Getting an original style

TEN PEOPLE ON TEN ISLANDS

Let me start by giving you a little analogy that really sums up the crux of the thing. Imagine there were ten desert islands. On each one you put a guitarist (or any musician). All each one had, was their instrument and ten Eric Clapton Lps (presuming they liked Eric Clapton). In five years you send out a boats and pick them all up. If you now listened to each one of them play, you'd very likely find that they all sounded rather a lot like Eric Clapton.

If on the other hand, you could do it differently. You could give each of the musicians on the islands ten different Lps. For example; a 60's jazz Lp, a Pop LP, a Techno LP, an LP of Indian ragas, a classical LP, a modern classical LP a 90's jazz LP, a heavy rock LP, a country and western LP, and an LP of Cuban music. Now when you pick them up in five years and you have a very different situation. Even though they had the same 10 LPs, I would bet they would all play very differently from each other.

THE POINT

So the point is; broaden your listening habits. Go to a library or a record shop and start building up a large library of all kinds of music. Jazz (from 1940 to 1995) classical (from Bach to Steve Riech) world music (from Indian ragas to Burmese court music) American country music, Brazilian music, Techno music, Punk anything and everything, but concentrate on the areas you don't know much about.

All the original and innovative musicians of the past and present do this. The advantage of using a library, if you live near a good one, is that you don't have to pay out a lot to get a big music library. Also you can feel free to take risks, if you tape something and don't like it, you can always tape over it. WARNING: Don't be too hasty in taping over things you don't like. I can't count the number of times I've taped something and thought, "Oh god, I can't listen to this stuff", only to find out a year later that not only does it sound very different (after a lot of other expanded listening), but has become one of my favourite tapes.

GROWING UP WITH ROCK AND ROLL

If you live in the west, because we have all grown up listening to rock and pop, these influences go very deep. Many people are frightened to listen to too much unusual stuff, because they are afraid they'l end up sounding weird and in-accessible. This is not what happens. Try this experiment, go to the library and get out a whole load of Indian music. Listen to it, a lot of it, but in amongst the things you usually listen to, for the next two years. Then try playing an Indian raga, or even anything that sounds a bit like one. It won't be possible (unless you've been taking lessons from a good sitar player or something). You'll be lucky if there's even the slightest occasional hint of it in your playing.

Westerners are so grounded in pop and rock, that there is no danger of suddenly taking on too strong of an influence. You need to listen to a lot of interesting stuff for quite a while, before even a little bit of it rubs off on you.

If you come from somewhere other than the west, why not make the most out of the influences you grew up with, mix that with rock, pop or techno and you'll have something interesting.

There are of course many examples of musicians who have done just this, and they are usually innovators.

As an example of this, look at the start of the British rock scene. In the early 60's British musicians started to listen to black American blues records. The records came over with American sailors originally, and before long the British musicians were heavily into American blues.

Now think about this if you will. This is all before my time and probably yours, but imagine such a thing happening in Britain again now. The blues at that time was a type of ethnic folk music, and that's what it was to the British musicians at the time. The blues they listened to and then copied, had nothing to do with them or their lives, but they reinterpreted it. They tried to copy it, but in the end they came up with something quite new. British rock was born. The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Led Zeplin, the Beatles, they all listened to, and tried to copy those black American blues players and singers. And look what happened.

MIXING MUSIC

Music has come on a long way from that. Bands like the Beatles added bits of classical, Indian music, tradition pub songs, and folk tunes and came up with things like Sergeant Pepper. Jimi Hendrix is a perfect example of someone who mixed blues with oriental, Indian, pop, and even (unless I'm very much mistaken) Native American Indian music (he was half Native American).

The great jazz players have always done this. Take for example John Coltrane, who studied African and Indian music extensively. Or Miles Davis who was very influenced by composers like Stokhausen and Ravel as well as by what sounds like Egyptian/African influences. A modern example is Jan Garbarek the Norwegian Saxophonist considered by many to be of our generation's Coltrane or Parker. He mixes jazz with Indian, Middle Eastern, Spanish, and Norwegian folk songs to produce one of the most original and influential sounds on the sax today.

WARNING: Through away you're initial associations. I remember the first time I really sat down and listen to some Bach, I imagined some film where people in frilly period dress were dancing in a ball room. Or when I first started listening to Indian music, I imagined hippies burning incense etc... Then I realised, in Bach's day this music was intense, it was the socially relevant music of the highest order. Indian people don't think of hippies when they listen to their music, why should I? We have been so bombarded with TV and film imagery to the sounds of various types of music, that we tend to have quite strong, but quite erroneous associations with a lot of music.

Remember, discard your initial associations, look through that to what the music REALLY sounds like. Its hard work at first, because it sounds unfamiliar, but it pays off richly if you stick with it.

LOOKING BACK

The influence of the blues, an ethnic folk music, lasted a long time in rock and pop music. It spawned many great songs and styles, and was mixed with British folk, classical, jazz, funk etc... However potent an influence it was though, after 30 years, its getting a bit past it. I'm not saying there's anything at all wrong with playing blues in 1995, I'm saying that it is unlikely to inspire anyone to come up with anything new. Its been a long time since there has been a potent new folk input into popular music. In my opinion its well past the time when we had one.

LOOK FORWARD

The techno and ambient music scenes are beginning to do it. Often mixing in bits and pieces from all over the world. This is great, and I think its quite possible that this is the start of a new beginning.

As a musician, guitarist or otherwise, if you want to create your own original style and sound, you know what to do. Go out and do it, there is no other way. Besides once you get into it, its incredibly fun. It takes a while to get used to the sounds of music you're not familiar with, but once you do, it snowballs. Before you know it, you are discovering whole new worlds of fabulous, amazing music, you'll find countless things that are as rewarding as anything you've ever heard.

Mark Wingfield