Life is odd

[4 Cat Slim]

musicians play music, guys who work in record stores put records in genres

True, that. I'm always a little wary when somebody wants to get together to play and
are a little too explicit in telling me about their influences. Dude, play music.
And play guitar, not lead guitar or rhythm guitar. Thank you...

 

[Fendereedo]

You'll get to a stage where you don't play anything that you actually listen to, and possibly beyond. Explore the guitar with passion and love, it's not just a one trick pony. Peace and enjoy. ✌

 

[Hodgo88]

"You are under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago" - Alan Watts

 

[bottlenecker]

Dad bands are mocked pretty regular but middle aged guys should probably never play thrash and death metal.

All the people who started thrash and death metal are past middle age. Young people should play something new instead of that old stuff.

 

[0SubSeanik0]

I never hitched my self-identity to the music I like to listen to or play (even in HS where that kind of thing was prevalent). The notion of music as fashion has always struck me as absurd, but as a fellow human, I'm not immune to that either.

Case in point, I was always repulsed by most country/western... but when I picked up my tele for the first time and started noodling around (following the sounds coming out of it), a country lick I never, ever played before just kind of found its way through my fingers, through the guitar, and out into the air. It was like the musical gods were reminding me that styles, genres, etc., were just made up labelling so we can communicate to each other in short-hand... but they aren't walls. It's just music, and moreover it's all just music.

I still look to that moment of humility to inform my musical wanderings, and that has exponentially multiplied the fun of it (it hasn't made me any better of a player, though).

(On the flip side, I do have one a hell of a time describing to people what it is that I like to play, lol).

 

[Sgt Pepper]

All the people who started thrash and death metal are past middle age. Young people should play something new instead of that old stuff.

Metal in general, imo, and especially thrash metal and whatever sub genre, is driven by teenage angst and mostly teenage males. I guess some teenagers never have it and are always totally happy but I'm pretty sure most teen males have that loathing angst going on, and so angry music appeals to them. I mean, check out a thrash and death metal concert. Mostly teenage and early 20's male, though of course there are some older, male and female too. Most people grow out of it. I guess some never do.

Some may be cereal killers

 

[Ben Bishop]

Music is a river and a few bays and narrows have names. Blues on the country side, Jazz on the city side. Or There's Perry Como and Doris Day, there's Carl Perkins and Big Mama Thornton. It's all music. I saw the obit for Robert Gordon recently. Originally spotted playing punk at CBGBs, got a contract, ended up working with Link Wray and moving to rockabilly. Punk or rockabilly, just plug in and play. Try playing a Neil Young tune and you'll appreciate it more. Finger pick it or thrash it. It's all music.

 

[bottlenecker]

Metal in general, imo, and especially thrash metal and whatever sub genre, is driven by teenage angst and mostly teenage males. I guess some teenagers never have it and are always totally happy but I'm pretty sure most teen males have that loathing angst going on, and so angry music appeals to them. I mean, check out a thrash and death metal concert. Mostly teenage and early 20's male, though of course there are some older, male and female too. Most people grow out of it. I guess some never do.

Some may be cereal killers

I liked metal when I was a teenager, but the people who created it were grown adults. I did create some as a teenager, but the bands I listened to and saw perform, like sepultura, voivod, kreator, death, exodus, s.t., not to mention the hardcore and punk bands, were all adult people.
Many of them still perform the music they created. I don't listen to metal today, except for voivod, but that doesn't mean it's a teenage phase for everyone. That's just what it means to you.
My teenage years were in the 80s, almost 40 years ago. So it is old people music. Teenagers have come up with plenty of ways to express angst, it doesn't have to be metal.

 

[Rustbucket]

Sorry to hear about your rough patch. We all go through them and I’m sure you will do fine.

