I fail all the time trying to best make my instrument fit the music. The weird thing is that a lot of the time the stuff that sounds best in the mix would sound terrible if it was isolated on its own. For instance, the other night I was playing a set, and we were in a ‘jam drive’ part right before the last chorus. And I hit on these two notes up on the neck and just started driving them. And those two notes sounded better over the chord progression that was going on and over what was happening rhythmically than anything I had played yet that night.
So of course, all of a sudden, my brain starts screaming to me, ‘Play something else! It’s getting boring! You look like you don’t know how to play guitar! Just two notes? Come on!’ and all the other things my pride tells me. And luckily, this time I stuck on the two notes. Many times I don’t, and fail. Now, not that two notes are always better than three, but at that time, for that song, played that way, they were. And that was what was best for the music. Now, if that service had been recorded and you were to isolate my guitar channel, it probably would have sounded terrible…..but it’s about the music as a whole. It’s definitely an art to find out what to play to create your piece of the whole music.
And to illustrate that, this video will just blow my words away. Watch as when the first pieces of the music start, you’re like, ‘What in sweet mercy? This sounds terrible.’ And by the end, you realize that if the pieces had stood on their own better, the end result of all the pieces together would not have sounded so good.
Sometimes I wish I were him…..without the awkwardness.
Splendid.
Karl.
Guitar for Worship 