What do Rod Stewart’s greatest hits, building an igloo and guitar playing have in common?
Dear Friends of the Guitar,
A few weeks ago, on a freezing Iowa Saturday morning my wife and children stumbled across a YouTube video on "How to build an Igloo."
"We can do that," I proclaimed confidently looking outside at oodles of snow falling from the gray sky. After our traditional hearty oatmeal breakfast and several quick cups of coffee, I bundled up and went out to our front yard to evaluate the situation.
What does this have to do with a guitar newsletter, you may rightfully ask? Well, let's just say that this project spoke to me in many ways, and I would like to use my first attempt at building an Igloo to draw parallels to learning, practicing, recording and being musically creative.
As a guitar teacher I am in a position of showing students how to do things "correctly." That is perfectly appropriate, and there are absolutely tried and true textbook approaches to learning all kinds of guitar related materials. Scale shapes, triads, arpeggios and chord inversions, melodic ideas and harmonic progressions, rhythms and various music genres can be explained and taught in a very logical and systematic step-by-step approach. Next, you apply this knowledge in a musical context. Lastly, you might even be inspired with an original idea for your own songwriting, composing or improvisational playing.
However, the reality of the learning process and musical growth of many famous musicians is quite different. There is a type of learning that happens when you are literally thrown into a situation that requires a "sink or swim" strategy. Legendary jazz musicians refer to this as "being thrown onto the bandstand." From a young age, you find yourself in front of a live audience performing with musicians you might not even know let alone have rehearsed with. Basically, anything can happen and the motto is: use your ears, find quickly what works and get through the tune as best you can. I am afraid that this type of learning is rather "old school." This is partly due to how most musicians today learn to play an instrument and whether or not they mature in an actual live music environment.
Unfortunately, I can't claim that I learned solely on the bandstand. Quite the contrary, I preferred the safe path of spending time with various method books and trying to thoroughly understand the material. Then I would apply it in a playing situation that I had control over. As a result, I still feel very uncomfortable in a live music situation especially if I don't know exactly what to expect.
Not knowing what to expect was exactly what confronted me with my igloo endeavor. First, without getting into too much detail, the "by the book" method to building an igloo is to design it in a spiral manner, increasing the height of the blocks as you go along, and continuously shaving off the inside edges of the snow blocks. This enables you to stack the next row of blocks so the wall starts leaning inwards towards the center of the design. This all looked totally doable in the YouTube tutorial, but in real life, things took a different twist.
The temporary weather opening I had became my bandstand, and I was forced to build quickly and intuitively with whatever tools I had. However, we did not have enough new packing snow that I could actually saw out large blocks like the Canadian tutorial. Geared up as if I was late to join a Mt. Everest expedition, I found various milk crates and half broken plastic storage drawers that I could use to shape the snow into bricks. Once the building began, I was forced to improvise. Oddly, my eagerness to build an igloo flew right into the face of doing things by the book. The bandstand!
However, "We can do this" turned out to be my best decision of last month. The igloo is standing, roof and all! Thanks goes out to my wife who firmly and repeatedly reminded me to keep sawing off the snow blocks as I went. She even let me borrow her trusty all-purpose kitchen knife for cutting out the entrance of the structure! My kids now have a one-of-a-kind outdoor playroom, and I feel pretty good about myself for just going for it and not letting the German inside of me overthink it too much.
What really took me by surprise is the feedback I got from strangers. Every weekend while I was out there shoveling up fresh white powder, I would enjoy dozens of smiles, thumbs ups, honks, quick inquires and even passerby's taking photos and selfies. We even received a hand written letter in the mail from a neighbor telling us how much he liked to drive by our place and see the evolving project! I had no idea that my impulse to build an igloo would turn out to be a blessing to others.
Similar to my igloo project, many musicians during the process of songwriting, playing live or recording also experience going into a project with a rough idea, but then the unexpected happens. Perhaps it is simply that reality strikes, and all your textbook knowledge goes out the window. Then it's high time to adjust and see what will work in that moment.
A simple example for guitar players is the unfortunate event of breaking a string right in the middle of your guitar solo. Unless you have a roadie who can quickly toss you a different guitar, you will have to find a new way to play your solo. The odd thing is, if you can keep yourself from panicking and simply heighten your focus and concentration, you might end up playing the best notes of your life. The fact that all the scale runs, opening and endings licks that are ingrained in your muscle memory might not work anymore will require a complete new reaction. With a bit of luck, the result will be far better than what you initially were going for. That's learning on the bandstand.
Honestly, I am quite fascinated with this phenomenon. It's a paradox! Of course everyone would want to avoid any unnecessary stress during the creative process. The truth is, talented musicians of all sorts have undoubtedly created some amazing music under pressure in circumstances that are far from being in a controlled environment!
This is the case with Rod Stewart. In his autobiography, he described his memories of the many times he was on his way to the recording studio with no prepared songs whatsoever. Instead, he found himself utterly clueless in a taxi quickly jotting down some lyrics like a junior high school kid copying off late homework! Interestingly, most of his greatest hits were fashioned in this manner: on the spot, fast paced and under tremendous pressure. Fortunately, he always surrounded himself with superb musicians, producers and recording engineers that could deal with or perhaps even thrive off of all this uncertainty. Rod definetely also had a real knack for pairing his unique voice with some of the best guitar players in the field, such as Jeff Beck, Ronnie Wood, Steve Cropper, Joe Walsh and many others. A sense of spontaneity, honest emotions and pure life are often found in many of these risk-filled recordings. They are products of the school of the bandstand.
Often I wonder how fortunate I am that many of my favorite musicians or bands went ahead and released albums they probably weren't really convinced of. Thank goodness they changed their minds and went ahead with the risk of putting those recordings out there. In the case of Rod Stewart, he was never certain of what song he should pick as a single release and often needed coaxing. His Grammy nominated hit "Forever Young" is a great example of this:
"...I almost dumped the song before it could get to the album... and suddenly, the engineer, a guy called Steve McMillan, who had worked in dutiful silence throughout the entire project and had never offered an opinion on anything, ever, piped up and said, "I wouldn't get rid of that if I were you. It's the best song you've got." A momentary silence fell while we all gaped in amazement at the fact that Steve had actually said something. And then we listened to the track again and realized he was right. Some things you can plan; other things are down to serendipity” (Rod The Autobiography, 274).
In the spirit of serendipity during creative endeavors, this month's playlist highlights Rod Stewart's songwriting. Here's to wishing all of us the courage to be creative in bold ways and dare to share our works regardless of how we feel about them. Be sure to follow me on Facebook at chrisdimondguitar and Instagram chrisdimondguitarlessons to keep up with the latest igloo news and pictures!
Chris
