Marty Friedman explains why practicing guitar at home won’t help you find your own sound
While hours of bedroom guitar practice will sharpen your chops, it won’t do much to help you find your musical identity – at least, according to Marty Friedman, who says the real magic begins when you’re forced into a ‘band situation’.
Speaking to English guitarist and YouTuber Bradley Hall, the former Megadeth guitarist explains that practising alone – even for hours a day – can only take you so far when it comes to developing a personal voice on the instrument.
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“It takes so much to get your own thing down,” Friedman says. “Band situations is the way to get your own thing quicker than practicing. I don’t think there’s anything that you can really practice at home that’s gonna get your identity as well as being in a band, because then you’re forced to [think], ‘Now, this is your part.’ You’re the league. You’re George Harrison, or you’re Paul McCartney.”
The former Megadeth axeman also credits punk rock and Kiss as the major influences that first made him want to pick up a guitar.
“I think, when you start playing, there are things that happen that influence you enough to want to pick up a guitar in the first place,” Friedman explains. “That probably never leaves you, right? As you know, picking up a guitar and then playing it forever, it’s kind of a big [thing] – something big had to happen to make you do that crazy thing, right? So in my case, it was punk rock and Kiss.”
Even now, those early influences continue to shape how he approaches the instrument.
“I gravitate to those types of things when I’m playing rhythm,” says Friedman, noting that it also explains why certain modern techniques don’t feel as instinctive to him.
“Hence, I don’t have all of the modern rhythm chops. I mean, I can do them when necessary, but it’s not always as comfortable as [it is for the] guys [who] grew up in the 2000s, and that’s what made them start playing.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
