Improvisation vs. Composition

Alright, this topic will probably only appeal to fellow musicians, but it's one that has been bothering me for a long time.

I first started playing guitar because I was listening to guys like Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, etc. Their music appealed to me a hell of a lot more than whatever it was that I was listening to before that (mediocre indie bands), and I loved listening to live recordings of these guys- they put out some of the best live albums ever (Clapton in Cream with Wheels of Fire and Live Cream, Duane Allman in the Allman Brothers with At Fillmore East, Pete Townshend in the Who with Live at Leeds, etc).

If there's one thing that all of those players have in common it is that they improvise every solo they play (for the unaware, "improvise" just means that they make it up on the spot). So naturally, when I began playing the guitar, I just always knew that you were "supposed" to improvise your solos. It never occurred to me that you might play the same thing every time, honestly. Obviously I learned some solos note for note, but I just assumed that when I got in a band I would improvise because that's what all my heroes did.

The first full song I learned, like a lot of people, was "Stairway to Heaven." The guitar solo in that song is legendary. It's a magical melodic masterpiece. Everyone knows it. It's probably the most renowned solo on any instrument ever.

But when playing it live, Jimmy Page always improvised it.



Yeah, the first couple measures are about the same, and the ending is the same, and there's that repeating lick in there that he always plays, but everything else is wide open.

Like most budding rock guitarists, I spent hours learning the studio version of that solo. But I spent many more hours improvising in the key of A minor over the song. Like anything in music, improvisation is a skill that needs to be honed and I've spent countless hours attempting to hone it (with mixed results).

Fast forward a few years and I "discover" Guns N' Roses. Also around this time I am listening to a lot of Rush and I greatly admire both Slash and Alex Lifeson. I look up live videos of these two great musicians and I discover that every solo they play live is almost identical to the one they played on the record. And I'm baffled.

Perhaps the MOST baffling part is that these two guitarists, Slash and Alex Lifeson, had the same influences as me. They were all into Clapton, Hendrix, Page, Townshend, et al. Now to this day I still do not understand why they do not improvise like their heroes did. It can't be that they think people expect to hear the same solo as they recorded on their album and will be disappointed if they don't...because Jimmy Page clearly never had that problem. So what is it?

Now, we all know that music is an expression of emotion. Maybe more accurately, a communication. To me it seemed obvious that when you play a guitar solo it should very much be in the moment- you should be expressing or communicating what you feel as you're feeling it, and not trying to replicate what you felt a year or a decade ago when you recorded the song.

Of course, you can express yourself by playing composed music...that's what all the classical players do. But to be honest, I am not interested in classical music for that very reason. It's not coming from the player, it's coming from some dead white guy from hundreds of years ago. But that's a different story.

Now, there are certain cases where I can see that playing a guitar solo note-for-note can be great. There are some solos that are just so good you know you'll never top them so you might as well not even try (but again, that never stopped Jimmy Page). There are some solos that are more than just solos...they're melodies, they're themes for the song. Take "Estranged" by Guns N' Roses. Slash composed melodies on the guitar that are integral to the song. You wouldn't want to improvise those. I also saw an interview with Tony Iommi, the guitarist from Black Sabbath, who made that same comment about one of his solos in "War Pigs." It sounds more like a riff than a solo, really, and it sort of just became another riff of the song, so he played it the same way each time.

These cases are excusable. But everything else? Well, in my opinion they should be improvised. But that's not going to stop me from seeing these artists who don't improvise live. I've already seen Slash once and am going to again next month, and I'm going to be seeing Rush in April. I'm sure the shows will be great, but think of how much greater they might be...

And in this corner, weighing in at 850 pounds...

When I first started typing this post it was going to be about Guns N' Roses' most recent album, Chinese Democracy, but I decided to just make this an all-encompassing GNR post- what I like about them, what you should like about them, and maybe some info for people who don't know much about this awesome band.





