The difference between songwriting and technical ability
I started playing guitar in the 5th grade after a three year stint of learning the piano which never really managed to inspire me. I took classical guitar lessons for about 4 or 5 years, but alas, was yet to be moved by the art of playing music. I loved to listen to groups like the Beatles, but playing classical never grew on me. By the end, I practiced so little that my teacher thought it would be better if I just stopped taking lessons. What a disappointment! I wasn't too upset at the time. It freed me up to take on more constructive activities like Super Street Fighter on the Super Nintendo. Three years later I started messing around with my Classical Alvarez again, learning how to play Beatles' songs with a tablature book I got years earlier for my birthday. As my teenage years progressed and I started listening to good music again after a period of being in love with cheesy 70's rock bands like Styx and Supertramp, I fell in love with the Smashing Pumpkins. Though they're not in my rotation much these days their music encapsalated the way I felt during that brief, yet emotional time in my life.
So, when I started to play the guitar again after a three year hiatus, I learned to play a little bit of almost every smashing pumpkin song I could. Certain aspects of the music were beyond my technical ability, but I always managed to learn enough to make it recognizable to the listener. In the tablature book for "Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" there were a couple articles written by Billy Corgan for Guitar World magazine. There was a quote that has always stuck in my mind about the difference between songwriting and technical ability.
"Guitar playing, in and of itself, does not mean a whole heck of a lot. But guitar playing with in the context of great music and great songs is a big deal. If you look at the guitarists who are most noted for their playing ability, you will find that their reputations are inextricably tied to the great songs they have written, or at least reinterpreted in their own unique ways."
At the time and today still, all the music I love and the music I write have one thing in common: good songwriting. I listen to hip-hop, electronica, indie rock, whatever. I'm not a genre nazi and hold no allegiance to any kind of music. The ultimate failure of scenes and things that categorize music into a small box is that they emphasize the technical aspects of the music being performed or listened to, not songwriting. Usually only a couple bands from a scene will actually connect to anyone outside of the scene, probably because they were good songwriters. When these bands leave that scene they usually want to grow into something different after which they'll be extricated from the scene or they'll continue to make the same kind of music and become stale.
So, advice to young musicians is to learn how to write and play music. Like in most aspects of life, the middle ground between the two is the best place to be. If you don't learn the technical aspect you'll eventually be stifled by your own ignorance and unable to move forward. If you only know how to play you'll never be able to create something that connects to anyone other than yourself when you're playing it.
So, when I started to play the guitar again after a three year hiatus, I learned to play a little bit of almost every smashing pumpkin song I could. Certain aspects of the music were beyond my technical ability, but I always managed to learn enough to make it recognizable to the listener. In the tablature book for "Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" there were a couple articles written by Billy Corgan for Guitar World magazine. There was a quote that has always stuck in my mind about the difference between songwriting and technical ability.
"Guitar playing, in and of itself, does not mean a whole heck of a lot. But guitar playing with in the context of great music and great songs is a big deal. If you look at the guitarists who are most noted for their playing ability, you will find that their reputations are inextricably tied to the great songs they have written, or at least reinterpreted in their own unique ways."
At the time and today still, all the music I love and the music I write have one thing in common: good songwriting. I listen to hip-hop, electronica, indie rock, whatever. I'm not a genre nazi and hold no allegiance to any kind of music. The ultimate failure of scenes and things that categorize music into a small box is that they emphasize the technical aspects of the music being performed or listened to, not songwriting. Usually only a couple bands from a scene will actually connect to anyone outside of the scene, probably because they were good songwriters. When these bands leave that scene they usually want to grow into something different after which they'll be extricated from the scene or they'll continue to make the same kind of music and become stale.
So, advice to young musicians is to learn how to write and play music. Like in most aspects of life, the middle ground between the two is the best place to be. If you don't learn the technical aspect you'll eventually be stifled by your own ignorance and unable to move forward. If you only know how to play you'll never be able to create something that connects to anyone other than yourself when you're playing it.
1 comment:
I've often found it difficult to explain to people the difference between writers and players. Its also astonishing the number of false assumptions in general that folks have about music. A friend of mine is convinced that part of the problem is how music is discussed. For example, we talk about "playing" an instrument - implying that there is something not-too-serious about it. Your post explains it much better than I have been able to.
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