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Looper's Delight
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> Try out a new musical style... Pretty much, if I get stuck, I end up >taking a good listen to something from Womad or other ethnic label, and >off I >go... Just a matter of broadening your perspective. Hey, even read a new >authour, know this helps for a few friends of mine who gig it out. > > L8r, > > Lee-ohki. Great advice, Lee! I'd like to amplify this a little and give some suggestions. Try imitating a musical style from another culture (unusual scales, interval tunings, rhythms, etc.) Imitate an instrument from another culture, e.g. make your guitar sound like a shakuhachi (or make your shakuhachi sound like a bagpipes). Make up your own "musical culture" and set your own rules, resulting in an "imagined" ethnic music. Invert the accustomed role of your instrument. I.e., instead of playing melody on guitar use it solely as a "drum", turn the "rhythm" section into the main melodic focus, etc. Limit yourself to a span of three or four notes and see how much new material you can get from these notes by permutations, varying tone color, leaping across octaves, etc. Use found objects and other unlikely "musical" sources -- vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, etc. run through effects and used as drones. Imitate the rhythms of speech -- instead of a fluid melodic line try to incorporate all the little pauses, "um-s," "er-s," "y'know-s" as well as the stammerings, repeated words, etc. that we all use when talking, but we let our brains filter this all out so as to get the gist of what's being communicated. The best musical example I can think of this is Lou Reed's guitar soli on "All Tomorrow's Parties" from the first Velvet Underground album. Focus on tone color and texture as the main elements in a piece, instead of lyrics, melody, rhythm, etc. [This is probably a common practice for everyone already] Totally ignore any one element of a "song" -- for instance, write a "formula song" (verse - chorus - verse - bridge, etc.) but don't use any chords. Polytonality - have different instruments play in unrelated (or only marginally related) keys. "Cross rhythms" or "polyrhythms" - have each instrument play in a different time signature. Force "microtonality" from instruments that don't have this capability. For example, using recording pitch controls, record a keyboard instrument slightly slower or faster than the other instruments for a "wobbly" effect. Or add temporary microtonal frets to your fingerboard by using toothpicks, etc. BUT BEWARE: I'd begun using these ideas years ago in an "experimental / avant-garde" vein, but somehow wound up formally studying Indian classical music for the last fifteen years, abandoning my piano for sitar and surbahar. Don't say I didn't warn you! Great to see everyone else's truly creative ideas and solutions. James