021. Absolute beginners.
“I’m an artist, and if you give me a tuba, I’ll bring you something out of it”
When I started to play in bands as a teenager, I was lucky enough to be adequately proficient at playing my chosen instrument, namely the guitar, that I didn’t get landed with the role of being the bass player. At the time, the bass player in the band was always the person who said, "Fine, everyone is playing the cool instruments so I’ll take one for the team and play the bass." Bass players, don’t hate me, I am going somewhere with this and besides this is what happened to Paul McCartney in the Beatles so you are in good company.
In my experience, not one of my friends who decided to take on this, or any other instrument, has ever regretted it. Not because of the usual, learning an instrument is really rewarding stuff, but because being forced to think about the way a different instrument functions made them appreciate music in a way which they may have never gotten to otherwise. However, I think there is an even more profound side effect; Choosing a foreign instrument allowed them to be more creative.
I feel that so much of the creative decision making can be caught up in identifying yourself in a certain way. I'm a guitar player, therefore, I play like this or I try to put more and more flashy techniques into songs to prove what a good guitar player I am. I think that the people who adopted different instruments have a great luxury in whatever they play because they don’t have the weight of their own preconceived notions.
For me it's the piano, I love to play it, I love to write on it, but I would never call myself a piano player and this is the beauty of it. Because it's not me, I am free to use it in whatever way I want. If I play a weird voicing of a chord that a trained player would never use, it's fine, because I'm not a piano player; If I don’t have independence with both hands, It's fine, because I’m not a piano player.
Look at how many great songs were written by people who were not trained in music. They were free to put things in whatever way suited them. They didn’t have to be bound by the regular rules because they didn’t know what the rules were.
I think one of the greatest ways out of a creative rut is to pick up an instrument you can’t play and write with it, or try to approach your own instrument in a new way. For guitarists I recommend playing with your bad hand I guarantee whatever you play will be unique.
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