Bobbyisms: Hearing the layers
I write about random things a lot. I write a lot about random things. I also spend at least a half hour almost every day of the week at home playing guitar; I can improvise and experiment with it, having quickly taught myself a lot of the basics when I started 13 years ago.
Though it doesn't ever cease to impress people if you can play guitar, I always thought it odd that people aren't truly aware of how much skill and practice it requires. In fact, unless you play guitar, you may not realize how easy or difficult a particular song or phrase truly is — songwriters take special pleasure in writing deceptively difficult-sounding guitar riffs that are anything but, and the reverse.
A natural talent will only get you so far — playing a musical instrument, like any craft, is highly dependent upon discipline, exploration, and interest. But see, a crazy thing happens when you learn to play a musical instrument, something that anyone can attest to: you hear music in a completely new way.
There's something of an insight gained in the process of playing and combining the notes, whether on guitar or another instrument, and then it's as if suddenly any song you listen to deconstructs itself, its various pieces and layers separating and lining up for you to examine them, judge them. It's like the world's shittiest superpower... unless Mozart were to return from the grave to try to take over the world.
I've lost count of how many times in my life I've said to someone, “Dude, listen to this guitar bit,” or maybe, “The drumming in this bar is amazing,” only to have people not be able to hear the piece I was talking about. When you learn a musical instrument, you gain the gift of hearing any instrument or component of a song, almost as a default (actually, I know musicians who've stopped liking their old favourite albums once they were able to do this, because they couldn't respect the individual layers' worth of music once they laid themselves out - true story).
So put at its simplest, there's a big difference between listening to music as a musician vs. listening as a fan - listening comparatively vs. listening appreciatively — and if it's something that you haven't experienced, I propose an experiment.
The Junior Varsity are one of my favourite bands in the last 10 years, and I was saddened when they broke up in 2007 in the months following their last album, Cinematographic. One of the reasons I hold them so dear is that their use and layering of all of their instruments is at a level of sheer mastery, it's hard to describe; however it's something that you might overlook were you not listening for it.
So the experiment is this: check out their profile on Purevolume.com (at www.purevolume.com/thejuniorvarsity) to hear a sampling of tracks off of their three records. In particular, I recommend the tracks The Sky!, Get Comfortable, and Everyone's Got Something. This band features two guitarists, a singer/bass player, a drummer, and a keyboardist for texture, and if you listen closely you can pick out each individual layer. It's almost indescribable how weird and cool it is when it happens the first time, and I think you might be surprised.
Like what you hear? I highly recommend Wide Eyed, The Junior Varsity's second album. It travels along interesting musical landscapes and eclectic time signatures in a very listener-friendly way, unified throughout by a stylistic consistency. For now though, I'm out of words.
Though it doesn't ever cease to impress people if you can play guitar, I always thought it odd that people aren't truly aware of how much skill and practice it requires. In fact, unless you play guitar, you may not realize how easy or difficult a particular song or phrase truly is — songwriters take special pleasure in writing deceptively difficult-sounding guitar riffs that are anything but, and the reverse.
A natural talent will only get you so far — playing a musical instrument, like any craft, is highly dependent upon discipline, exploration, and interest. But see, a crazy thing happens when you learn to play a musical instrument, something that anyone can attest to: you hear music in a completely new way.
There's something of an insight gained in the process of playing and combining the notes, whether on guitar or another instrument, and then it's as if suddenly any song you listen to deconstructs itself, its various pieces and layers separating and lining up for you to examine them, judge them. It's like the world's shittiest superpower... unless Mozart were to return from the grave to try to take over the world.
I've lost count of how many times in my life I've said to someone, “Dude, listen to this guitar bit,” or maybe, “The drumming in this bar is amazing,” only to have people not be able to hear the piece I was talking about. When you learn a musical instrument, you gain the gift of hearing any instrument or component of a song, almost as a default (actually, I know musicians who've stopped liking their old favourite albums once they were able to do this, because they couldn't respect the individual layers' worth of music once they laid themselves out - true story).
So put at its simplest, there's a big difference between listening to music as a musician vs. listening as a fan - listening comparatively vs. listening appreciatively — and if it's something that you haven't experienced, I propose an experiment.
The Junior Varsity are one of my favourite bands in the last 10 years, and I was saddened when they broke up in 2007 in the months following their last album, Cinematographic. One of the reasons I hold them so dear is that their use and layering of all of their instruments is at a level of sheer mastery, it's hard to describe; however it's something that you might overlook were you not listening for it.
So the experiment is this: check out their profile on Purevolume.com (at www.purevolume.com/thejuniorvarsity) to hear a sampling of tracks off of their three records. In particular, I recommend the tracks The Sky!, Get Comfortable, and Everyone's Got Something. This band features two guitarists, a singer/bass player, a drummer, and a keyboardist for texture, and if you listen closely you can pick out each individual layer. It's almost indescribable how weird and cool it is when it happens the first time, and I think you might be surprised.
Like what you hear? I highly recommend Wide Eyed, The Junior Varsity's second album. It travels along interesting musical landscapes and eclectic time signatures in a very listener-friendly way, unified throughout by a stylistic consistency. For now though, I'm out of words.
