Do you pick a style or does it pick you?

Subject: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: GUEST,irishajo
Date: 07 May 02 - 08:59 AM

Got a lot of good thought-provoking responses to my question about training and the 'soul' of music.

One question that came to mind was this:

Should a musician try to find a style that suits their abilities or try to modify/enhance their talents to fit a particular style? For example, I'd love to sing the blues but with my voice I don't think I could ever pull it off. How much are musicians constricted by things like that?

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: GUEST,Mike Billo
Date: 07 May 02 - 09:37 AM

I've heard plenty of people singing the Blues that were totally uninhibited by the fact that their voices couldn't pull it off and yet they sure seemed to be enjoying what they were doing .

Why pursue a musical style if it doesn't appeal to you?

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 07 May 02 - 09:44 AM

I think it's a circular thing where both things you describe happen in a dynamic tension always trying to resolve. That blues, for instance, WILL come out of you one way or another, if it's in you. It may burst out, or it may sneak out, peek out, leak out.... You just have to let it find its own way, and watch for it, and when you see it coming, encourage it and follow it. It will chase you till you realize you are chasing IT, and vice versa, at the same time!

I would say, start with how you sing in the car when you are by yourself. I betcha you are singing the blues sometimes. Well, let it rip from there....

ANyway what evolves is not your style, so much as your sound. At least that is what we are finding. We keep asking ourselves, "WHY is this working, this thing we do?" Because if you were to use logic, it shouldn't be working. So what is it we are doing that is letting it work? And so we continually discover and refine the characteristics of our sound and our music and everything about what we are doing. We chase and are chased, and every once in awhile we pause to catch our breath and look back and see what's been going on with a little hindsight.... then it's off into the future again!

These analytical pauses to assess what we are doing let us go forward into the future with intentionality.... they let us refine the implementation because for a time we know where we are going and what we are doing.... till the balance is upset again by new things wanting to come out of us, and then the chase, the mystery, the passion are renewed all over again.

For me, an important realization was that I am wired for partnership. I just do better with a partner. So hey, maybe we can do some blues sometime....

~Susan

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 07 May 02 - 10:41 AM

There's a fuzziness about the language being used here.

I believe that the blues is not a style. I think the better word would be "genre".

A singer/player, as I see it, develops a style, consciously or perhaps by default, that characterizes his work, whether he's playing blues or old ballads or American pops. That style is not "picked"; it happens as a result of various habits, small choices and avoidances, the timbre and range of his voice, abilities and/or inabilities. Such a style is inimitable, the sum of the singer/player's musical personality, as it were.

Someone in a recent thread gave a wonderful quote from Doc Watson, to the effect that "Style is what we do to compensate for our technical deficiencies." I KNOW that what I do on banjo and on guitar grows out of my efforts to compensate for my musical ignorance.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 07 May 02 - 11:00 AM

I'll repeat a quote I heard from a fine jazz guitarist, Sal Salvador: "A musician's style is the summation of his limitations." A jazz variant on Doc's statement. But, that tends to accentuate the negative. I think your style grows naturally out of the music that you've listened to and sang(or played) along with all of your life. That's why styles are so idosyncratic. No one else has the same ingredients as you do. When you ask people who their influences are (and they're not trying to be terminally clever) it's amazing to hear how broad a range of music many people love. There's a little bit of the Penguins and the Five Satins in my style, mixed in with Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, Doc Watson, Clarence Ashley, The Staples Singers, The Swan Silvertones, Elvis and Johnny Cash, Don Williams, Steve Earle, Clancy Hayes, Lonnie Donnegan and dozens more. Mix it all together and that's my style. There may be a good separate thread there..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 May 02 - 12:59 PM

I think it picked me.

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 07 May 02 - 01:18 PM

I'm reminded of John Renbourn's quote from the "Sweet Child" liner: "I started off trying to play like Big Bill Broonzy and I'm still trying".

I started off trying to play like Bert Jansch and I still do some of his stuff, in pure clawhammer. Funnily enough, none of the songs I've written use that finger style, same with the traditional songs I do, so, in the course of working out my own songs/trad arrangements, I've definitely developed my own style, well away from where I first started.

And I can still get blown away by people strumming G, C and D! B*st*rds! (*BG*).

Pete

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 07 May 02 - 03:09 PM

It you try to pick a style it'll bite you. At best you'll sound like a poor imitation of someone else.

