Saturday, February 18, 2006
Strange Brew
It was a strange feeling indeed.
For the past 3 years I was involved in Kent Ridge Halls annual musical production as an instrumentalist, playing guitar most of the time. It was always a tiring yet rewarding experience, of figuring out and arranging all the songs, of practicing and running through scene after scene till late at night, of all the hassle and preparation in the run up to the show, and of course performance day itself.
We went through the whole musical so many times that we could almost recite the whole thing line for line, sometimes I heard the songs in my head in the morning when I brushed my teeth. Yet somehow, on performance day we’d still laugh at the same jokes that we’d heard a million times, and then some others which we didn’t find funny before but which the audience did. Every time the curtain fell at the end of the night there was the relief and satisfaction of a job well done, of many months of effort come to fruition.
I’d seen 3 different batches of production crew come and go, amongst them were a few recalcitrant, repeat offenders like myself but otherwise every year always proved a different challenge and musical experience. Working with new faces always brought a fresh perspective and variety to the musical stew, and it was gratifying to hear that the music was usually one of the more memorable points of each years production. Being involved as an instrumentalist was usually so absorbing and time-demanding that after each one was done, I found myself suddenly a little lost, not knowing what to do with the free time with which I had become unaccustomed.
Which was why it felt a little strange sitting in the crowd, watching the production as a paying audience. Everything was oddly familiar, the whole setup, venue, even the smell of the place. I could nearly imagine what was going on behind the scenes, from the stage manager sitting at the Star Trek-like TV console, the mad rush for the cast to get their make-up and hair done while having dinner, the last minute adjustments to the microphone levels, right down to the freezing air-conditioner in the dressing rooms. Deep down there was a part of me that wished I were back in the thick of action, wielding a guitar.
There was barely time to reminisce before the curtains opened. The show that they put up was fantastic, and the music was woven into the play much more smoothly than before, flowing with the ebb and tide of the plot. The 2 guitarists did a great job, doing their part to bring the music to life as I had done before. The bass player for the 2 previous years served as the music director, conducting the rest of the instrumentalists with aplomb, while another guitar player from the previous year held the bass lines firm this time round.
I was glad to see this kind of continuity in the group of instrumentalists flourish, each one becoming more adept and experienced with every passing performance. Those who were new certainly didn’t appear to be so, no doubt aided by the combined pool of experience within the group.
At the end of the night, I knew I had made the right decision to step aside, for others to undergo that same learning experience. My greatest satisfaction came from knowing that I wasn’t missed.
It still felt weird to pay for a ticket though.
For the past 3 years I was involved in Kent Ridge Halls annual musical production as an instrumentalist, playing guitar most of the time. It was always a tiring yet rewarding experience, of figuring out and arranging all the songs, of practicing and running through scene after scene till late at night, of all the hassle and preparation in the run up to the show, and of course performance day itself.
We went through the whole musical so many times that we could almost recite the whole thing line for line, sometimes I heard the songs in my head in the morning when I brushed my teeth. Yet somehow, on performance day we’d still laugh at the same jokes that we’d heard a million times, and then some others which we didn’t find funny before but which the audience did. Every time the curtain fell at the end of the night there was the relief and satisfaction of a job well done, of many months of effort come to fruition.
I’d seen 3 different batches of production crew come and go, amongst them were a few recalcitrant, repeat offenders like myself but otherwise every year always proved a different challenge and musical experience. Working with new faces always brought a fresh perspective and variety to the musical stew, and it was gratifying to hear that the music was usually one of the more memorable points of each years production. Being involved as an instrumentalist was usually so absorbing and time-demanding that after each one was done, I found myself suddenly a little lost, not knowing what to do with the free time with which I had become unaccustomed.
Which was why it felt a little strange sitting in the crowd, watching the production as a paying audience. Everything was oddly familiar, the whole setup, venue, even the smell of the place. I could nearly imagine what was going on behind the scenes, from the stage manager sitting at the Star Trek-like TV console, the mad rush for the cast to get their make-up and hair done while having dinner, the last minute adjustments to the microphone levels, right down to the freezing air-conditioner in the dressing rooms. Deep down there was a part of me that wished I were back in the thick of action, wielding a guitar.
