Rock guitarist: Classical training made me hate music
mainThis blast comes from Tim Henson, lead guitar with the prog-rock group Polyphia:
‘I started playing violin. Before I started playing guitar, I started playing at the age of three. I can sight-read violin pretty well. When it comes to reading sheet music for guitar, I don’t even really know where all the notes of the guitar are because I learned to play by ear, and because, for me, violin was so rigid, and it kind of killed any sort of love for music.
‘It made me hate music. Because, especially in classical music, you’re essentially just doing cover songs all the time. There’s no room for creativity. And when I picked up the guitar at 10, I saw it as an escape from that.’
Full article here.
Oh dear, how sad, well, never mind.
Yes I have that too!
Sally
Let’s not forget that the first instrument Jimi Hendrix ever played was a Viola….and that’s no Viola joke! He has since become a household name.
It is important for a musician to know the rudiments of music, no matter what style you decide to play. Similarly, a foreigner who lives in a different land than​ his own, can still speak his native language with others while being creative at the same time.
I don’t see the point of “hating” classical music, when it can help you get the results you need. We all learned the alphabet at first; some of us ended up becoming writers, poets, and journalists by correctly combining these letters into interesting thoughts and ideas.
Sting (former member of The Police) is a huge admirer of Bach.
I’ve certainly heard of Sting but I had not heard of Tim Henson. I wonder why?
Beethoven wrote some great “cover songs.”
That’s evidence that classical music is not for anyone.
Conveniently enough, classical training made me hate Tim Henson and Polyphia. Ah well, best of luck in their future endeavours.
Hilarious comment!
I detest pop fans who refer to things that are not songs as songs.
They are obsessed with songs and celebrity. They have no use for instrumental music because they simply have no use for it.
I’ve tried to explain its virtues to younger folk on many occasions, and failed.
Everything he produces convinces me that he STILL hates it.
It works for him, typical of this generation of thinking it should works for everyone. Sonnet has so many rules! I couldn’t write poetry…it killed my creativity!!! I opted for tagging walls….I feel so free. We should burn these old libraries, shouldn’t we?….
“There’s no room for creativity [of classical music]” says the man who also states, “I don’t even really know where all the notes of the guitar are.”
Not knowing all of the notes would make it more difficult to be creative in the first place, don’t you think? 🙂
Never heard of him/them. Is he related to the Muppet guy?
Reminds me also of Nicky Henson’s turn as the boorish young bloke in the Fawlty Towers episode about the psychiatrists.
Combination of poor teaching and lack of talent. If you truly, madly, deeply love music, no amount of bad teaching will destroy that. But if the love is real, not skin-deep and ego-driven (as, alas, it almost always is wth rock), it will survive whatever. Performing great music is is no making ‘covers’, as in pop music; it’s a vital part of the art of music, just as performing Shakespeare or Pirandello is vital to drama.
It is true. As with many, I did not experience great teaching until after college. Unfortunately, classical music is so age-conscious and discriminating, that it really interferes with building any career if you don’t have a great teacher from early on. Too few teachers are humble enough to pass their talented students on soon enough.
We should pay respectful attention to Mr Henson’s strictures on classical music. He would have been another Menuhin or Oistrakh had he persevered.
If he can, as he claims, “sight read violin pretty well” then I am mystified by his statement that he cannot read guitar sheet music. It would be interesting to put him to the test on that violin sight reading. You have to be at least a bit deeply advanced before that is worth bragging about, otherwise it means little more than that you know “A” when you see it.
One sometimes reads that this or that pop musician was “classically trained” but I suspect that means little more than that they were taught keyboard from the usual scale books — which might be compiled by classical musicians but can hardly be termed classical music. Not that I want to dis pop musicians who can read music, and maybe even tune their own guitars.
Surely someone told him at some point that he could improvise on the violin?
His advice to aspiring guitarists reminds me (as a guitarist) that the worst advice guitarists can follow usually comes from guitarists.