Mapping Randy Rhoads to the Shamisen

0:57 What's good everybody?Welcome back to Love Music More.I am Scoobert Doobert.Today I wanna talk about finding your groove again,getting back into the groove of things.And one of the ways that I love thinking about thisis what is your primaryor what is your dominant instrument?Just like a right hand, left hand kind of situation.It's very fun to play your non-dominant instrumentbut there is something to be said

1:24 about going to your comfort zone.So I've been working on new musicand I've taken some time offand I think that a big part of making musicis the act of making music itself.So just sitting down, recording some stuffand throwing it away or picking it up,continuing it on,the act of just starting leadsto the act of finishing.But when you've been away for a second,when you haven't been cooking on it,

1:52 the thing that really makes it tickis going to your strength.What are you great at?What have you spent most of your time doing?And there are some musiciansthat don't have a primary instrument.They kinda dabble.And I actually think that that can be very dangerous,particularly in situations like thiswhere you're trying to findsomething that goes beyond the logical.It isn't just sit down and make a song.

2:17 It is commune with your instrument,make something interesting,do something from your soul.And with all things music, easier said than done.But for me, the way to access thatis by having something that is so second naturethat even if you take some time away, it's in there.Do you know the song Crazy Train?Randy Rhoads is the guitarist on that.Randy Rhoads died in a plane crash,

2:42 a very tragic figure, incredible guitarist.And one of the things that stuck with me mostabout his like guitar worldor guitar player magazine featurewas that he loved to go on the roadand take guitar lessons.And I think that that reinforcesthe thing I was talking about before,of like what is your primary?What is the thing that you love most?The thing that you are closest to mastering?

3:07 And then how do you continue to refine that?How do you find new ways to master it?Or new vantage points,like classical guitar or jazz guitar?And that's what he didand that's how he became such an incredible soloist.And I think that that sense,I've tried to tell throughout the entire podcastof if you're a guitarist learning saxophone partsor vice versa, if you're a saxophonistlearning some guitar solos.

3:36 That kind of looking at it from a different lenscan allow you to master the instrument in a different way.And I'm not saying I'm perfectly masteredor anything like that,but for me it is the closest that I've cometo being able to access the most natural partof myself interfacing with music.I love bass, that might be my favorite instrument nowbut I'm best at guitarbecause I've spent most of my time on it.

4:01 And part of the reason why I love bassis that it's hard for me.Like in a truly, you know,gotta do 15 takes to really find the grooveand find the thing with guitar, it might be one or two.But when it's time to, you know, throw the fast ball,it's time to go to the guitar.It's time to write a song around your primary instrument.In the same way that I took a pageout of Randy Rhoads's book and I was in Japan

4:27 and I decided to take a shamisen lesson.Fascinating thing because the shamisen,literally three strings is very different than the guitarbut fundamentally is kind of laid out in a similar way.The same way that I've played the lute,I've played the oud,I've played these different guitar-like instruments.And every single time I do,when I re-approach the guitar,I think about it differently.

4:53 And the plectrum, the large bachi,that's like a, I think it's like a large tortilla chipwhere you're playing the guitar.It's like bigger than your hand, the shamisen.And it makes you think about the pickwhen you come back to the guitar in a very different waybecause most of it is like downstrokes.It's a very different kind of like sharp percussivekind of sound.But when you play in another instrument like that

5:23 and then you take it back to your home base,the thing that you're very used to,you can apply similar concepts of saying,okay, when I'm gonna strike the string,what if I channel the shamisen bachi?Or in the case of the oud,the Saudi Arabian kind of instrument that is lute-like,the way that you play the pitch between the pitches,the way that you play linearlyas in like ascending the same string,

5:52 you can apply that to guitarin the same way that slide guitarcan be applied to fretted guitar in interesting ways.I say all of this because this is the only lensthrough which I can actually apply all of these conceptswithout having to think about it because it's my home base.If I tried to do the same thing on bass,it's not gonna work as well,even though it's very similar to guitar.

