When I first released "Rhythms Of The Gods", in 2003... it immediately became a hit in the early days of internet music downloads. I was very surprised because of instead of recording it with one of my thirty some odd high end guitars, I was just fooling around with a guitar that was a beat up piece of junk purchased for $2.00 at a Flea Market. When the recording was finished I was still not convinced I should even present it to my people at Rhythms Of Life Records, but I did. Within only days after it was out there for sale it was a success.
Ridiculous... I thought, with no planning or sketch of what I was even going to play, and with nothing but a few simple chords and a rhythm enhanced by a drum loop... it was really almost disgusting. To think that I would ordinarily spend perhaps days composing a piece, and then carefully select just the right guitar to pull it off... and to discover that all that planning/decision making was perhaps unnecessary. And; additionally that instrument... a reject in the world of guitars, sounding as it did... bringing to life perhaps the real Rhythms Of The Gods, what would be next.
This made me take a second look at my previous methods and choices in my work, and doing a 180 degree turnabout as I proceeded into the future. Since then I have been infused with a new sense of what creativity in music is all about. Music is a Landscape in sound that is ever in motion, and playing music must contain that spontaneity and freedom it was born with, you cannot solidify it because the form contains the life energy of the person playing it. Creating and performing music is like life, ever flexible and changing... that we the artists are a part of and need to experience fresh each time, rather than copy or just regurgitate the musical performance of someone else. Music is, as painters once said of visual images after the invention of the camera... "if you want the exact picture, take a photograph". The same is with music, if you want the sound of someone's performance download a copy, or buy a CD; otherwise become yourself... as once that player did before he or she became popular.