For any artist to answer this question, it requires some serious choices to be made....and no teacher can ever make them for you. For me, I’ve had to look at the person that I am and the person that I am not. When I’m writing my own music, I want it to reflect who I am. When I was much younger, I was enthralled with the music of rock bands like Van Halen, Whitesnake, Bon Jovi...etc. While I still love that music and it brings back a lot of memories when I hear it, I would have a hard time walking out on stage and portraying that image. I’m certainly not the same person I was 15 years ago, and my tastes have changed in all areas of my life. I spent a long period of time when I was younger lifting riffs and solos from these records, and it benefited my playing immensely in terms of progressing technically and having a better sense of rhythm and musicality. I can still shift gears and play that kind of stuff, but when I’m writing for one of my own records... I want it to be as honest as possible.
Writing music for yourself is one thing, but writing music to make a living is also another whole dilemma. Not only must you contend with making music to please yourself, you must also make a choice as to how far you are willing to go to please other people as well. There are many artists out there right now who make millions of dollars every year and many of them have never undergone any musical training for an extended period of time. For musicians who have not achieved this level of success... it can be frustrating and discouraging. No matter how harmonically or rhythmically sophisticated or how technically gifted a player or writer is, when someone else hears their music, they are still entitled to like it or dislike it. I can say that having studied music for so long, it is a really hard thing to deal with criticism from other people....and everyone’s a critic...lol. While I might be conscious of the reason why I wrote a song the way I did and I believe that every note I chose has a unique purpose....that doesn’t necessarily mean anything to the listener. On the other hand, with my knowledge of music, I can listen to someone else who’s technique is stunning, their ideas are brilliant, their execution flawless...but still the music lover in me is not inspired by it because I felt there was a lack of emotion behind it. Putting this into perspective when I receive...
