New Year, New Style

Well, it's after midnight and sounds like a war zone outside. Means it's either Tuesday or it's New Years. I've posted a blog relating to New Years on my other blog under my profile. Go read it if you want. Anyways, it's the new year. Out with the old, in with the new and all that jazz. That also includes doing it with our playing.

When we play, we can one of two things. Play exactly like the recording, in every way and mannar. I admit, this is one thing I do probably ninety percent of the time. It's the ten percent where I don't, and I play in my own unique style that I've invented. This is called Sean Arseo style. I'm sure you play your own style as well, whenever you're just messing around.

As Christian music becomes more like the rock songs of the eighties, short songs with identafiable instrumental lines, we as musicians start to play them just as the original artist played them. There is little room for originallity in them. Oh, that's not to say that we don't put our own personal twist into them, our little musicial signitares. Then there are the somewhat older songs.

Take the Matt Redman song, Blessed Be the Name. When they put the music in front of me, I had never heard of the song, let alone Matt Redman before in my life. The lead guitarist had said play it as eigth notes with a pick, so I did. The whole song, simple eigth notes. No life. After our first drummer Aarron Black stepped down due to health reasons, we got a young drummer. This is a prime example to my comment for bassist that I made yesterday about listening to the drummer.

Aarron would be the first to tell you that he was not a drummer. He was a purcussionist with a resume that most would kill for. When playing bass along side him playing drums, I had a certain style. He would play more a Salsa style, so I would mould right in and play that style as well.

Enter our current drummer. He would be the first to tell you that he knew next to nothing about being a purcussionist. He was a really a kid (seventeen when he joined, I believe), and had only been play a few years. Rang a bell for me. What he lacked in experience, however, he made up for in youthful enthusiasim. So when we went and did Blessed again one Sunday, my simple "duh-duh-duh-duh" didn't work. It was far to simple. It was then when the craziest infulance came to me for the song.

I had recently boughten the Nine Inch Nails concert DVD Beside You In Time, and was watching it one day when I noticed the bassist was changing his picking position and style on the song The Line Begins to Blur. So I followed with the song when we played the chorus. It was enough of a mix up to give it a new life. I went even further and, during the actual set, played the pre-chours an octive higher along the D-string, hitting one note per word. The band said nothing, so I simply continued, eventually playing the bridge in a metal style, playing the occasional set of sixteenth notes while rising an octive when the bridge repeates.

I promies that I will now get to the point of that long and confussing piece. The point is, you need to move past simple "The song says play this so I'll play this." and experiment! I know that some songs have some killer instrument parts (coming to mind is the bassline in Dancing Generation), and if you find yourself playing that, then feel free to play it as it's writen. But if your playing something else, something that has been played just shy of a billion different ways by a billion different people, then feel free to play it your own way as well.

Well, the gunshots have fallen silent, so I will as well. I might continue this line of thought for a while, since I could probably write a book on this topic alone.

Happy New Years.

-Sean Arseo
12:54am, January 1, 2010

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