Captain Beefheart's various guitarists, especially the divine Bill Harkleroad and Jeff Cotton, played some of the most memorable guitar parts in rock history. The blend of blues, counterpoint, syncopation, dissonance, and distorted timbres on "Trout Mask Replica" is an essential frame of reference for many artists. Any time you hear a rock band where the guitarists are working on rhythms, overdriven rather than high-gain distortion tones, counterpoint, dissonance, etc. rather than speed-based fluidity, there's a pretty good chance they have been listening to the Captain and his various Magic Bands.
I'm not going to get into the issues of authorship of Captain Beefheart's compositions here, but I will say this--
1. All of the musicians deserve a lot of the credit for Beefheart's sound, because of the hard work and creativity they brought to the music.
2. It seems likely to me that without Beefheart's irrational combination of self-confidence, willful perversity, ideas about combining elements of Bo Diddley, Chicago blues and free jazz, controlling personality, etc. none of that music would have ever happened.
So, I recognize the Captain's genius. It may or may not be possible to achieve results using his suggestions below. I like the idea of practicing in a traditional manner, but I am intrigued by his tips, so here they are!
(incidentally, one of the things that led me to doing these guitar instruction blogs was my plan to transcribe and analyze a lot of the guitar parts from the Trout Mask album. I've come to believe that this is a project which, at least in the short term, is not the best use of my time; I do have one interesting transcription I've done, though (Dali's Car). I hope to get to that project one day, but in the meantime I'd love to get feedback from anyone who is interested in transcriptions of Beefheart guitar, and who wouldn't be scared off by the prospect of paying for something like that. if anyone knows of any transcriptions online, please let me know also.)
| Captain Beefheart's Ten Commandments For Guitarists 1. LISTEN TO THE BIRDS. That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere. 2. YOUR GUITAR IS NOT REALLY A GUITAR. Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one. 3. PRACTICE IN FRONT OF A BUSH. Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn't shake, eat another piece of bread. 4. WALK WITH THE DEVIL. Old delta blues players referred to amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts demons and devils. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub. 5. IF YOU'RE GUILTY OF THINKING, YOU'RE OUT. If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing. 6. NEVER POINT YOUR GUITAR AT ANYONE. Your instrument has more power than lightning. Just hit a big chord, then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field. 7. ALWAYS CARRY YOUR CHURCH KEY. You must carry your key and use it when called upon. That's your part of the bargain. Like One String Sam. He was a Detroit street musician in the fifties who played a homemade instrument. His song "I Need A Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another church key holder is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty making you want to look up her dress to see how he's doing it. 8. DON'T WIPE THE SWEAT OFF YOUR INSTRUMENT. You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music. 9. KEEP YOUR GUITAR IN A DARK PLACE. When you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure to put a saucer of water in with it. 10. YOU GOTTA HAVE A HOOD FOR YOUR ENGINE. Wear a hat when you play and keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a wet paper towel around it to make it grow. |
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Suppose this should somehow go with David Fair's 'How to Play Guitar' . . . and if there's these two, there's gotta be a third out there somewhere, no?
ReplyDeletethanks for telling me about the david fair essay-- here it is.
ReplyDeleteHow to play Guitar
by David Fair
I taught myself to play guitar. It’s incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string father out by the tuning end it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That’s all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that’s pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you’d still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day.
Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But he thing to remember is it’s your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn’t have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same.
Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But that absurd. How could it be wrong? It’s your guitar and you’re the one playing it. It’s completely up to you to decide hoe it should sound. In fact I don’t tune by the sound at all. I wind the strings until they’re all about the same tightness. I highly recommend electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they don’t depend on body resonating for the sound so it doesn’t matter if you paint them. As also, if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic. Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls.
The first guitar I bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really doesn’t matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I’ve never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you’d feel pretty foolish holding one. That would affect your playing. The idea isn’t to feel foolish. The idea is to put a pick in one hand and a guitar in the other and with a tiny movement rule the world.
a DISCLAIMER from karl straub.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I am serious about the value of practicing, theory, etc., I am a fan of a lot of "outsider", unorthodox, "avant-garde" musicians too. I feel that if a musician is serious about music, he or she will put a lot of work into it. That is the crucial thing-- working hard to discover what you can do, and working hard to perfect and develop once you've discovered a musical idea. If you don't work hard, then knowledge of theory, traditional techniques, etc. will be of little use. I consider a lot of willfully unorthodox artists to be scammers, hiding their laziness behind a smokescreen of philosophy and pretentious bullshit. This being said, I'd say something very similar about a lot of conservative and orthodox musicians. While I definitely believe that traditional study, knowledge of note names and chords, etc. can often lead to rewarding results, so can the deliberate avoidance of traditional approaches. Both roads can also lead to boring cookie-cutter music. I'll say something here that needs to be said more often-- people that deliberately avoid learning music fundamentals and move into "rulebreaking" territory sometimes flatter themselves by believing that they're accomplishing something magical by eschewing tradition. Often, they are actually accomplishing stale results; their lack of historical knowledge has led to a lack of perspective. For the most part, the unorthodox artists that I love were very hard workers-- Sun Ra, Derek Bailey, and Eugene Chadbourne come to mind. In fact, these artists all had lots of technical and fundamental knowledge underpinning their experimental work. Chadbourne continues to break new ground while still knowing more about tradition and academic music knowledge than most people I've met.
This channel here has quite a few transcriptions... I think I heard awhile back that he/she was interested in transcribing all of Trout Mask & Lick My Decals eventually, but is seeking a publisher https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLftB2gYwhiFH1q8cbrltbK6t6S-u8Wvrr
ReplyDelete