Here is a great post from a blog that I just found. The blog is from the Creatives at Hillsong Church. You can check it out here.
The article is by one of their musicians, Pete James called “Listening/Musical Influences” posted on 2.25.10.
Enjoy!
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As Musicians we HAVE to get really good at listening. Not just listening, but listening with the intent to learn. It’s one thing to listen to a song on the radio and go “that’s a nice song”. But it’s another thing to listen to that same song to learn from it and analyze every ounce of goodness out of it! We need to get into a habit of doing this to help us grow creatively, to widen our musical knowledge and ultimately make us better, well rounded musicians.
We can actually limit our growth in this area by our musical prejudices or simply our likes and dislikes. Don’t limit yourself by only listening to your favorite style, band, artist etc. We can learn something from ALL good music, full stop. Regardless of style. Don’t limit yourself either to only listening to Christian music. Yes Christian music will edify your soul and spirit which we all need. But music in itself isn’t secular or nonsecular. Yes lyrics can carry a positive or negative message, but don’t simply limit your musical influences just because a band or song may not fall under the ‘Christian’ genres. I’m not saying go out and listen to whatever music you want to regardless of it’s message etc. Use wisdom. But don’t limit yourself musically just because the band or artist may not be ‘Christian’.
To be creative we need to feed our creativity. And listening is one of the best ways of doing this. Limiting yourselves to only certain styles/bands/influences is kind of like a painter limiting him or herself to only one color. Yes the painter can be creative with that one color, but how much more creative can that painter be if they have a pallet full of colors with different shades and tones? How much more creative as musician can we be if we don’t limit ourselves to just one color/style/influence but have a great understanding of all styles and the tones, colours, rhythms etc that accompany them.
So what should we listen to when pulling a song to bits and analysing it? Well for one that depends on what we want to learn from that song. But for starters try analysing the instrument that best relates to you and try to think about these things in relation to your instrument.
1/ What tone or tones are they using?
– How does the tone fit within the style of the song?
– How are they producing this sound and how can i replicate it?
2/ How are they layering the sound?
– Are they using more than one sound?
3/ What effects are they using and why?
– How are they manipulating these effects in realtime?
– How can i incorporate some of these effects into my ’sound’?
– Delays, Filters (e.g. low pass filters), Reverb, Overdrive etc
4/ What kind of rhythms and riffs (parts) are they using and why?
– Are these riffs clashing with the other musicians parts and/or melody?
– Are these riffs leaving room for the other musicians and melody? If so how?
5/ What are they doing to build the song dynamically?
– Are they using the about 4 things: Effects, Tone, Layering, Rhythms & Riffs to do this?
– How can I learn from this and incorporate it into my playing.
Those are just a few things to get you started, I’m sure you can think of more, but that’s more than a good starting point.
As a musician wanting to continue growing and learning I’m always looking out for new bands and influences to help with this. I thought it’d be helpful if I listed a few of my own personal influences. Most of these bands have influenced Hillsong United and our ‘Sound’ as well by the way. Obviously there are more than just these, but these are a few of the main ones that I thought of:
Delirious
Passion Pit
Sigur Ros
Radiohead
M83
Keane
The Killers
Phoenix
Athlete
Anyways, I hope that helps and gets you all pumped to get even deeper into the world of listening!
Pete James
dustinpead.wordpress.com 