6:14 But say for example, I try to do this on saxophone.I'm very bad at saxophone.I cannot access, even if I can intellectually understandlike, oh, what if I took the strike of a bongoand tried to apply that to a reed?It's like, I can't do it.Cannot physically manipulate sound in that way.But I say all of thisbecause when I was doing that shamisen lesson,the woman that was teaching me shamisen also played koto,

6:40 which is a large horizontal stringed instrument,kind of like a lap steel looking guitar,but is very different.That is what you picture kind of like a geisha,kind of trio, they're playing shamisen,they're playing koto, they're playing together.And I asked her, between the shamisen and the koto,what feels the most effortless?And her response about the koto was very similarto how I feel about the guitar.

7:08 She said she's most excited about the shamisen.But she said, when she sits behind the koto,she does not have to think, she merely does.She is able to access music itself through the koto,but the shamisen allows her to access musicthrough a new means and like a thinking means,a fun means, a novel, new way.And I think that one of the most fun ways to make musicis to try to apply both.

7:36 How can you attack the sense of like the emotionthat you're trying to bring through both the thingthat you're most familiar withand something that you're unfamiliar withand try to point it at the same thing?Like if you've heard the parable about religionsbeing like a stained glass windowand you're looking at the interior of a buildingor you're looking at an elephantor you're feeling an elephant, you're blind.

8:00 And everybody's, you know, the blind personis grabbing the trunk versus the tailand they're talking about different things.Same kind of thing of like lookingthrough a stained glass window,you're describing blue, you're describing red,but you're looking at the same kind of thing.I think that with music, where if you're comingfrom it from your primary versus your secondaryor tertiary or whatever instrument,

8:18 you can be approaching the same kind of essencefrom different manners.And sometimes it's time to take up the fast ball.Sometimes it's time to try something new.But often with music, you can do bothand that can be one of the coolest waysyou can access new things.But all of that comes around in the senseof being humble and open in your own instrument,the thing that you're best at

8:43 and saying, okay, what is the version of itthat can apply the new to the old?How can you take the bachi, the large pickand apply it to your tiny pick?The thing that you know,the thing that you've been playing for 10, 20 yearsor whatever, that is a really special thing.And I think you can find so much inspirationin the same way that a guitarist,when you give them a new pedal, a new guitar pedal,

9:08 they can invent a new song very easilybecause they have a new toy.They're filtering the thingthat they're most familiar with, the guitar,into something that they're unfamiliar withand they're combining the new and the old.And that's one of my favorite compositional devices,is taking, you have to first of all have an instrumentthat you feel very comfortable withand then taking something new and layering on top

9:32 or challenging it, pushing it through something.And that's why guitar is a wonderful thingbecause it's very tactile, it's familiarand yet you can transform it in a million different ways.Synthesizers are very similar.But guitar is special because I think that with a guitaryou can play a note in a lot of different places.So there's a lot of like intuition or personal tasteas to where you play the exact same note,

10:00 the exact same frequency.You're just choosing the hand position, the string.And each string obviously has a different tonality,a different timbre because it is more narrow of a stringlike a tiny string or a very thick kind of string.And naturally you're playing the same noteon a thick thing or a narrow thing.It's gonna sound very different,neither of which is necessarily better.

10:20 And this is one of the reasons why I like thinkingof guitars as a stringed instrumentbecause then we're part of the family of any humanthat ever figured out if you stretchany sort of string-like substance and you pluck it,it makes a pitch and then you cut it in halfand it makes the pitch up an octaveand you can cut it in a bunch of different directionsand you can start playing it like a guitar.

10:45 In the same way that a flute or a percussion instrumentcan root into all of human experienceor any alien or whatever that figured that same thing out.And taking that kind of frameworkto your most dominant instrument,I think can unlock new compositional ideas.If you enjoyed this podcast,I would love to invite you to check outmy weird little stringed music at scoobertdoobert.pizza.Yes, that's my actual website.

11:13 And share this with friends.Rated five stars.It's on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, all of the things.And next week we're gonna have another amazing guest episode.I hope you stick aroundand I hope you share it with some friends.I will see you next week.