On a lighter note, perhaps a smooth transition such as this is in order:

 

[televillian]

the oddest thing about life is the way it ends

 

[aging_rocker]

You'll get to a stage where you don't play anything that you actually listen to, and possibly beyond. Explore the guitar with passion and love, it's not just a one trick pony. Peace and enjoy. ✌

A lot (probably the majority...) of the music I listen to these days doesn't have much (if any) guitar in it.

But I still find the influences creeping into what I do with guitar, in subtle ways (timing, 'feel', note choices, etc.)

We absorb musical 'things' subconsciously all the time, I think, and they re-appear in strange and unpredictable ways (the 'where the fk did that note/rhythm/phrase/noise come from?' moments that happen when noodling away)

It's a never-ending journey.

 

[Refugee]

Canned Laughter ruined a funny skit.

Remember these?

 

[Skydog1010]

Speaking as another old geezer I can tell you that your interests will come in cycles and varying intensities over your lifetime.

Amen!

 

[39martind18]

Just don't pick up a banjo.

Perhaps re-visit the roots of your music. Motorhead, Sabbath, etc

I don't know- Death Metal banjo might be interesting...

 

[Fiesta Red]

My covers band is doing some stuff at the moment that I would never listen to without a gun to my head. Everything from disco to metal and back again via mainstream pop. Don't like any of it.

But playing it is a different experience. You learn a lot - and you learn to appreciate what goes into stuff that you would normally run a mile from.

I hate having my mind opened. But sometimes I need it.

I can relate to this, with one difference:

About ten years ago, I quit playing songs I don’t like.

For years, I was the “fill in the blanks” dude…I’d play the odd little flourishes and riffs that would make the song more complete (this was part of the reason my signal chain got so complicated and convoluted for a while—making sure I had enough effects to cop the sound/spirit of the original song). I had to work hard to do this—as an uneducated, mostly-self-taught guitarist/harmonica player, I don’t have a big bag of theory and chord structure to dig into; I just had to jack around with the song(s) until I found an acceptable groove.

While this led to me becoming more adept at picking apart a song and finding a niche within it that matched my style, I learned a lot of songs I downright detested. I refuse to do that anymore.

That doesn’t mean I won’t try something new or leave my comfort zone—I’ve adapted/arranged some pop songs to my style, sometimes with good results—but I won’t play (for example) “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” or “Honky Tonk Bedonkadonk” or “We Built This City” or “Do You Want To Know A Secret” or almost anything by The Beach Boys or Def Leppard, no matter how much the other band members or the audience wants to hear them, because I detest those songs.

Plus, they might not be able to hear the music itself over my own derision, embarrassment and the rolling of my eyes at the stupidity of the song.

I’ll meet the people halfway—I’ll be glad to learn and play a different or similar-but-not-stupid song by the artist—but I’m not going to waste what little free time I have or my (mental and physical) energy learning a song that makes me dive for the skip button if it comes on the radio, Spotify or whatever.

Having said that, I’ll play genres I’m less enamored of if the band sounds good playing it and I can stomach the song.

(On the flip side, I do have one a hell of a time describing to people what it is that I like to play, lol).

I’ve run into that problem, too…

I’m fortunate that I live in a geographical area (North Central Texas) that naturally mixes musical genres and allows for some “slop” within the styles.

It’s ok if you’re a blues guy that throws in some soul or country (Delbert McClinton) or a country guy that throws in some rock elements (Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson) or a rock guy that mixes all those things (ZZ Top) or an African-American who plays country and western (Charlie Pride, Charley Crockett) or whatever the heck Joe Ely, Ray Wylie Hubbard, the Texas Tornadoes or Storyville are/were doing.

You get the point.

So I grew up on country & western, Stax/Volt/Atlantic southern soul, jazz and 50’s/early 60’s rock and roll…

…and I ended up being a guy who plays mostly blues…

But with the added elements of outlaw country, singer/songwriter Americana and classic rock…more recently, garage rock stuff like Link Wray, Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, the Sir Douglas Quintet, etc., has crept in as well as some punky indie low-fi stuff like Ron Gallo, early Black Keys and White Stripes.

