September 14, 2022
As a musician, as a guitarist, if you achieve a technical perfection, or even a very good playing technique, you must start to break that perfection somehow. You must use your technical playing skills to make your playing depart from the impression of perfection. You must not adjust to perfection. You must rebel against perfection.
You must not make yourself a cage, where you are isolated from life and other people by showing them your perfection as a player and seducing your audience to admire your skills.
So much more interesting is your ability and courage to express emotions through music, through your playing. That means also expressing, showing and allowing imperfection in music.
For example, in guitar playing you can break the impression of perfection by concentrating on variations for the sound of every note you play. You can make every note to sing differently. Jeff Beck does that.
Another way for bringing imperfection to music is to violate the conventions of scales and typical chord progressions. Allan Holdsworth does that while maintaining a masterful playing technique, that someone might describe as really, absolutely, undeniably “perfect”.
You can go even further away from conventional conceptions of scales and chords. You can concentrate only on melodies and unusual chords, that are independent from any scale or key signature. You can purposefully make mistakes and pursue imperfection that way. I’m interested in this concept. I’m developing this idea further. This is also a concept for improvisation.
Perfection is isolation. By avoiding perfection, you create and maintain connection.
This idea could be applied to other areas of art as well.
Sincerely,
Sam Kris
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