There was barely time to reminisce before the curtains opened. The show that they put up was fantastic, and the music was woven into the play much more smoothly than before, flowing with the ebb and tide of the plot. The 2 guitarists did a great job, doing their part to bring the music to life as I had done before. The bass player for the 2 previous years served as the music director, conducting the rest of the instrumentalists with aplomb, while another guitar player from the previous year held the bass lines firm this time round.
I was glad to see this kind of continuity in the group of instrumentalists flourish, each one becoming more adept and experienced with every passing performance. Those who were new certainly didn’t appear to be so, no doubt aided by the combined pool of experience within the group.
At the end of the night, I knew I had made the right decision to step aside, for others to undergo that same learning experience. My greatest satisfaction came from knowing that I wasn’t missed.
It still felt weird to pay for a ticket though.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Many Splendoured Thing
I know it’s the time of the year to trot out the anti-capitalism rhetoric, denounce the commercialization of love, recite love-lorn non-sequitar, curse flower-sellers and the like but instead, something else touched my heart on this day (Ok, technically it’s not Valentine’s anymore but just humour me here).
And it wasn’t even a personal or physical experience. It was just something that I read on an online blues forum, an innocent thread started with a question along the line of “What made you first feel the blues?”
I wasn’t quite anticipating the enormity of it. The first few responses talked about romances gone wrong, but soon the thread delved into topics of death, illnesses, loss of loved ones, substance abuse, physically and sexually abusive childhoods, things which I couldn’t imagine being shared with anyone beyond very close personal circles, much less on an online forum. The courage that they mustered to share those events was incredible, and I could not even begin to imagine some of the things they went through happening to me.
Yet there was something enlightening in this otherwise somber discussion. With every story of sadness came a tale of musical healing and recovery, every love and life lost was a love and life gained elsewhere. The remarkable resilience of the human nature shone through for all, and knowing what the blues has done for people who share my taste in music around the world made me realize how lucky I really am.
Though I’m not a religious person, I believe I live a much blessed life. Definitely there are things that I wish did or did not happen, but I do not bear in my heart any heavy sorrows or deep hatreds. At this point, on the brink of becoming a working adult, my life has been relatively positive. There were things I could have continued to feel bitter about, but in retrospect they were all comparatively trivial or inconsequential. There is much to look forward to, though of course the abovementioned thread did remind me about the frailties of human life.
Romantic love is something of which I have precious little personal knowledge, but I’ve seen how it falls from grace at all stages in a relationship from dating right through to marriage, sometimes a little too up-close for my liking. I may or may not be the wiser for all that I’ve seen. That, time will tell.
On this day of extravagant shows of love, I witnessed a deeper, more profound one from a most unlikely source, an online blues forum. Then again, perhaps it's not that unlikely.
And it wasn’t even a personal or physical experience. It was just something that I read on an online blues forum, an innocent thread started with a question along the line of “What made you first feel the blues?”
I wasn’t quite anticipating the enormity of it. The first few responses talked about romances gone wrong, but soon the thread delved into topics of death, illnesses, loss of loved ones, substance abuse, physically and sexually abusive childhoods, things which I couldn’t imagine being shared with anyone beyond very close personal circles, much less on an online forum. The courage that they mustered to share those events was incredible, and I could not even begin to imagine some of the things they went through happening to me.
Yet there was something enlightening in this otherwise somber discussion. With every story of sadness came a tale of musical healing and recovery, every love and life lost was a love and life gained elsewhere. The remarkable resilience of the human nature shone through for all, and knowing what the blues has done for people who share my taste in music around the world made me realize how lucky I really am.
Though I’m not a religious person, I believe I live a much blessed life. Definitely there are things that I wish did or did not happen, but I do not bear in my heart any heavy sorrows or deep hatreds. At this point, on the brink of becoming a working adult, my life has been relatively positive. There were things I could have continued to feel bitter about, but in retrospect they were all comparatively trivial or inconsequential. There is much to look forward to, though of course the abovementioned thread did remind me about the frailties of human life.
Romantic love is something of which I have precious little personal knowledge, but I’ve seen how it falls from grace at all stages in a relationship from dating right through to marriage, sometimes a little too up-close for my liking. I may or may not be the wiser for all that I’ve seen. That, time will tell.
