So when I'm not playing guitar, working, studying or wasting time on youtube I sometimes get my camera out with my very average 18-55mm lens and try to take a really nice photo. Most of the time I get caught up trying to make it fancy by adding all these effects and taking shots in very crowded areas to make the photo look busy and impressive; but it usually ends up being one that I am never happy with.
As with my music, when I am trying to create a melody or a 'solo' I am almost habitually inclined to try and make it complicated. Whether it be a complicated melody, a complicated solo, a complicated harmony, I always seem to try to make it 'hard' and often try in vain. Why? Well I guess it's that juvenile concept I still have about making things look impressive, and if it's not fast and complicated, it's no good right? Slowly I have learned that often simplicity can be a lot nicer than over complication and a lot more effective. You need to give people time to breathe. To take in the music, the notes. As I mentioned in a blog earlier 'Less is More'. That's not to say that fast and complicated music isn't good, some of the greatest pieces of music are so hard I wouldn't even be able to play the first two bars. But creating a fast and 'hard' melody for the sake of being fast and 'difficult' definitely misses the point of a melody. Sometimes one simple idea is all it takes.
Like the in the photo I took above (yes I know the lighting and exposure could be better) what attracted me was the 3 simple colours of the flower, the glasses, and the flower's stem. The image hardly has any depth (actually it is rather flat), and there was nothing difficult about taking the actual photo. It's just three flowers. Yet there is definitely an aesthetic quality in it's simplicity. Actually when you think about it life is a whole lot nicer when it's simple. When you don't have to worry about work, studying, exams, how to pay rent etc. you can actually just sit back and appreciate things for what they are. And sometimes we still then try to make things complicated for ourselves. We think, 'well I am relaxed now I can go and buy something else to pay off', or 'I can work towards something else that I haven't done yet' meanwhile creating the whole complicated lifestyle we just got out of not too long ago. Now I don't know if that is necessarily a bad thing or not, you tell me, but I do know that making things complicated for the sake of being complicated ain't going to do you any favours.
However, the funny thing is that sometimes, we find that the simpler songs are harder to perform. How do you stand out amongst the crowd of people that have played this song a hundred times? How do you write a nice simple melody over the same three chords that everyone else uses? How do you take a really great photo of a flower than a thousand people on flikr have shot? And so on and so forth.
Turns out less not only is more, but more work too.
Besides my rant on all that contradictory stuff (simplicity not being simple after all) I had a gig which went well about a week ago. Performed Manuel De Falla's 'La Vida Breve' and Paulo Belinati's 'Jongo'. Was definitely sweating by the end of them. Got a couple of weddings coming up and a new video in about a week. As well as a new original this month so make sure you stayed posted.
If you haven't seen my latest video let me know what you think.
Thanks for reading,
JL
