ok, i borrowed this idea or learning technique from two outstanding teachers: Billy Ward and Vera F. Birkenbihl. the first one’s an unbelievably creative drummer, the second one’s a ridiculously productive and creative german author and trainer. i don’t know if there is any english material of her but if there is you really should check it out.

the idea now is quite simple. i mentioned this before as a way to learn in a passive way but there are ways to exploit this even further of course. again this is about imitation and the experiment would be to pick something to imitate, a guitar part from one of your favourite songs for instance. now the goal is not to cover it or play it your way but to copy it as perfect as you can. this includes not only the notes played in the same tempo but also things like the sound, the phrasing, the accents etc.

make an exact copy of the original. this can be pretty hard, i know, but it was a lot harder before the internet with sites like youtube made our day :-) now the first thing to do would be to figure out what it really is that’s been played in the first place. for me this usually is the tough part because great musicians have ways of making things sound different. ahuh. i’ll try to explain: there are two types of creativity, convex and concave (gosh, i hope this is the same in english…) – maybe we could call it active and passive creativity as well… the active (or convex) type is the one an artist uses by creating something – easy enough, right? now the other one is the type one uses by listening to what the artist created. meaning not only the artist needs to be creative but the audience as well. hmmmm, not very cear, is it? think about a painting by a modern artist. to lots of people it may just look like someone threw up right on the canvas. but others see something in it, their mind makes something of it, it creates or re-creates the picture. maybe the way the artist meant it, maybe not… that’s concave (passive) creativity. if you don’t have this, there will be no picture. of course this goes only for that one picture or artist and maybe he really threw up on the canvas, who knows? in that case your nose would need the concave….you get the idea.

anyway, great musicians (or painters etc.) are able to get your ears to hear it in a certain way. for example a drummer could leave out certain notes but you would swear that you hear them. that’s what makes it hard to find out what was really played in some performances. so the first thing i would do is to look if i could find it on youtube. if you dig it there’s a good chance other do as well, so someone might have uploaded exactly what you’re looking for. you might find a performance of the original artist as well as other guys trying to play it or maybe even break it down. if it fails you’d have to use trial and error but that’s fine and even has its advantages, because the quest for creating a sound-alike-piece is much more rewarding this way. but it can also be a very long one and might even not work at all… as soon as you know what was played, figure out how to get that exact sound – everything’s allowed. after that it’s just practicing to bring it up to speed or precision etc.

anyway, experiment. try as hard as you can to make a perfect copy. “but i don’t have the same gear…” don’t give me lame excuses. you need to make do with what you have, that’s an important part of the journey.

in the end you will not only have gained really cool insight into your favourite artist’s world but also have more possibilities to express yourself. and hands down, there’s no better way to learn than being taught by the masters themselves…

Tags: Art, artist, Creativity, learning, Music, Trial and error