When I was first composing my music, I envisioned studio musicians playing the other parts of the song since I was a lone individual and could only play one guitar part. I recorded the rhythm guitar first, then the lead guitar, bass, then the vocal. Of course, I found myself faced with the reality that no-one desires to play a part in someone else's composition without creative license to modify it. My music was particularly dark at the time. I was filled with pain and rage and I took it out on my guitar. Everyone breaks a string now and then. But I was breaking the bass strings - the "A" and "D" strings mostly, and occasionally, the bass "E". I had to learn to control my expressions in a way that would articulate the proper state of being while at the same time, spare the destruction of another string. I learned to temper the brute force with speed. The pain and rage provided infinite energy to sustain extremely fast strikes of the strings, so fast that it was more like a flutter or buzz. This fluttering striking hand has multiple dimensions of motion. It moves not only up and down, but also forward and backward along the fret-board, and across individual, or groups of strings (including all strings), and also with a dimension of depth of the strike into the strings in a sometimes cylindrical or conical manner of flow. Now these dimensions should not be viewed as separate components. They are always used together. The degree of depth into each dimension as one moves across the strings is a dynamic process that articulates the emotional state of being in real time with the physical state of being. This is what determines a "genuine" expression from a natural guitarist from one that is not. Your energy level, your current sense of self, are also dynamic processes. They are never exactly the same from moment to moment. Thus, you play the same thing a little differently each time. Those in the commercial music business seem to believe that there should be a specific way to play a song so that it can be repeated exactly the same by others. When it comes to commercialism, it is easy to see why such precision is necessary for them. It is however for "the sake of music itself" and for commercialism and therefore, NOT self-expression. In the days of the great composers, there were no recording devices and you had to coordinate the activities of a very large number of individuals to perform an incredibly detailed and complex sound. However, these composers were driven by commercialism even in those days and the "music for the sake of music" can be heard in most of their work.
Now the dimensions mentioned above you can easily grasp and coordinate for effect on the guitar. There are however, more dimensions involved that are not as apparent. These are also dimensions of being and they ARE physical. I will expand more on this later.
My own personal driving energy was born out of overwhelming pain and rage. Like someone throwing a temper tantrum, I was banging on the guitar so hard that the thickest strings kept breaking since they took the brunt of the brute force. I found in trying to suppress the brute force, the energy still had to come out in some form, so speed replaced a lot of the brute force. This resulted in two things. First, no more broken strings. Second, a whole new world of sound opened up to me. If I ever felt that I wasn't playing "up to speed", I did not slow down or practice the piece. I played even faster. That would make things right most of the time. Then I was playing "up to speed" again. As the emotions swept thru me and out across my guitar, I saw and felt it in the form of energy. I found that I could channel and mold the energy in ways to emphasize specific emotional states of being. When I say that I could "see" the energy, I do not mean with my eyes. I understood that I was playing from an extra-dimensional perspective, and this sight is far more powerful than the eyes. Being able to see the energy allowed me to witness and learn to control the patterns of energy flowing from me. I go into the mechanics of this in more detail in another chapter.
You must be driven to express yourself on the guitar. It has nothing to do with "wanting" to. It has only to do with being "driven" to. Whatever it is that will fill you with an intense, unrelenting need to relieve pressure before you explode, you use it to drive yourself. But it cannot be feigned or forced. It must be natural and real or it will have no effect at all for you. If you think it is, then you are fooling yourself. You must hit bottom and claw your way back up. It may be a cliche, but you really do need to lose it all to gain it all.
Each song should be constructed from a specific perspective, a specific state of being, and a specific "self". Think of it being kind of like the narrator of a story. There may be ups and downs and accentuations for dramatic affect, but the voice of the narrator is the common element thru all of it. It provides the "tone" of the story and provides a perspective from which the story is experienced.
When you construct a song, you are the narrator. Even though you are speaking in the first person in your song to a person or a group of persons, what you are articulating is being conveyed from a specific perspective, a specific state of being, and a specific "self". The base vibration of energy that drives the guitar work (and vocals) is representative of a "self" in a specific state of being, that is seeing the events from a specific perspective, and communicating them to the person or group of persons to whom the song is speaking.
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