I hesitate to call my band a “Blues Band” because too many people immediately think, “Oh, a white guy playing ‘dunt da-dunt da dunt da-dunt’ 12-bar songs at 60 bpm all night long…”
Umm…no, that is a small segment of blues, but we don’t do that.

And I hesitate to call my band a “Country Band” because people will think, “Oh! Luke Combs and Little Big Town and Lady Antebellum.”
Ummm…no, and after I wipe my own puke off my boots I’ll explain Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash and Dwight Yoakum and Billy Joe Shaver…or I won’t, because you probably won’t get it.

If we say we’re a rock band, too many people expect the Foo Fighters or Nickelback…umm, no…we’re playing the Stones, Buddy Holly, the Arc Angels, etc.

So we call ourselves “Texas Roadhouse Music”—loosely defined as blues, outlaw country and classic rock…

If a blues audience shows up, we’ll skew that way…or a rock audience shows up, we’ll skew that direction…a country audience…well, you get it.

By the end of the night we are playing a bunch of songs of undefinable genres anyway, because they’re already happy and they’ll keep dancin’.

 

[cometazzi]

I liked metal when I was a teenager, but the people who created it were grown adults. I did create some as a teenager, but the bands I listened to and saw perform, like sepultura, voivod, kreator, death, exodus, s.t., not to mention the hardcore and punk bands, were all adult people.
Many of them still perform the music they created. I don't listen to metal today, except for voivod, but that doesn't mean it's a teenage phase for everyone. That's just what it means to you.
My teenage years were in the 80s, almost 40 years ago. So it is old people music. Teenagers have come up with plenty of ways to express angst, it doesn't have to be metal.

This is similar for me as well, though I was still in high school when the 'grunge' thing happened and everyone declared "metal is dead!" without making the distinction that it was Hair Metal that died, and Thrash was still going strong. I listened to some hardcore punk stuff along with my Big Four and NWOBHM. I thought Voivod was cool for covering Astronomy Domine and I bored the crap out of my friends by explaining its origin and the fate of its writer.

The grindcore of the 90s didn't do it for me, and most of today's metal is just too metal for me I guess. I don't think it's an age thing for me- I wouldn't have liked Cattle Decapitation when I was 14 either. That said, some of the metal bands I used to get into (i.e. Anthrax) just don't do it for me anymore and I don't know why. I'll take pre-Black Album Metallica in small doses. I still like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Megadeth and still listen to them regularly in phases. I also still listen to the huge world of stuff that Dad introduced to me from day one, the stuff we now call "classic rock" and "classic prog metal".



I don't even know what the cool kids are listening to these days. I don't have any kids and my niece and nephew (22 and 17) are already in "just listening to stuff I grew up with/no new music" mode. I turn on the radio and flip through and most of what I hear is bad 80s Radio Rock or autotuned electronic stuff.

I sometimes wonder if "guitar music" mostly died in the 90s and people are by and large just rehashing the good ole days before they pass out of living memory.

 

[Flaneur]

I don't feel guilty, or disloyal, for never listening to the music of my teenage years. Of course, I could easily go back to that stuff- it's not like music is a closed loop. The OP can drift as far from his roots as he wants to, with no penalty. One of life's wonderful pleasures.

 

[bottlenecker]

This is similar for me as well, though I was still in high school when the 'grunge' thing happened and everyone declared "metal is dead!" without making the distinction that it was Hair Metal that died, and Thrash was still going strong. I listened to some hardcore punk stuff along with my Big Four and NWOBHM. I thought Voivod was cool for covering Astronomy Domine and I bored the crap out of my friends by explaining its origin and the fate of its writer.

