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.
# posted by BloozeGit @ 11:07 pm 