On this day of extravagant shows of love, I witnessed a deeper, more profound one from a most unlikely source, an online blues forum. Then again, perhaps it's not that unlikely.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Understanding
This weekend has been a musically-energising one.
The past few weeks have really been chock-full of performances, and while they were enjoyable (for the most part) they still left a part of me yearning for something more. So, I made my way down to Roomful of Blues for a Saturday night blues jam. I usually take it as a good time to recharge, to play some music while not really stretching out most of the time. For a bunch of guys who only get together on Saturday nights as and when to play whatever, it has its moments of brilliance but otherwise we coast along in a relaxed, laissez-faire manner. Following which we’d knock back a pint, maybe play some cards and consider it a Saturday night well spent.
It started off as it usually did, going through the various blues rhythms. On that night we didn’t have anyone to sing though, so we just took turns soloing. There was the rhythm section, 2 of us on guitar and one harmonica player. Of that bunch, 3 of us are/were bandmates in Blues Virus, namely the bassist and harmonica guy.
To digress a bit, I’ve been with Blues Virus for quite a while, thumping out the blues at venues of varying sizes and conditions. We’ve played dingy little bars, street sidewalks, big outdoor stages and almost everything else in between. Good and bad gigs all came our way, that was the way we paid our dues to play the blues. It’s been almost 4 yrs since our first gig, but recently we’ve been on a hiatus of sorts. Not that it was an agreed break, but it just happened that way. If anyone’s looking for a blues band that sounds deliberately crude and unpolished, that loves to have an irreverent good time on stage and runs on plenty of cold beer, drop me a line.
Anyway, back at Roomful, in walks our drummer whom we haven’t seen for almost a year. He was walking along with the Thaipusam procession and happened to pass by, so he decided to drop in (barefoot, no less) and see what was happening. Now, our drummer is a colourful character of sorts, adding to the band’s collective weirdo quotient. A cab-driver by day, he’s been through all the ups and downs that make up a stereotypical bluesman’s life, and his tempo always seems to teeter dangerously on the edge of disarray, not quite over the edge but just enough to keep things exciting. The beauty of his understated drumming is matched only by his unpredictability, his brilliance and erratic nature both equally spectacular. He’s not into fancy rolls and crashes and all that shmuck, but he keeps the groove going and knows all the ins and outs of the old-school blues. He’s been there, done that since long time ago and he’s still at it, hitting the skins and driving the band along.
It started off shakily enough, a mid-tempo swing to dust off the cobwebs and scrape off the rust. We took a few bars to literally get up to speed, though after exchanging some curious looks we eased into a comfortable groove. The audience didn’t seem all too interested in what we were doing, since it wasn’t really a blues-loving crowd, but that didn’t matter. Once that was done, we went into a slow blues to take things down and see what would happen.
And the magic returned, with a sort of telepathy brought us through a whole dynamic range. When he took it way down and barely tickled the skins, I responded with gentle, plaintitive bends at similarly low volumes, just loud enough so I could hear. The other guys went quiet too, at times hardly playing. When I signaled a build-up with one stinging note after another at gradually increasing volume and intensity, he went right along and brought it back up, culminating in a mad flurry of chords and cymbal crashes and probably leaving the audience quite confused, but again that didn’t matter. We were all just delighted to be speaking the same language again, one which we hadn’t spoken for a long while.
This was a totally different ball-game from what I’d been doing the past few weeks. This was unadulterated musical chaos that no amount of arrangement and practice could achieve. The kind where you play one thing and everyone else just knows what comes next. We’re not sure why and how, but it just happens.
Maybe it’s the same kind of understanding that winning sports teams, military special forces and long-time lovers share, something common to all human activity that involves more than one person. It’s the kind of understanding where one knows where the other is going without the need for verbal or written agreement, safe in the trust that the other party will make good on his part of it. For me, music is where I find this understanding with kindred souls, the understanding that binds one human to another, or perhaps a few others as well.
We started the song not knowing how it would end or exactly what was going to happen, but knowing how to follow on each other’s leads and make the most of it. That’s where the fun starts.
I hope we get a gig soon and start making the same noise again.
