Playing guitar - the end in itself or just the means? Which one are you?

Roland

When I was very young I wanted to play a polyphonic instrument because I was fascinated with harmony and counter melody. Guitar, harp, and piano were the only instruments I knew which could do that. We had neither space or money for a piano, and harps were only found at the end of the rainbow. It still took a few years before I acquired a guitar. Playing with other musicians allows me to play things  which solo playing doesn’t, and provides the added challenge of managing a show.

If I stopped gigging (heaven forbid) then I’d go back to playing fingerstyle, and learn a solo repertoire, or find a singer who needed accompanying.

digitalscream

Playing guitar is...just something I do. It's not something I do with any particular point in mind, but equally there's nothing I particularly want to achieve which involves "playing guitar" as a step along the way. It's just something I'm reasonably decent at, and that I like to do sometimes. Sometimes, I even like the noises I make.

For me, it ranks alongside playing Candy Crush when I'm bored and sitting at my computer. I try not to analyse it too much, to be honest.

I guess this sort of explains why my playing hasn't really moved on in the last 10 years or so

jeztone2

I’ve always loved playing the guitar. I had some mental health issues in recent years and it’s always been the best medicine. But playing to people in this country feels like a nightmare. Is it me, or has anyone else felt like this pre Covid? 

Ive recently after 30 years plus of playing in original bands started to think about joining a covers or tribute act. This is because of several factors.

1: I feel in no mans land musically. Most Original bands seem to either want a totally untechnical boring guitar player playing boring unchallenging parts (punk/landfill indie) or people want a total shredder (metal).

I am somewhere in the middle of this. I’m pretty good and have played everything from Post Punk to Desi Music. But the way popular music seems now, it’s all about simplicity for the sake of it. And frankly it bores the shit out of me. 

2: Pile em high 5-6 band bills.

Most promoters seem lazy to me. When I was 22 I played mainly 3 band bills with similar acts and people got decent sound checks. In recent years I’ve seen the arrival of the pile em high promoter. Half a dozen totally disparate bands on a bill with no sound check and usually an appalling sound quality. Which in turn puts people off going to see live music. Which leaves me to number 3.

3: The careerist Indie band who’s read a book on the industry and thinks being a c*** is a business model. 

The last gig I was about to play before lockdown featured a three band Bill at a midlands nightclub. The promoter had done a really good poster and online flyers. All the acts were of a similar genre, so I was looking forward to it. 

The headliner decided to contact the other two bands saying it was doing its own posters and wanted our logos in Black & White. 

In the end the stuff they produced had their band in a giant font and the other two bands in eight point font. It was comical. They didn’t use our logos either. Being as everyone was playing an hour onstage and they were from out of town, I think they were over egging it somewhat. 

The people that seem to enjoy gigging are doing covers and or tribute stuff. I wonder if because it’s usually a one band bill and two sets there’s less opportunity for really dumb ideas to occur???

DavidR

I just love playing and love guitars. I enjoy performing  (especially the applause) but it's such hard work! My ideal would be a small group of tolerant musicians with no egos who all enjoy the same things musically meeting once a week or thereabouts. Oh yes..and they would all play acoustics! All a big ask in my experience! So mostly I practice alone and record for friends and family.

Can't wait until my 20 month old granddaughter is old enough to learn! Hope she'll want to. Even now she enjoys bashing my resonator with a toy. I'm sure she played Stairway To Heaven the other day!     

viz

hollywoodrox said:

I love my music  and guitar is part of it  it has to be done 

Same. Music is my life. I play and listen to music because I need to; there’s no other purpose or objective. 

DrJazzTap

I play because it gives me a sense of peace. I'm sure it was gibson, they had an advert out years ago that was something like "2 minutes equals 2 hours". 

I've learnt recently that for me, playing with others really gets my creative juices flowing. 

Benm39

Predominantly for enjoyment and decompression/distraction from work life.  I mainly play piano (mostly classical) but over years have taught myself guitar.  During lockdown decided to really try and play better rather than just noodle half arsed bits of stuff. I like lots of genres but probably find fingerstyle acoustic most satisfying (and frustrating!), probably because it more closely resembles piano. Treated myself to a lovely acoustic last month and now thinking I should get a teacher and put more serious practice in. 

slacker

All of it.

Playing, bands, covers, originals, buying selling and modding gear. 

mike257

It's been both over the years, I guess. 

I'm a bassist by trade, but spent a lot of time playing original music in bands and guitar was a songwriting tool for me. My main driver to improve as a guitarist was to expand my writing - if I couldn't get something out that I wanted to achieve in a song, I'd figure out how to do it. Never really spent time learning other people's music, I just played to write. 

Years later, I ended up as a guitarist in a function band, learning and playing other people's songs for the first time since I was a teenager. Did wonders for my playing and appreciation of different styles as I was forced to study, learn and reproduce things I'd never previously taken an interest in. It was still more of a means than an end in itself - the end was "earn enough to get the bills paid"!

Nowadays I work in live production so my main musical output is mixing other people's playing. There's an electric, an acoustic and a bass all hanging up in the living room and I play them (nowhere near enough) for nothing other than my own enjoyment. I haven't played a gig professionally in nearly two years now. I miss the excitement of getting on stage with an instrument instead of a mixing console, but at 36, working in live events, and having young kids that still need lots of time and attention I don't see myself back in an original project at this point in my life. 

tone1

fastonebaz said:

Playing guitar is my mindfulness.  It freezes the thoughts in my brain for a while and fills my body with endorphins. This feeling i like crave and need. 

