Blog - occasional, random thoughts on music - November 2015
Accompanying other musicians
6.11.2015
One of the joys of making music is the pleasure to be got from playing with other musicians. I've done this all my musical life, from my earliest days of playing guitar. By chance a good friend of mine bought his first guitar at the same time as I bought mine, and we made our first tentative chords together. One of the great things about it was that, as we each learned something new by ourselves, we would then meet up and pass on to each other what we'd discovered. As I became more proficient, I started playing informally, and occasionally in public, with other guitarists. I was very lucky in that they were all, without exception much better and more experienced than me! I was doubly lucky in that they also had the ability to communicate what they did to me, and show endless patience at my never-ending questions. Two people have always stuck in my memory.
The first is a banjo player and guitarist from Lancaster (I was living there in the mid-'60s) called Mike Deighan. We struck up a friendship and formed a brief musical partnership before he moved down to London. He was (and I think still is) a superb musician and taught me a lot - not just about playing the guitar, but about music and musicians as well. He joined the Temperance Seven many years ago as their banjo player and still plays with them in spite of now being very deaf. He was also a great (and very funny) piss-taker, and one of my first educators in the art of the banter that passes between musicians.
The second was a guitarist called Mick Wayne who, alas, sadly died of asphyxiation in a fire in his USA apartment in the 1980s. His brother, through whom I met Mick - is still one of my oldest and dearest friends. Mick without doubt was one of the finest guitarists I've ever known or heard. He was born and brought up in Kingston-upon-Thames, of the generation of the Stones, Yardbirds, etc., and played with people like David Bowie and Joe Cocker. (His guitar work can be heard all over Bowie's "Space Oddity", for which he was paid £10). I played with Mick on several occasions and, though I was always in awe of him, he was one of those wonderfully inclusive players who welcomed you in, encouraged you and almost enticed you to do things you thought you could never do. A great man, and I was utterly upset when he died.
Since those early days, I've played in a variety of bands and duos, and accompanied other musicians from concertina players to mandolin players, dobro players and fiddle players. I've learned something from every one of those experiences - not least how to interact with other people at a personal level - and certainly how to adapt my playing to accommodate and mesh with their playing.
Highly recommended!
6.11.2015
One of the joys of making music is the pleasure to be got from playing with other musicians. I've done this all my musical life, from my earliest days of playing guitar. By chance a good friend of mine bought his first guitar at the same time as I bought mine, and we made our first tentative chords together. One of the great things about it was that, as we each learned something new by ourselves, we would then meet up and pass on to each other what we'd discovered. As I became more proficient, I started playing informally, and occasionally in public, with other guitarists. I was very lucky in that they were all, without exception much better and more experienced than me! I was doubly lucky in that they also had the ability to communicate what they did to me, and show endless patience at my never-ending questions. Two people have always stuck in my memory.
The first is a banjo player and guitarist from Lancaster (I was living there in the mid-'60s) called Mike Deighan. We struck up a friendship and formed a brief musical partnership before he moved down to London. He was (and I think still is) a superb musician and taught me a lot - not just about playing the guitar, but about music and musicians as well. He joined the Temperance Seven many years ago as their banjo player and still plays with them in spite of now being very deaf. He was also a great (and very funny) piss-taker, and one of my first educators in the art of the banter that passes between musicians.
The second was a guitarist called Mick Wayne who, alas, sadly died of asphyxiation in a fire in his USA apartment in the 1980s. His brother, through whom I met Mick - is still one of my oldest and dearest friends. Mick without doubt was one of the finest guitarists I've ever known or heard. He was born and brought up in Kingston-upon-Thames, of the generation of the Stones, Yardbirds, etc., and played with people like David Bowie and Joe Cocker. (His guitar work can be heard all over Bowie's "Space Oddity", for which he was paid £10). I played with Mick on several occasions and, though I was always in awe of him, he was one of those wonderfully inclusive players who welcomed you in, encouraged you and almost enticed you to do things you thought you could never do. A great man, and I was utterly upset when he died.
Since those early days, I've played in a variety of bands and duos, and accompanied other musicians from concertina players to mandolin players, dobro players and fiddle players. I've learned something from every one of those experiences - not least how to interact with other people at a personal level - and certainly how to adapt my playing to accommodate and mesh with their playing.
Highly recommended!