The past few weeks have really been chock-full of performances, and while they were enjoyable (for the most part) they still left a part of me yearning for something more. So, I made my way down to Roomful of Blues for a Saturday night blues jam. I usually take it as a good time to recharge, to play some music while not really stretching out most of the time. For a bunch of guys who only get together on Saturday nights as and when to play whatever, it has its moments of brilliance but otherwise we coast along in a relaxed, laissez-faire manner. Following which we’d knock back a pint, maybe play some cards and consider it a Saturday night well spent.
It started off as it usually did, going through the various blues rhythms. On that night we didn’t have anyone to sing though, so we just took turns soloing. There was the rhythm section, 2 of us on guitar and one harmonica player. Of that bunch, 3 of us are/were bandmates in Blues Virus, namely the bassist and harmonica guy.
To digress a bit, I’ve been with Blues Virus for quite a while, thumping out the blues at venues of varying sizes and conditions. We’ve played dingy little bars, street sidewalks, big outdoor stages and almost everything else in between. Good and bad gigs all came our way, that was the way we paid our dues to play the blues. It’s been almost 4 yrs since our first gig, but recently we’ve been on a hiatus of sorts. Not that it was an agreed break, but it just happened that way. If anyone’s looking for a blues band that sounds deliberately crude and unpolished, that loves to have an irreverent good time on stage and runs on plenty of cold beer, drop me a line.
Anyway, back at Roomful, in walks our drummer whom we haven’t seen for almost a year. He was walking along with the Thaipusam procession and happened to pass by, so he decided to drop in (barefoot, no less) and see what was happening. Now, our drummer is a colourful character of sorts, adding to the band’s collective weirdo quotient. A cab-driver by day, he’s been through all the ups and downs that make up a stereotypical bluesman’s life, and his tempo always seems to teeter dangerously on the edge of disarray, not quite over the edge but just enough to keep things exciting. The beauty of his understated drumming is matched only by his unpredictability, his brilliance and erratic nature both equally spectacular. He’s not into fancy rolls and crashes and all that shmuck, but he keeps the groove going and knows all the ins and outs of the old-school blues. He’s been there, done that since long time ago and he’s still at it, hitting the skins and driving the band along.
It started off shakily enough, a mid-tempo swing to dust off the cobwebs and scrape off the rust. We took a few bars to literally get up to speed, though after exchanging some curious looks we eased into a comfortable groove. The audience didn’t seem all too interested in what we were doing, since it wasn’t really a blues-loving crowd, but that didn’t matter. Once that was done, we went into a slow blues to take things down and see what would happen.
And the magic returned, with a sort of telepathy brought us through a whole dynamic range. When he took it way down and barely tickled the skins, I responded with gentle, plaintitive bends at similarly low volumes, just loud enough so I could hear. The other guys went quiet too, at times hardly playing. When I signaled a build-up with one stinging note after another at gradually increasing volume and intensity, he went right along and brought it back up, culminating in a mad flurry of chords and cymbal crashes and probably leaving the audience quite confused, but again that didn’t matter. We were all just delighted to be speaking the same language again, one which we hadn’t spoken for a long while.
This was a totally different ball-game from what I’d been doing the past few weeks. This was unadulterated musical chaos that no amount of arrangement and practice could achieve. The kind where you play one thing and everyone else just knows what comes next. We’re not sure why and how, but it just happens.
Maybe it’s the same kind of understanding that winning sports teams, military special forces and long-time lovers share, something common to all human activity that involves more than one person. It’s the kind of understanding where one knows where the other is going without the need for verbal or written agreement, safe in the trust that the other party will make good on his part of it. For me, music is where I find this understanding with kindred souls, the understanding that binds one human to another, or perhaps a few others as well.
We started the song not knowing how it would end or exactly what was going to happen, but knowing how to follow on each other’s leads and make the most of it. That’s where the fun starts.
I hope we get a gig soon and start making the same noise again.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
And the band played on
The previously mentioned band competition came to a close recently and it’s time to take stock of what happened over that 3 month period.
Every year, the Kent Ridge Hall band sends a team to take part in JamX. They had a line-up already but were still looking for a guitarist. When I was approached to participate at first, I had my reservations. There was always the Final Year Project looming large in my mind, and countless other things that threatened to clash and obliterate my free time. Plus, competitions didn’t exactly fit in with my concept of musical enrichment. I personally never felt very strongly about musical competitions, being of the opinion that casting music as a competitive event detracts from its true purpose.