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: 53
Date: 07 May 02 - 03:16 PM

I think that a style picks you. When you first learn to play or sing your style just seems to evolve from your music and you really can't change the way it will go. Bob

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 07 May 02 - 03:26 PM

Gotta agree with Bob. When I first started, I was OBSESSED with bluegrass and country blues, but as the skills started to come it just evolved into WHO I was with elements of WHAT I loved. You can't BE part of a rural tradition if you've grown up in a Northern City....but you can absorb a lot of it.

Rick

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 May 02 - 03:41 PM

I think the distinction between style and genre is an important one.

One of the worst things that an aspiring writer can do is to try to consciously develop a "style." The writing invariably winds up choked and stilted. This is a real hazard in university creative writing departments, where some really crappy writing gets done. The best writing is usually done by those who just sit down and write. People who simply write a lot without worrying about style do inevitably develop a style. But it's one that's uniquely their own—which, eventually, other writers may try to imitate. The best way to develop a style is not to try. Read the kind of things that you like. Read a lot. And write what you want to write. Write a lot. But don't try to force your writing into any preconceived mold, just let it flow.

I think music is the same. Listen to a lot of the kind of music that you like and that you want to do. Then, play and sing a lot. The right style—your style—will just happen. You pick the genre. The style picks you.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: GUEST,irishajo
Date: 07 May 02 - 03:47 PM

Thanks Don, for the eloquent clarification. I like the writing analogy, as I once had aspirations in the area.

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Celtic Soul
Date: 07 May 02 - 06:13 PM

The styles I love the most I am not capable of imitating. Grace Griffith is my hero, but I couldn't "do" her if I tried (no comments, Spaw) ;D

I could sing opera if I wanted (and have been approached to do so on more than one occasion by those representing opera companies locally), but opera just aint my thang. So, I compromise. I use what I have in ways that make me happy, and thus far, no ones complaining too hard that I should shut up (at least not to my face). :D

I think that, in a perfect world, your voice would match your personal tastes, but that is not how it works. Best anyone can do is to work as best they can with what they have.

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: CarolC
Date: 07 May 02 - 06:23 PM

I've been finding that whatever style I use is more an extention of some inner sort of thing that expresses itself through the way I play than any attempt to cultivate a style.

It's kind of interesting, too, to find out what I've got in me to be expressed musically. Sometimes it quite takes me by surprise. (Usually a pleasant surprise though.) Seems like I just never know what I'm going to do next.

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Jim Krause
Date: 07 May 02 - 07:26 PM

I didn't exactly pick a style. I have gone through phases where I wanted to be a bluegrass superpicker. I went through a phase when I really loved that southern California/Bakersfield sound in country music, which quickly turned into a passion for the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Pure Prairie League, and a little known group called Mason Proffitt.

All the while I was discovering guitar pickers and songsters like Blind Willie McTell, Mississippi John Hurt, and Blind Blake.

I blush to admit it, but I also used to love John Denver's recordings. I think it was his backup band partly, and also the way he put some of his songs accross in the early days. Along with Denver were other songwriters like Ian Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, John Prine, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and later Bill Staines.

So now somewhere there is this old-time Appalachian stringband stuff that is yet another layer on top of all that. Style? Man, I don't think I have a style as much as I have different kinds of music that I like. Somehow it all comes accross and I guess it works in performance. I didn't set out to create a style, or even copy one. I just do the stuff I like, and hope for the best.
Jim

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: irishajo
Date: 07 May 02 - 07:53 PM

I guess genre is what I meant as opposed to style, then.

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 02 - 09:56 PM

I have sucked up a dozen genres and three score personal styles into my head over the years, I reckon; the parts that stay with me, hat come back out through the filters of my own invention, with my own quirks and dostprtions, constitute my own style. It has been touched by Dyer Bennet, Leadbelly, Frank Warner, and a lot of people in betweenn including Buffy and even the Momma's and the Poppas, plus a couple of cups of 1950's era doo-wop and some Fats Waller and jugband music thrown in for seasoning. Broonzy is in there back to back with Mahalia and Momma Cass and Mister Ochs and Mister Zimmerman. But ... well, what comes out is pretty much my own melange,I guess. And there are a lot of pieces I never took on board, and wouldn't even try to do on a bet. So I guess developing a style is a case of what Nietzche called elective affinities.

A

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: khandu
Date: 07 May 02 - 11:52 PM

As I learned to play my instrument, I became adept at playing various styles of others. But these were not my "style".

