Chasing Magic…

Hello Troubadourians!

I often write about practicing, finding new ideas, getting out of ruts, and ways to improve your playing. In fact, there was a lot of that in last month’s column. But I’m not as often specific about what that means to me. So, I’ll try to do just that this time. The best way I can describe it is that I’m chasing “magic.” By that I mean playing things that have that magical feel of classic music but that are uniquely mine. This applies to whatever genre of music I happen to be playing, so versatility is very important. Also knowing when I need to stay within the idiosyncrasies of a genre and when I can cross pollinate from a different genre. I think it is appropriate at this point to pause and reiterate my appreciation of the difference between style and genre. While we use the word style interchangeably with genre to describe types of music, I think it is very important to remember that style belongs to an artist while genre refers to the music being played. For instance, I can emulate the style of a particular guitarist while playing music from an entirely different genre than what they may be known for. Knowing that there is a difference and having the ability—the ear or taste—to reimagine the “what if” scenario of a player playing in a different context than where we are accustomed to hearing them is an important part of being a professional grade musician.

This all starts from listening to a lot of very different music. We all have our favorite genres and love the styles of our favorite players, but if we limit ourselves to only listening to and emulating our favorite players and music, we are missing the point and an opportunity for growth. It is a virtual certainty that all our favorite players are able to do much more than what we might know them for doing. A recent documentary called Becoming Led Zeppelin is a perfect example. While we all are familiar with the music of Led Zeppelin, which has been called rock, hard rock, proto-heavy metal, etc., the documentary tells the story that all four members of the band played many different genres of music prior to coming together as a band. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were in fact session musicians for many years and played on sessions ranging from pop tunes to movie themes, in particular the Goldfinger theme from the James Bond franchise. Yet when they had the chance to play what they wanted—to chase their own magic—they rewrote musical history and redefined an entire genre of music.

So, let’s say you’d like to chase your own magic, how do you do it? Where do you start? Well, most of us have probably already been on that path for a while but may not have been aware of it. It is easy to compartmentalize the things we learn, especially when it comes to music. Let’s say that we know five rock songs, five country songs, five blues songs, and five pop songs. Twenty songs across four different genres. But are they really that different? Chances are that every one of those songs is more alike than they seem. I’d bet that the style of the artist whose recording we learned the songs from went a long way to define the genre that we accept the song to be. A little style bending or blending, and we now have 20 songs that can be whatever we want or need them to be. Sure, that’s obvious… but is it really? Think about all the songs you know and what they might sound like if you played them as a different genre or in a different style… like in your style.

To get more into specific details, we collect licks, riffs, tones, beats, rhythms, and feel that are germane or generic to a genre of music and are easily recognizable as such. Then we continue do the same with as many genres as we can. These become the building blocks for our understanding of music. The more familiar we become with each one, the more we recognize the similarities among them, and we learn to interchange one for another across genres. This is what professional players can do effortlessly. Mimicking influences is where everyone begins but eventually the desire to sound like ourselves starts to push forward. And how do we answer that impulse?

Digging deeper into the magic we need to work on chords and lines. Basic chords come naturally to most of us and, as we progress, we add more complex chords to our vocabulary. Minor 7^th, major 7^th, 9^th, suspended, etc., are some of the normal follow-on chords. But chasing the magic requires that we break those chords down into their component parts—dyads, triads, etc.—and in doing so we start to see and hear where they overlap and morph into each other. We start to hear where we can substitute, interchange, and exchange one chord for another, again, recognizing that they are more alike than they are different. When is a 6^th chord a 6^th chord, and when is it actually a minor chord? That all depends on the context in which it is used, which leads us to playing lines. Of course, this starts with scales, but scales aren’t music. Scales serve to attune our ear to linear motion and train our fingers and muscle memory so that we have the dexterity to play what we hear in our head and react to what we hear from other players—in real time. I usually build my lines on chord shapes that requires an interesting dexterity, but how do I get there?

One of the techniques I use for this is which fingering I start with. I’ve written about basing most of my playing on the middle four strings, using the outside E string as needed to extend the lines from the inside strings. The fingering for most of the lines start with a root note played with the second finger. That leads most often to the next note being played with the fourth finger. I call it 2 and 4 fingering. Now I’m not exclusive with this fingering, of course, because most guitar-like lines—such as pentatonic scales—rely on a 1 and 3 fingering approach, so I have to do that, too. But getting your second and fourth fingers working together is important for finding the magic. As I explored becoming myself, I used these techniques as a place to start, but what I really wanted was to get into the in-between spaces of chords and lines where I could play something unique and magical. In doing so, I also learned that truly getting there required that I find my own way of voicing chords and playing lines. However, sometimes the music I’m playing requires that I ‘conform’ to the ‘rules’ of the genre so I can’t always play those in-between ideas. If I’m playing conforming ideas long enough, I often find that I lose some of the edge of what I would do if I were to play my own music, so periodically I have to revisit chasing magic. That is both my joy and my frustration, and a lot of work…

That is how I chase—and find—the magic…

Need to know? Just ask… Charlie (ask.charlie@hotmail.com)

Charlie Loach has played guitar in the San Diego music scene for many years, primarily with the power-house original rock band the Wild Truth and the elegant Americana ensemble Folding Mister Lincoln, performing and recording several CDs with both bands. More recently, he has performed with the vocal trio the Outliers. Charlie is an accomplished session player who is well versed in multiple genres of music from bluegrass to rock to country, and his playing is both smooth and tasteful whether on electric or acoustic guitar.