Those of my followers who are Guns N' Roses fans may have already noticed that the name of my blog is taken from a song from their second (technically third) studio album, Use Your Illusion I (released in 1991). I make it no secret that I love Guns N' Roses, which always gets me flak from various groups of people. In a way I can understand where they are coming from. I used to dislike Guns as well...before I listened to them. Actually listened to them, I mean. Everyone has heard "Sweet Child o' Mine" and "Welcome to the Jungle," but how many people have heard "Mr. Brownstone" or "Locomotive?"

I've found on multiple occasions that if you really explore a band's catalog you discover that their best songs are almost never the most well-known. It's tough to get over the stigma of listening to such a massively popular band as Guns N' Roses, though. Hipsters and other people who hate anything that is popular will certainly tell you that you have shit musical taste, but that's fine, they will just never appreciate the majestic masterpiece that is "Estranged."



The song was popular at the time of its release, mainly due to this video (the most expensive music video ever at the time), but is certainly not one of their most well-known songs now. It's a shame, because in my opinion it is the greatest song of all time and embodies everything that is great about Guns N' Roses that people fail to recognize. It's not a mindless hard rock song, it's an intricate and complex musical journey through the entire spectrum of human emotion over an epic 9 and a half minutes.

There was a thread recently on a forum I post on that said Slash was overrated. I'm not sure what to think of that. Certainly he's not the greatest guitarist of all time, but in my opinion he is easily in the top 10 (possibly the top 5, it depends on how I'm feeling). "Estranged" demonstrates exactly why: he's tasteful. Taste is one of the most important qualities a guitarist can have, and Slash has it in spades. He rarely overplays. He can play fast, obviously, and does (when the song calls for it), but he also comes up with incredible melodic ideas. Slash's melodic sense is his greatest strength. The guitar melodies in "Estranged" are fantastic.

Slash's tone is legendary, as well. People have been trying for almost 25 years to replicate the tone he got on Appetite For Destruction, GNR's debut (and also the best-selling debut album of all time). It had a crazy amount of distortion but was never muddy like a lot of metal guitar players.

Songs like "Sweet Child o' Mine" show just how easily Slash could switch from a tasteful, melodic, beautiful solo to a heavy, fast, hard rock solo and they show just how easily Guns N' Roses could switch from tasteful, melodic, beautiful ballads to heavy, fast, hard rock songs. It baffles me that so many people think of Guns as a one-dimensional rock band, judging them on songs like "Welcome to the Jungle" instead of songs like "Estranged."

I often run into people that say they don't like the band because of Axl Rose's voice, to which I reply, "Which voice?" Axl is one of the most dynamic vocalists in the history of humanity. Look no further than GNR Lies (their actual second album, made up of three new songs and a bunch of old songs re-released) for the perfect example. Anyone unfamiliar with the band would have no idea that Axl Rose sings "Patience" (trust me, I had no idea myself when I first heard it). It sounds nothing like the gravelly, howling Axl Rose that we all know, and that's the genius of him. He uses his voice like a guitar in a way- just as a guitarist can play clean and distorted, Axl Rose can sing clean or distorted. Just as a guitarist can use a wah-wah pedal, Axl Rose can make his voice sound like a wah-wah pedal. Compare his voice on "Reckless Life" to "Patience." It sounds like two completely different singers.

People love to hate on Axl though. He's made it quite easy through many of his actions, like appearing on stage late on a regular basis, using racial and homophobic slurs in a song, and firing various band members and driving the rest to quit. As a result of this, even people who like Guns N' Roses hate Axl and his new version of the band. Many of them hate the newest album, Chinese Democracy, on principle, without even listening to it.

The truth is, Chinese Democracy is a good album, with many songs that are pretty good and a few songs that are truly great. No, it's not Appetite, but why would it be? What is the point in releasing the same album over and over again? You can listen to Nickelback and the like if you are into bands with no musical development.

I, on the other hand, will be enjoying great songs like "I.R.S.," "Street of Dreams" and "Chinese Democracy," and watching the new band tear through the old stuff perfectly:



I've seen Slash's band live, but nothing beats the original singer shredding on the songs he wrote himself. Here's a video from 2010:



Whatever it was that Axl Rose had, he's still got it.