Advice for musicians by musicians! (part 3)

There is a Spanish proverb that goes something to the tune of "diamonds have a price, but good advice does not.” Consider thus, the following invaluable guidance of these music greats.

Jimmy Page (guitarist of Led Zeppelin)

Push your limits
“We should always try to push the boundaries with our instrument. Who knows what we’ll discover? You’ll find out the moment you discover it! That's what's great. The guitar is a magic instrument. Some have developed incredible techniques that go beyond the original framework of guitar use, such as Stanley Jordan, whose style is totally avant-garde. He has developed techniques, like the hammer that uses a double-tapping and things like that, with a very sensitive touch, like Jeff Beck.”

John Frusciante (ex-guitarist of Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Work on the sound textures
"It doesn’t really matter what I play, even if it's a super-fast piece with show-off playing or a melodic solo played on chords, I do it to draw out the sound of the guitar. If something needs to be expressive, it's the sound and textures that you create. This was the mistake I made when I was a teenager: I followed the example of known guitarists. This is ridiculous because this approach doesn’t match with the field of music but theater. We’ve got to try to understand the chords, have more freedom in their sequences and not feel obliged to chain a minor chord with a major chord, change the tuning of the guitar, see if we can integrate seventh or ninth chords... I started using richer chords harmonically where you can hear seven notes as you play six, creating harmonies that cause new notes to appear."

Tom Morello (guitarist of Prophets of Rage and ex-Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave)

Out with the old, in with the new is not necessarily a good thing
"My equipment is a bit low-end. I have not changed equipment for many years. Because my philosophy is that the more we limit ourselves, the more it forces us to develop our creativity, rather than buying the brand new, trendy effect. I‘ll have exhausted the potential of my material only when I‘ll have exhausted my own imagination. This is the case with my Whammy: for someone like me who does not know a lot about technology - I'm not that interested in reading the how-to instructions - a pedal like that is a dream. Especially when I started using it with Rage Against the Machine, it allowed me to include my hip-hop influences. I was able to recreate scratch sounds very easily. Everything was happening between my fingers, the pedal and my imagination."

Steve (keyboardist of Shaka Ponk)

Don't listen to the critics
"Popular obedience has always railed tortured souls, no? One time, we came across a post on the web, which basically said something like: 'Let them go to hell, let them be cursed' ... When you have this kind of comment on social networks, in my opinion, you’ve entered the big leagues ...I don’t think it will be long before we get a meal with Ozzy Osbourne!"

Billy Corgan (singer and guitarist of The Smashing Pumpkins)

Make your own language
"If you do not invent new guitar tracks, you’re always playing the same things in a loop, you never evolve. Tony Iommi, Jimi Hendrix, invented new guitar languages ​​and everyone stole them. So I'm inventing a new language. Now, when I replay riffs and solos, I play differently with my new language. I had to reinvent myself, because the one I created in The Smashing Pumpkins was completely stolen."

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Published on: 10 lutego 2019