My "style" and I are one. It is the natural expression of who I am. I did not choose the tonal qualities of my normal speaking voice, my eye color, my tempermant, nor did I choose my "style". It is just me.

Other musicians have influenced my music, just as my family and freinds have influenced my outlook. However, as I am who I am, so is my "style".

I love the responses that have been posted here. Very interesting look into the minds of musicians!

khandu

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 May 02 - 11:40 AM

I'm a good example of this. If I could sing opera, no doubt I would, because I love the tonal qualities of blended voices, especially when I don't know the language.

However, practically the only thing my voice will do, besides straight country, is the Appalachian sound, which I was first exposed to in my early teens when my family moved to Virginia. Luckily for me, I resonate strongly to that sound and love to hear it as well as sing it.

But no one's going to sit still while I sing most of the standards of the day!

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Celtic Soul
Date: 08 May 02 - 10:12 PM

Hey, Ebbie...sounds like you and I should trade. :D

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Deckman
Date: 08 May 02 - 10:29 PM

In answer to Jim Krause ... I also am a HUGE John Denver fan. But I don't feel it is any reason to feel embarassed! I think he was extremely talented and his music spoke (still does) to me. I still remember when I dared to sing "Poems, Prayers and Promises" at a concert sponsored by the Seattle Folklore groupies. I was just about run out of town on a rail. Heck, I was diss-invited (is that a word?) from the Seattle Song Circle! As for style, you do what you feel you do well. I don't feel that I'm a blues man, yet a do a couple, very well, I think. Going again to Jim's comments ... I think when we are young, and we don't know ourselves very well, we tend to emulate someone's style. That's fine. That's how we learn out skills. Today, at the age of 65, and damned proud of it, it's the MATERIAL that speaks to me. I still love John Denvers material. CHEERS, Bob

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Bobert
Date: 08 May 02 - 10:40 PM

I think as musicans we all like a certain sound and then we attempt to repeat it. Those without the gift (or curse) do it well and can imitate note for note what they hear (i.e. cover bands). Then there are the rest of us who think we're imitating but something happens in the process of processing the information and it doesn't come out the way we THOUGHT we heard it. This is one's style. Like to me David Wilcox is just like James Taylor or whomever it is...) and not interesting but when I hear Patti Griffin? Well, yeah, she is influenced by (fill in the blank) but she has her own style. I like to think of that as the artistic part of music. Being able to dive into a big pool and make one's own waves.

There, living proff that the Bobert just doesn't talk peace and love.... but.... hark! Music. Where's DougR?

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 May 02 - 10:44 PM

OK, Celtic Soul! Now, how do we go about it??

Seriously, I do envy you your ability to sing opera. Not that I've agonized over it- never got close enough to the capability that I ever tried.

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Amos
Date: 09 May 02 - 09:05 AM

CS:

From what I've heard you are doing exactly the right thing!!

A

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Celtic Soul
Date: 09 May 02 - 08:09 PM

Wow, Amos...thanks so much, really! I'll say again, that means so much coming from another 'Catter. I really look up to the lot of you here...you have amassed so much knowledge, experience, and expertise. I do love what I do, for sure, but there are times I wish I had a more "folkie" sound.

Unfortunately, Ebbie, I think we are both stuck. Guess we all have to take the hand we were dealt and run with it.

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Stephen L. Rich
Date: 10 May 02 - 01:53 AM

Q: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?

A: Yes.

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: Jim Krause
Date: 10 May 02 - 03:13 PM

Deckman,

I still sing one or two of Denver's songs, albeit some little known ones for example Around and Around. It was recorded on his LP Poems, Prayers & Promises. I usually sing this one to myself when I'm all alone in the house. It brings back memories of a certain Someone, as most of Denver's songs do.
Jim

Subject: RE: Do you pick a style or does it pick you?
From: GUEST,Dora
Date: 10 May 02 - 06:58 PM

Just do it.I know that for many reverent folkies it's hard to do,but the thing you must remember about music is that making it your own is the only way to keeping it good.Don't say "I'll play blues" or "I'll play rock" or whatever,just play.Especially in playing traditional stuff,the secret for me is doing them my own way,which comes after many many years of listening different people doing it different ways,but when I'm playing I don't think about them.I just play.I channel them.I mix 'em up to fit my size.I ignore them.I remember them. Okay the way I way I write makes me seem like a wonderful singer,I'm not.I'm just good.:-)and I don't do that consciously (sp),it just happens.