STAR LETTER
GO YOUR OWN WAY
What an inspiring and insightful interview with Gordon Giltrap in issue 492. I picked up the guitar again two years ago after last playing in 1970 when everyone thought they could be a rockstar. I have learnt more in the past two years about music and guitar than I ever knew existed back in the day. My two granddaughters, aged 10 and 14, are also learning and I think I agree with Gordon when I tell them to try to play your favourite songs how you feel they should sound and not exactly how your guitar heroes play them. That way you’ll be adding something to the music and not just copying it. Roy Pearson
Thanks for this, Roy, we completely agree – and even when we do try to imitate an existing musical style, we can’t help but introduce our own ideas, quirks and alterations that often change it into something new. A good example of that is ska (which later morphed into rocksteady and reggae) in 1950s Jamaica, which was in part an emulation of American R&B of the era. But instead of merely replicating the loping shuffle of US R&B tunes, ska fused R&B with calypso and mento influences and the rhythmic emphasis shifted towards the off-beat. And so a new, distinct and incredibly influential musical lineage was created.
So we can see from that example and others that both imitation and originality are important to the vitality of music. We might perhaps say, though, that imitation without originality risks a lapse into cliché, whereas pure originality alone can yield masterpieces. Your thoughts on the subject win you this month’s Star Letter prize of some superb Vox headphones.