The grindcore of the 90s didn't do it for me, and most of today's metal is just too metal for me I guess. I don't think it's an age thing for me- I wouldn't have liked Cattle Decapitation when I was 14 either. That said, some of the metal bands I used to get into (i.e. Anthrax) just don't do it for me anymore and I don't know why. I'll take pre-Black Album Metallica in small doses. I still like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Megadeth and still listen to them regularly in phases. I also still listen to the huge world of stuff that Dad introduced to me from day one, the stuff we now call "classic rock" and "classic prog metal".



I don't even know what the cool kids are listening to these days. I don't have any kids and my niece and nephew (22 and 17) are already in "just listening to stuff I grew up with/no new music" mode. I turn on the radio and flip through and most of what I hear is bad 80s Radio Rock or autotuned electronic stuff.

I sometimes wonder if "guitar music" mostly died in the 90s and people are by and large just rehashing the good ole days before they pass out of living memory.

Thrash-related metal did die in the early 90s, as far as I'm concerned. I don't think grunge killed it. I think the black album started killing it, megadeth's response to the black album to get their own radio hit with a dumbed-down version of their own music helped, and then finally it was killed off by pantera, who made it into dumb meat-head redneck fake tough guy bragging music. It started seeming irrelevant and stupid, and then no one was doing anything interesting with it.
Nirvana just kicked it's corpse off the airwaves the way metallica kicked hair metal off.

I hated radio rock in the 90s. There were so many pearl jam soundalikes. To me grunge will always be Tad and Melvins, not Pearl Jam and bands like STP. I like to pretend grunge only existed in the late 80s, and then skip right to the good stuff from the 90s.

There was tons of great underground music in the 90s with a large variety. And for guitar fans, there was lots of stuff with real guitar sounds, not just distorted power chords and weedly weedly.
I really don't care if music is "guitar music", but when I do want to hear some guitar, rock doesn't do it for me. There has been no shortage of great guitar playing and sounds in my new music listening, but I haven't cared about mainstream commercial music for over 30 years. To me it feels like guitars have just sounded better and better since about 1995.

 

[johnny k]

Remember these?

my dad had the pink box! there is a small record inside, and there are 2 sides. One is the standard laugh, the other one is a slowed down laugh !

 

[Wrighty]

It's been a weird couple of months for me. That's why I haven't been around as much (if anyone cared or noticed).

Things have been going well for me professionally but my personal life has more or less tanked, which seeped into my musical life. Both playing and as a listener. I even took an unspoken hiatus from guitar, where I played maybe three times in about four months. But I've been playing consistently again recently, and I realized something that really made me think and question myself quite a bit.

I don't like playing death metal anymore.

I will always love death metal. I grew up on Nile and Suffocation, I'm wearing my new Majesties long sleeve as I type this out. But I have no desire to write death metal songs, learn them, play in death metal bands anymore. And I've been 'the death metal guy' for about half of my life. But that appeal is gone. I don't have the desire to work on my chops for hours on end anymore. It just feels too regimented, too strict. To do the things that'd keep my playing at a level that I can be proud of because as we all know, these skills atrophy without that repetition. I just want to have fun with music again.

I went back to my stoner/doom roots and have incorporated some alternative, shoegaze, Deftones-y vibes and completely rediscovered my love for playing. I can't wait to get home from work and plug in again. I'm even looking at selling some of my old death metal related gear to free up some space, maybe make another addition or two.

I don't really know why I wrote or posted this? Just kind of screaming out into the void, I guess. I still find this change to be kind of odd and sudden. I'm not exactly happy with how things are right now, but I can see them slowly getting better. Change can be good.

Well, whatever the deep seated psychological reasons for your epiphany, great news! I’ve never known a true musician who has given up music forever, though many just take an unplanned, unexpected break. At some point they realise something’s missing, and return to the fold. When there’s a change of direction you can never be sure whether that new found style has rekindled your love of playing or your deep seated love of playing needed a new challenge. Whatever the answer, welcome back!