone has a method and a mindset and you're not going to talk them out of it, and I wouldn't want to. I just can't imagine a musician that doesn't want to listen to music. That's like a writer who doesn't want to read. Every great writer I ever heard/read giving advice on how to become a writer said something along the lines of "Go read the greats". You don't do that in order to steal their words, you absorb what it is they do that makes those works great and learn from their use of style, the approach.

 

[Sonicfrog]

Funny thing is, that when I'm playing in a covers band, I will not veto a song simply because "I" don't like it. I will voice my displeasure, but will play it anyway.

Why?

Because I recognize that buried in this song that I don't like, there may be a bass line, fill, or chord progression that I may not have ever thought of if I relied on my "creativity" alone... assuming of course that I have any creative spark in the first place!!!

 

[tZer]

@ Corey Y

That's my experience to a T. One of the things I really enjoy doing with one of my favorite collaborators (a non-trained, but very good writer and player) is to take his compositions and apply different 'artist filters' to them.

For example - he writes a signature "him" tune. I jam it with him for a bit and we get the form and style nailed down, generally speaking. Before the song is called 'final' I like to say, "Let try it as if David Bowie, ala Ziggy Stardust.." were playing it - or "Let's apply a Beatles filter ala Revolver..." As a means to explore the myriad of possibilities the progressions and words he wrote could evolve through.

Using other artists and bands as 'color palettes' is a convenient way to define a LOT of variables in one easy statement. Instrumentation, vocal treatment, backups, percussion, orchestral parts, and so on. If I say, "Pink Floyd ala 'Us and Them'" most people get the parameters - languid, clear, clean, drifting, gentle guitar - minimalist drums and bass emulating a narcotic, dreamlike sensation...

At first he was VERY hesitant. As if to say that his song couldn't possibly be done any other way that the one way we just played it.

Then he tried it and his eyes were opened and have remained open since. Once he heard how leveraging other artists influences as a means to flesh out his worked, the idea that 'how I just played it is IT' all but went away. No writer submits their first draft to their publisher. Some musicians think that because they completed a set of changes and lyrics, that they're done - which can be true for singer-songwriter type stuff... One acoustic guitar, the same guy singing it - sure... But for a full band production, that's just step one of the process.

Also - many musicians don't think beyond the scope of their own instrument. Their a 'guitar player' and all they think about is their guitar part. They don't envision the bass line, the drum treatment, backups, etc... If they only think in terms of their instrument, the composition languishes and depends on others to compose the rest. If, however, you think in terms of the whole song, "your instrument" is only one very small part of what really matters.

This, I find to be one of the most limiting factors for a lot of self-trained bass and guitar players. They think almost exclusively about the bass and guitar part and not in terms of the song as a whole. This tends to lead to parts that are very overdone and ego-centric.

Detaching the ego from the music creation process is key - and musicians who claim to not want to be influenced are drinking way too much of their own Kool-Aid.

 

[FromTheBassMent]

The fallacy underlying the statement quoted in the OP is that a musician might somehow, by isolating himself from other music, be in a better position to create something unique. The problem is, within the Western music tradition in which we create, "something unique" is virtually impossible.

We've got twelve tones to work with. Between Scriabin, Bartok, Stravinsky, Ruggles and Schoenberg, the possible combinations of those twelve tones have been exhausted... and even if you did go down the atonal path and came up with something "new," the chances that anyone would want to listen to it are slim indeed.

In our genres (pop, rock, country, even jazz to a great extent) there are harmonic and structural formulas that are followed in successful songwriting, and the reason these formulas exist is because when they are followed the resultant music is pleasing to our ears (as they have been conditioned by our culture).

(This cultural conditioning also explains a lot about why traditional Thai music, just to take one example, is virtually unlistenable for Western audiences... but that's another thread I suppose).

So no matter how "unique" someone tries to be when they're writing a song in these genres, there's a 100% chance that whatever they're coming up with has been done before. Better, it seems to me, to listen to a lot of different music and learn to discern what's great from what's crap, and then take your inspiration from what's great.

 

[Corey Y]

@ Corey Y

One of the things I really enjoy doing with one of my favorite collaborators (a non-trained, but very good writer and player) is to take his compositions and apply different 'artist filters' to them.

I've been doing the same thing with a friend of mine, doing so tonight actually. He's been a singer in bands for years and just picked up guitar. So he's been writing riffs and rough drafts of songs and I've been helping him arrange them into songs based on the genre/influence he wants. I used to do the same thing in my old band as well, take our songs and rearrange them into into different genres for fun or take cover tunes and rework them into the genre the band played. I really enjoy that type of thing, it appeals to the way my mind works and my personal philosophy/approach to music and creativity I suppose. I'm always into the aspects of music that are part engineering, so to speak. Taking things apart, figuring out how they work, and putting them back together a bit differently, with a few bolts and cogs left over