It’s this...^...Mrs tone1 said yesterday ‘can you play anything all the way through’? I thought...’shit, she’s right! No I can’t... but I just noodle away aimlessly. I think it’s the only time where I switch off and don’t think too much. That’s why I hate digital stuff with menus and usb IR’s and the like....I should probably jack it all in though 

blobb

it's vibrational energy, man.

Jamming with others makes it telepathic vibrational energy

Jamming along with Trio+ is where it's at for me at the moment. That's like synthetic telepathic vibrational energy.

so for me it's about energy. All those vibrations, speakers vibrate the air which vibrates my eardrums and massages my brain. I can happily just hit a chord and absorb the vibrations. It's possible to make those vibrations move dynamically with complexity and beauty and emotion. 

I've no desire to painstakingly work out songs or solos. I just want to convert electrical signals into vibrations and back into electrical signals and then move and control those vibrations to create atmosphere.

Rocker

In my family, playing music was and is a daily occurrence.  My late father played accordion as did most of my aunts and uncles.  My late paternal grandfather played a melodeon.  My late mother was a marvellous singer, I inherited a fraction of her vocal quality, most of which is gone now.

So from an early age, my sisters and I played accordion, my younger brother played drums.  Trad Irish music and old time waltzes.  It was only years later that I realized that the reason we played together as a group was to provide the backing for other people to dance.  The same thinking as the Kilfenora Ceidhle Band.  Dancing was the reason we played.  And one of the reasons I never learned to dance!  We played in barns for barn dances, in pubs and parish halls.  The lineup constantly varied but always had a few accordions, drums, violin and often a concert flute.  To broaden our sound, I learned to play the tin whistle, the mouthorgan and the fife.  I was reasonably capable on the accordion and qualified to play in the Leinster Fleadh Cheoil due to being runner up in our County Fleadh.  I did not like the competitive playing experience as it concentrated too much on technical details, details like ornamentation etc.  And the fact that the player became the focus of attention and not the tune.  There was no urge to dance to music arranged for competition.   Which defeated the purpose of playing music.

Fast forward to the end of my apprenticeship and I had progressed to guitar playing.  And Eke dreadnought with a [presumably] factory fitted single coil pickup between the neck and the sound hole.  Played through a small bass amp, I found that the guitar added to the overall sound of the band.  As I got better, I often got asked to stand in for sick guitarists in other pub bands.  I learned a few songs and before long I had evolved into an electric guitar player.  But my motto was to keep it as simple as possible and to blend in and add to the overall sound of the band.

Today I have a number of very fine guitars, all of which get played, and a bass which has become my main gigging instrument.  Back in the time when there were gigs.  I got an electronic piano to learn a few chords and music theory.  We all learned to play by ear, there were no music books or music teachers in rural Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s.  The music is and always was King and the reason we played.

I am not sure which category I fit into.  If I had not tried guitar, I would most likely still be playing accordion.  I get great enjoyment from playing music and listening to others play.  If they play as best they can and with feeling, I am impressed.  Their playing ability hardly matters if the music comes through.  I could sit and listen all night to my late aunt playing old time waltzes and marches.  Hence my low opinion of competitive playing on any instrument.  Play and if you put your heart into the song, someone will love it.  That idea got me to where I am now.

Bill_S

I love my guitars, and when it’s going well, playing is an end in itself. But primarily guitars are what I write songs on. I’m big into music technology, writing and recording songs, and guitar is a part of that. Wish I still gigged, but those days are in the past for me. 

TeleMaster

pintspiller said:

When I started I thought it would lead to rock stardom, chicks and money. It took six months to tune a guitar and string a couple of chords together. A year or more before everything sounded sort-of smooth. But EMI and CBS didn't come knocking on my door to release my songs.

I just wanted to play and join a band, gig, maybe release records.

These days I muck about in the house for my own amusement, and play bass in a cover band. The money I've gotten for gigs barely covers the cost of strings and fuel to rehearsals and gigs

Move into functions. 

adampeter

I love guitars probably more than I love playing them, and I love playing them
I would probably still buy guitars if I had no arms

SPECTRUM001

I started playing as a teenager and was lucky enough to be in a pro band for a short time in my twenties.

But I then fell out of love with playing, and didn’t really pick up a guitar for a good fifteen years. 

In 2017 I did a couple of numbers in my friends’ covers band, and completely got back into the groove. I am still pretty crap, but better than I was, and now far deeper immersed in sound and tone (I can and do happily spend an hour playing two chords).

So for me, it Is all about the Sonic love of the guitar. I also find them to be beautiful objects/concepts.

Not sure I would want it to be my livelihood though.

Litterick

I play to keep the vampires away.

jmf1928

It’s solidly both for me. As an outlet for just escaping and finding calm or flow or whatever that place is, there’s nothing better for me. That said, if all I do is play and don’t write/record, I begin to get antsy and feel like something is missing. I’d play no matter what, but there’s a part of me that feels compelled to channel it into output. 

jmf1928

Funkfingers said:

My main instrument is the recording studio. I need sources of noise to point microphones at.

Studio reverbs, effects, EQs, and comps are my personal weakness. If I had a live room, microphones would be an added vice for sure. I’m tempted by the new WA-87R2 & WA-67 despite being in an apartment lol. 

rossi

I get music buzzing round my head and also have ADHD sort of .I grab a guitar and play the song or lick .It just happens, mainly as I work at home .When I was employed I used to get music buzzing round my head and I  just killed people instead ...metaphorically of course.I sing and play sometimes in public at bars etc .Both are a means to the other .