Re: live or memorex

["Jimmy Fowler" <jimfowler@prodigy.net>]

> But do musicians really create from silence or
> just make something new from all the music
> they've heard in their life, stored in the back
> of their mind somewhere?  I tend to go for the
> latter.  Nobody creates out of nothing, everybody
> takes in some form of raw materials and organizes
> them in a way they find to be ideal.  Whether
> it's notes and licks or samples and loops.

certainly nobody is at a point of total and absolute freedom, but dj spooky
(now just a totem) is getting a headstart on the game.  what he uses is
already organized to some degree...i mean, if he's cutting it up so much so
that he's left with a single piano note or a single drum hit, then why not
just play the piano and drum kit and sample your own playing?

what dj spooky uses is already organized and placed on/within a piece of
media (cd, lp, 8-track, etc.).

i think every musician, particularly guitarists, have "licks" that they 
fall
back on.  the idea is to catch yourself when you're using stock ideas and
say "you know, this is just an automatic lick that my fingers like to play.
for that reason, i shall now discard it and try to come up with some
arrangment of notes that i, personally, have never knowingly encountered."

i think charlie parker told a story once: he had a fellow musician stand
beside him as he practiced.  parker's instructions were for his friend to
hit him everytime they heard him recylce an idea.  if he played a "lick", 
he
got whacked.  this is the idea, so far as i'm concerned.  don't allow
yourself to get away with anything less than 100% of your creativity.
anything less is simply a cop-out...a sort of getting-by in the music.

but no, to get back, no musician creates anything from total scratch.  that
having been said, where does your influence start and where does it stop?
when you play a riff, how can you know for sure that it wasn't influenced 
or
strikes your fancy because you heard something similar while walking down
the street...maybe some cars were honking and the pitches just sounded 
right
and your mind stored them but you didn't really pay that much attention.
sorry, tangent...

my point: sampling other folks music is just a little more effortless and
therefore a little less legitimate (maybe legitimate isn't the right word).
you didn't have to try quite as hard because you found a riff that you 
liked
on a record somewhere, created by somebody else, already employed in
somebody else's jam.

i get the sneaking suspicion that i'm a one-man minority on this subject.

-jim