There can be times when as a musician you get tired of the stuff you are playing, and you may echo the cry of Iggy Pop in 1979, and a decade earlier by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, “I’m bored!” What to do if you need inspiration to progress with your music? I typed ‘inspiration for musicians’ into Google and was amazed by the number and range of pages my query produced. If you’re suffering from musical boredom, do this search for yourself. Everything is out there on the Net, from full-length interviews to brief checklists of things to do. Many of these ideas come from professional musicians, teachers and advisers. As a rank amateur picker and singer I’ve developed by trial and error some practical strategies to keep me going until the clouds roll away and new inspiration strikes.
The first thing is to listen. I remember the guitarist in one of the early bands I played in saying “I’m trying to work out why we don’t sound much like Flatt and Scruggs!” We had to listen very carefully to Lester and Earl and then, with great embarrassment, to some of our own recordings, to get a clue as to what might be wrong! I remember one of the things we picked up was that our playing was lacking bounce. Singing in tune and finding interesting harmonies were also high on the list. The point was that we had to focus and work to improve. We were never going to be top professionals, but we had the satisfaction of being able to spot some fundamental flaws and do something about it. And our audiences noticed the difference. This is how I’ve kept up interest as an amateur musician over the years.
You can get stuck in the same groove for too long. A solution for me has been to explore a wider range of music, much of which I have come to love. For decades I have listened to what might loosely be called traditional jazz. King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band with Louis Armstrong and Johnny Dodds has become one of the high peaks of my musical experience among many others. You absorb the sounds and somehow or other they inspire you to play better yourself in a different kind of music. I’ve been fascinated by the musical blog of a fellow Brit who uses the name Pops Coffee and enthuses about traditional jazz at http://playing-traditional-jazz.blogspot.com/ His encyclopaedic website has 610 (!) separate pages about individual tunes, chord sequences and enthusiastic but critical assessments of some wonderful music and how to play it. Some of these pages have now been converted into books published by Amazon, and are very reasonably priced, in fact a real bargain. So much of what Pops Coffee writes is very relevant to bluegrass and old time music, indeed to any kind of non-classical improvised music. Have a look at his ‘Playing Traditional Jazz’ for lots of practical tips. I have read it from cover to cover.
A thoughtful gift from my son some years back was ‘Kenny Hall’s Music Book’ by Vykki Mende Gray and Kenny Hall. This has become a mainstay for me. It covers a vast range of music, all transcribed by Vykki and with Kenny’s detailed comments on every tune, including where and when he learned them and how he plays them. If ever I need inspiration for something to play I reach for this book and before I know what’s happening I’m exploring a new tune and chuckling at another of Kenny’s stories.
If all else fails, just sit down with your instrument and play something straight out of your head. Anything, it doesn’t matter – old tunes you heard and enjoyed years ago, hymns from church (which reminds me that there is a vast Sacred Harp repertoire), all the Christmas songs and carols, in fact anything you can sing or hum. Find the notes on your fingerboard, try different keys, work out some chords and double stops (where do you think Don Reno got the arrangements for his sacred and ‘heart’ songs?). Before you know it you will have improved your knowledge of the fingerboard, you will have a new tune to play and to perfect, and boredom will be a thing of the past. Enjoy your music!