Somehow or rather, I still felt a certain calling to join them, but it went beyond music, beyond the potential prizes (which were, in my opinion, negligible) and beyond the recognition or glory. Well, it wasn’t really a very high-profile competition so that was negligible too.
Rather, when I thought about the line-up they already had, I saw dreams that needed to be fulfilled. Most of them were new to this, for some this would be their first public performance. Even though all of them had played for a crowd of hall residents before, taking it outside for the first time would be a whole new thing altogether. I saw in the line-up a certain hunger, a desire to prove themselves and to push their musical talents to be the best they could.
So into the fray I went.
It wasn’t easy, to say the least. This was perhaps the first time I’d ever played in such a musically diverse group, and reconciling all the different viewpoints to come to a consensus was the most challenging part of it all. This was complicated by their tentative nature, perhaps a little unsure of themselves, wanting to put up a fantastic show but not very certain how to go about it. In fact, it took me right to the very limits of my patience, which, admittedly, is rather limited. Still, recognizing a common goal helped us to sort out the path to take, and a consensus was obtained to everyone’s satisfaction.
In terms of technique and arrangement, it wasn’t plain-sailing either. The musical ideals that I heard in my head were a struggle for me to express in words, not being very good at teaching or explaining. Besides, this wasn’t the kind of thing that could easily be learnt overnight or coached individually. It took a while to get it across to them, but I was gratified to see the improvement all of them made towards the end.
To stack the odds even higher, the band ran on 4 parts estrogen and 3 parts testosterone. On top of overcoming musical boundaries, I had to overcome gender differences as well. If you’ve known me long enough you’ll probably know that my understanding of the female psyche tends towards total confusion. Well, I guess that spiced things up a little.
So practices came and went, songs were played and re-played and re-worked and many nights were spent in the band room. The preliminary rounds and finals went by in a flash as we went through a whole roller-coaster of emotions.
After the finals were over, I sensed a palpable air of disappointment amongst them as the crowd dispersed. Hearty congratulations from friends were accepted with forced smiles, even as I saw their emotions written in their eyes. Though we obtained a credible result, they weren’t too happy about being displaced by a band that arguably wasn’t fantastic, though I wouldn’t really know. At the time they were playing, yours truly was nursing a can of beer away from the venue with some good friends who came down to support our cause and not really paying attention to the din.
At the end of it all, I’m still not entirely sure I achieved what I set out to do. I was hoping to be a catalyst to help them reach their goals, to be a stepping stone so they could reach out for their dreams and find their musical selves, just as others had done for me before. Though they may have felt a little shortchanged, I still hope that they will in turn pass on what they’ve learnt and work on what they didn’t learn. I also hope that at the very least, it will be a lasting memory for them.
Perhaps, that little last bit of the dream unfulfilled will fuel them to strive towards their own musical betterment long after I’ve graduated, hopefully beyond their own graduation.
Perhaps, that was my true purpose.
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Every year, the Kent Ridge Hall band sends a team to take part in JamX. They had a line-up already but were still looking for a guitarist. When I was approached to participate at first, I had my reservations. There was always the Final Year Project looming large in my mind, and countless other things that threatened to clash and obliterate my free time. Plus, competitions didn’t exactly fit in with my concept of musical enrichment. I personally never felt very strongly about musical competitions, being of the opinion that casting music as a competitive event detracts from its true purpose.
Somehow or rather, I still felt a certain calling to join them, but it went beyond music, beyond the potential prizes (which were, in my opinion, negligible) and beyond the recognition or glory. Well, it wasn’t really a very high-profile competition so that was negligible too.
Rather, when I thought about the line-up they already had, I saw dreams that needed to be fulfilled. Most of them were new to this, for some this would be their first public performance. Even though all of them had played for a crowd of hall residents before, taking it outside for the first time would be a whole new thing altogether. I saw in the line-up a certain hunger, a desire to prove themselves and to push their musical talents to be the best they could.
So into the fray I went.
It wasn’t easy, to say the least. This was perhaps the first time I’d ever played in such a musically diverse group, and reconciling all the different viewpoints to come to a consensus was the most challenging part of it all. This was complicated by their tentative nature, perhaps a little unsure of themselves, wanting to put up a fantastic show but not very certain how to go about it. In fact, it took me right to the very limits of my patience, which, admittedly, is rather limited. Still, recognizing a common goal helped us to sort out the path to take, and a consensus was obtained to everyone’s satisfaction.
