Back to Basics: When What’s Old Becomes New Again

A few weeks ago, I received a deluxe box set in the mail of one of my all-time favorite albums, In Absentia by the British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree. I had discovered this album around 2010, a time when I was forging my own musical identity. Memories flooded back as I listened to the remastered album of first hearing it in my car and how it instantly knocked my socks off. This was truly the first time I listened to music and thought, “I want to make music like this.”

Perhaps due to my upcoming 30^th birthday (which is 2 weeks away from the day that I’ve started this article and a day before this is scheduled to be sent), I’ve found myself looking back and revisiting a lot of things from my formative years. Music has, of course, been the most notable but it’s seeped into every aspect of my life. I’ve found myself rewatching the entire Marvel movie saga during the stay-at-home orders (partly due to it being one of the few things that my roommates and I all enjoy, partly due to a genuine desire to indulge my nerd side that hadn’t seen these films in years). I’ve even used quarantine as an excuse to enjoy some childhood favorite foods/drinks, such as otherwise rare treats like grilled cheese, Swedish Fish, and apple juice. What I’ve come to notice through this trip back in time is that my perspective has quite obviously changed. But despite undergoing several life-changing events since discovering these things for the first time, so many still feel fresh.

Most importantly, I’ve channeled this newfound search for rediscovery into my guitar playing, which has yielded some interesting results. I had found my playing growing a bit stagnant before I moved to Atlanta, which is something that all of us deal with every now and then as guitarists. We can easily fall into ruts of playing certain licks or songs over and over again. Sometimes, it feels like we’ll never get out of those ruts. Maple Street served as an incredibly inspiring way out for me, prompting me to explore new music and styles that I hadn’t been exposed to as a “Northerner.” All of these exceptional guitars seemed to incite new songs and my co-workers’ playing prompted a desire to develop my skills. I studied a fair bit of jazz in high school and college but hearing Jake and Dave play made me realize how much my jazz chops needed work. George and Lindsay’s finger-picking acoustic prowess made me realize how much I had neglected my acoustic playing. The list seems to go on! I began exploring these styles more and it led me to learn something that I was all too familiar with upon starting here at Maple Street… that I really didn’t know as much as I thought I did.

So I’ve taken this opportunity to get back to basics, strengthening the foundations of my playing, and even attempting to play LESS NOTES. *GASP* To my surprise, just like my rediscovery of my favorite art and music, the whole process has been refreshing! I’ve spent so much time in the progressive rock world of odd time signatures, drop-on-a-dime dynamic shifts, and endless barrages of 16^th notes that I had forgotten the simple joys of strumming an open G chord. I’d always prided myself on never putting more emphasis on flash or technique than emotion or musicality but I’ve come to a new appreciation of simplicity, whether that be in melody, chord progressions, song structure, etc. 

One realm that I’ve placed some much needed focus on is our good old friend, the Pentatonic scale. I’ve known the classic pattern like the back of my hand for probably 16 years now but I’d never really explored the modes of that scale or how it applied over the entire fretboard. Instead, I went right to more technical diatonic scales (8 notes vs the pentatonic’s 5 notes) and seemed to try to add every possible color to my music. Now more than ever I’m realizing that sometimes you don’t need to add every color in the rainbow. Sometimes, you just need red. Or, perhaps more fitting for the pentatonic scale analogy, blue. This became painfully obvious to me when I began playing music with a friend of mine in a sax and guitar jazz duo. Given our generally ambitious nature, the first tune that we decided to learn was Dave Brubeck’s classic “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” which features some very complex rhythm and harmony. I found myself maneuvering the 9/8 meter and breakneck tempo fairly well but the solo section was a different story. For those that are unaware, the solo section eschews all of the previous complexities for a simple 12-bar blues in F major. We would get to that point in the song and I felt stumped. I knew every scale and note that worked but yet… I somehow had nothing to say. Nothing that I played had weight. It felt like I was back in my 8^th grade guitar lessons learning how to improvise again. For the first time in a long time, I was uncomfortable while playing music. And in my opinion, that’s one of the best things that you can encounter! 

Painful as it has been, I think that it’s quite important to revisit the basics here and there. Some of us (myself included) tend to ignore them after graduating to more advanced techniques and ideas. But there’s something powerful about simplicity and there’s a reason why simplicity tends to resonate more with people. KISS is more than just a band, it’s also an acronym that I try to always keep in mind and it’s a message that’s quite easy to remember. Keep It Simple, Stupid!!
Chris Capitanio, April,2020