Tonight's Ramblings

I'm very interested in the way some artists will create this very full song with all sorts of depth and different layers, and then others will create this thin layer of many parts woven together. Someone like Trent Reznor can create this whole world in a song; I remember reading about how on The Downward Spiral he didn't want it to be about the instruments as much as the song as a whole. He made an effort not to lean too heavily on synthesizers or guitars, instead wanting to focus more on creating the "texture and space". The Smashing Pumpkins would also create heavily layered songs; for example, the song Soma supposedly has around 40 guitar tracks.

 My limited experience with playing around recording music on garage band has given me a greater respect for artists that can really tone down their music and really simplify it. This is probably because I'm realizing how hard that really is to do. Whenever I've recorded something, I'd keep adding layers and more tracks and it would sound cool, but it felt like I needed to do that to make it work. I have quite a bit of respect for minimalist artists.

This next video is something that really amazes me. It is a studio jam session with all these amazingly talented musicians and yet none of them on their own are really playing much. For the most part they are all playing really tiny little parts that weave together perfectly. I also find it interesting to see Victor Wooten playing like that because he is such a talented bass player, most of the time you'll see him playing these wildly complex fast slap lines. His playing in this video is in a word; refreshing.

I've found that minimalism can mean many things when it comes to music. In the Studio Jams video, it refers to the construction of each individual part and how they merge into something more complex, but it is also taken in a more traditional sense.

Morphine was a very unique band in several aspects, one of which was that it was a three man rock band comprising of a saxophone player, a bass player, and a drummer. They played a sort of jazz-blues-rock, but probably the most unique thing was that the frontman, Mark Sandman played a bass with two strings using a slide.

The limitation of the two string bass to some might seem like a gimmick, or an extremely limiting technique, but reading about Mark reminded me of something Geddy Lee said about his unique bass playing technique. Geddy Lee has a very interesting technique; he plays with one index finger but achieves the attack of a pick. I heard somewhere that when he was younger he injured his finger and the nail grew back unusually thick, allowing him to get away with this style of playing. All that aside though, I recall an interview where Geddy Lee discussed the development of his technique, and he said that he started by limiting his right hand to only using one finger. This then caused him to experiment more in ways he wouldn't normally have played, because of that limitation. This concept of "forced creativity" is really interesting to me, and I'll definitely be looking for more examples of this in music.