In terms of technique and arrangement, it wasn’t plain-sailing either. The musical ideals that I heard in my head were a struggle for me to express in words, not being very good at teaching or explaining. Besides, this wasn’t the kind of thing that could easily be learnt overnight or coached individually. It took a while to get it across to them, but I was gratified to see the improvement all of them made towards the end.
To stack the odds even higher, the band ran on 4 parts estrogen and 3 parts testosterone. On top of overcoming musical boundaries, I had to overcome gender differences as well. If you’ve known me long enough you’ll probably know that my understanding of the female psyche tends towards total confusion. Well, I guess that spiced things up a little.
So practices came and went, songs were played and re-played and re-worked and many nights were spent in the band room. The preliminary rounds and finals went by in a flash as we went through a whole roller-coaster of emotions.
After the finals were over, I sensed a palpable air of disappointment amongst them as the crowd dispersed. Hearty congratulations from friends were accepted with forced smiles, even as I saw their emotions written in their eyes. Though we obtained a credible result, they weren’t too happy about being displaced by a band that arguably wasn’t fantastic, though I wouldn’t really know. At the time they were playing, yours truly was nursing a can of beer away from the venue with some good friends who came down to support our cause and not really paying attention to the din.
At the end of it all, I’m still not entirely sure I achieved what I set out to do. I was hoping to be a catalyst to help them reach their goals, to be a stepping stone so they could reach out for their dreams and find their musical selves, just as others had done for me before. Though they may have felt a little shortchanged, I still hope that they will in turn pass on what they’ve learnt and work on what they didn’t learn. I also hope that at the very least, it will be a lasting memory for them.
Perhaps, that little last bit of the dream unfulfilled will fuel them to strive towards their own musical betterment long after I’ve graduated, hopefully beyond their own graduation.
Perhaps, that was my true purpose.
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Thursday, February 02, 2006
Listen to the music again
This recent YouTube phenomenon has had me hooked. Being able to upload movies and stream them to everyone else leaves no excuse for the rest of us to be musically-deprived. I’ve spent many an hour watching old footage of my musical heroes, and one of them in particular brought back memories of a time past. This one too.
Chet Atkins was one of the pioneers of the finger-picking style, establishing the sound of country fingerstyle and also lending his talents to jazz and pop. His tasteful arrangements of both obscure and well-known tunes were adapted to his style of solo performance, often combining the bass, chords and melodies into a masterful display of finger wizardry. His influence on music extends beyond country and lives on today through his huge catalog of albums, recorded over his long and illustrious career.
Watching this video of him reminded me of the time when I’d just started trying to master the guitar (still trying) at the age of about 16-17, when I was in my first year of junior college (11th grade equivalent). At that time I was eagerly scouring guitar magazines for names to check out and Chet Atkins was one of them, alongside the old bluesmen like Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker. I bought his CDs, a couple of magazines with transcriptions and with the determination to practice that I had back then, picked out whatever precious little I could out of his vast range of techniques.
Now I’m pretty sure anyone under the age of 40 today would agree with me that trying to play like an old country picker wasn’t the way to be the coolest guitar hotshot in town. Neither was it the way to charm the many willing female hearts who’d fall at the feet of anyone who could play More Than Words or Now And Forever or whatever sappy love song was on the radio.
It was either that or the likes of Satriani, Steve Vai or Malmsteen. Seemingly endless solos played at 1000-beats/min at stomach-churning volume were a good way to let the ego rip and have the rest gaping in wide-eyed amazement, “Wow, you can play the intro to *insert song name* here!” I’ll have to admit though, it had me fascinated for all but the shortest while before I decided that I couldn’t do all that fancy schmuck.
At that time I was in the Guitar Ensemble, which focused mainly on ensemble arrangements but during the annual performance we always snuck in a couple of numbers for our own enjoyment and of course, a combo band to get the blood (mainly ours) pumping. I distinctly remember playing Chet Atkin’s arrangement of “Vincent” for an audience that had no idea who that was. The usual polite applause ensued, though predictably there wasn’t any prominent display of positive female reaction. Not that I was aware of anyway.
