Thursday, February 24, 2011

Less is More!?

     I've always been a fan of both minimalist and extremely dense music. One of the first minimalist projects I was exposed to, years ago, was Mick Harris's Lull.  I wasn't nearly as open minded of a listener then as I am now and dismissed it. The Lull records I've listened to could best be described as low frequency drones. Only recently have I started to revisit some of these recordings with a new found appreciation. Through re-exploring some of these more spatially rich recordings I gained a new perspective on writing and approaching music.
     The first thing that I really discovered about my own writing process was, how dense and harmonically rich I would try and make everything on guitar. Part of the problem was my complex and dissonant chordal voicing's that made some of the material inaccessible to fellow musicians. There is always a time and place for this and of course there is nothing wrong with doing it sparingly and tastefully. But, for me, I wasn't able to make this distinction because I would always unfairly judge my own incomplete material against a band or artists finished product. I ended up trying to recreate as much of the full spectrum a band is capable of with just my guitar. Needless to say, it doesn't leave much room for other musicians to add their own flare and creativity to the piece and can even be somewhat intimidating to get into.
     This brings me to texture, and really where I'm heading presently as a musician. I can still accomplish these dense multi-faceted elements but in a linear and layered fashion. Lets say I create an extremely simple melody as a foundation to build upon, not only can I add as many layers as I want, to achieve this same desired effect, but each layer is based on simplicity and the original melody. Any amount of layers can be added or removed to make room for other instruments or musicians still making it accessible. So I guess less is more, more or less.

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