Musical Originality
For reference, this is my cajon! For all of your acoustic needs! It was homemade by my previous youth pastor at my church so it is pretty DIY, don't sit on it all day, you'll get cramps, plus it does hurt and builds calluses after a session because at the end of the day, you're still smacking a tree stump, and I'm 70% sure it needs new interior snares but it does it's job!
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This is probably the last blog of my three posts that covers the main and most important things I've learned on my journey so far, the next blogs will cover much more specifics!
I included pictures of my cajon because it is one of the main causes for teaching me originality. Here's how that lesson began. The second time I played on the worship team at my church, I was called to play the cajon. Now let me get this straight, at the time I didn't own a cajon and I had only jammed on a cajon once, this jam session caught the right ear at the right time and I was invited to play for the next weeks worship service. I got the general idea at the time but didn't really get any specifics, I knew there were only a bass and a snare, as opposed to a drum kit, so I practiced hard trying to convert the original drum track onto a cajon. I now know that nobody's going to get far in that department, I had practiced and listened closely time to time again and I figured out the closest thing I could get which was pretty far from the original. . . I got to the worship practice before the church service thinking it wouldn't sound good because it was so far off. That night's worship went well but I had still felt I could've done better. I jammed more and more on the cajon, played a couple more worship services, and one night I asked my pastor where to put the cajon away and he offered it to me, my immediate reaction was gentleman 101 and my thought was to kindly reject, but as I thought more about it on the spot I knew I could practice at home and build my knowledge completely in this department, plus the pastor said he rarely even played it and it would just gather dust so I accepted.
Ever since then I've practiced and played worship, jammed and grooved on the cajon. It's a good makeshift kit for drummers with portability problems if you invest enough into it, and great for camping trip jam sessions around the fire! From my journey through drums and the cajon, I've experienced the payoff that comes with originality, all you need to know is the general idea of the beat and of course the BPM. There's been instances where I was a last minute choice, knew nothing of the songs and needed to depend on originality to save me - and it did. Originality can be broken into two things: experience and creativity. Experience in originality is your skill and talent in the instrument and specifically all the small things such as keeping grooves, shuffles or fills handy for on the spot. Creativity in originality is knowing how to utilize your past experiences and skill at the right time, to the right degree, and distributing that equally. Being a drummer, I know a lot of the time people are very dependent on drummers to know what to do, so this is a big priority for me to learn, and because of it I learn and practice extra grooves, shuffles, and fills at different tempos just in case the time arises when they're needed, but it's important to distribute these equally.
For example, you can't just keep playing two fills over and over, it's boring and repetitive. If you only know the two fills or just one groove or so on, sometimes it's good to improvise (refer to first blog post.) Improvising something unknown on the spot is tricky and risks messing up, which is dangerous. For example, if you feel you're getting boring and repetitive while covering a song, you could try something new on the spot, literally make it up as you go. I've learned some of my best drum fills from doing so, I don't advise it but it's a good last minute resort from same old, same old. So, from this, originality is built from the ground up from experience, creativity and improvisation, but there's something amiss here, isn't there? Yes, it's the most important of all, it's what originality derives from - personality! Add your personality to what you play, pour your passion, experience, creativity and personality into what you play. But also mix in what other people play as well, that can hugely help develop your originality. It's never bad to add a little influence, listening and taking after the greats never hurt nobody!
That should be the core of your music you cover or make. That is originality!
~ Levi, the dork
(Wouldn't it be hilarious if I plagiarized this?? XD)