However, playing that song over and over again imbued in me a certain discipline, to keep my technique clean and avoid the sloppy habits that self-taught guitar players fall into. I tried my best to perfect it, and doing so laid the foundation for what was to be my future musical self-education. That was perhaps the most important reward I ever got for following the musical road less traveled.
In a way, my music life paralleled that of my student life in VJC. Apart from a tall, lanky Indian chap called Angshu (if you’re out there, drop me a line), I was the only one playing the old stuff. Somehow, in all other aspects I also fell into the minority. I was an English speaker amongst a whole horde of Chinese speakers, perhaps because I was from ACS(I) while nearly everyone else was from VS, Dunman High, Chinese High etc. That didn’t stop me from making some good friends and having a great time though.
Fast forward to today, I’m hardly anywhere closer to reaching Chet Atkin’s technique than I was back then, having gone on to play the blues instead of fingerstyle. But the stuff I learnt from him, his musical approach of doing everything tastefully and the wonders of his playing remain crystal clear in my mind, though that didn’t keep my jaw from hitting the floor when I caught the videos on YouTube.
Any guitar player who uses his fingers owes a huge debt to him, and you can count me as one of them. Thanks, Chet.
Chet Atkins was one of the pioneers of the finger-picking style, establishing the sound of country fingerstyle and also lending his talents to jazz and pop. His tasteful arrangements of both obscure and well-known tunes were adapted to his style of solo performance, often combining the bass, chords and melodies into a masterful display of finger wizardry. His influence on music extends beyond country and lives on today through his huge catalog of albums, recorded over his long and illustrious career.
Watching this video of him reminded me of the time when I’d just started trying to master the guitar (still trying) at the age of about 16-17, when I was in my first year of junior college (11th grade equivalent). At that time I was eagerly scouring guitar magazines for names to check out and Chet Atkins was one of them, alongside the old bluesmen like Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker. I bought his CDs, a couple of magazines with transcriptions and with the determination to practice that I had back then, picked out whatever precious little I could out of his vast range of techniques.
Now I’m pretty sure anyone under the age of 40 today would agree with me that trying to play like an old country picker wasn’t the way to be the coolest guitar hotshot in town. Neither was it the way to charm the many willing female hearts who’d fall at the feet of anyone who could play More Than Words or Now And Forever or whatever sappy love song was on the radio.
It was either that or the likes of Satriani, Steve Vai or Malmsteen. Seemingly endless solos played at 1000-beats/min at stomach-churning volume were a good way to let the ego rip and have the rest gaping in wide-eyed amazement, “Wow, you can play the intro to *insert song name* here!” I’ll have to admit though, it had me fascinated for all but the shortest while before I decided that I couldn’t do all that fancy schmuck.
At that time I was in the Guitar Ensemble, which focused mainly on ensemble arrangements but during the annual performance we always snuck in a couple of numbers for our own enjoyment and of course, a combo band to get the blood (mainly ours) pumping. I distinctly remember playing Chet Atkin’s arrangement of “Vincent” for an audience that had no idea who that was. The usual polite applause ensued, though predictably there wasn’t any prominent display of positive female reaction. Not that I was aware of anyway.
However, playing that song over and over again imbued in me a certain discipline, to keep my technique clean and avoid the sloppy habits that self-taught guitar players fall into. I tried my best to perfect it, and doing so laid the foundation for what was to be my future musical self-education. That was perhaps the most important reward I ever got for following the musical road less traveled.
In a way, my music life paralleled that of my student life in VJC. Apart from a tall, lanky Indian chap called Angshu (if you’re out there, drop me a line), I was the only one playing the old stuff. Somehow, in all other aspects I also fell into the minority. I was an English speaker amongst a whole horde of Chinese speakers, perhaps because I was from ACS(I) while nearly everyone else was from VS, Dunman High, Chinese High etc. That didn’t stop me from making some good friends and having a great time though.
Fast forward to today, I’m hardly anywhere closer to reaching Chet Atkin’s technique than I was back then, having gone on to play the blues instead of fingerstyle. But the stuff I learnt from him, his musical approach of doing everything tastefully and the wonders of his playing remain crystal clear in my mind, though that didn’t keep my jaw from hitting the floor when I caught the videos on YouTube.
Any guitar player who uses his fingers owes a huge debt to him, and you can count me as one of them. Thanks, Chet.
