For The Instrument you Play What is your Influence

[caelestis]

love to see the matt bellamy tributes there.
but i'd like to use him as an example of a piano influence.
he is such a great writer and player of the Crazy Piano.

i'd also have to cite the usual girl piano players, tori, fiona, and my fave: imogen heap.

[hazdog]

i've tried to play space dementia on piano

[Cornelius]

i play guitar

tool, rage against the machine, incubus and system oad have probably influenced me the most. pauls stuff isnt technically that hard (apart from those bitch chords) i have more trouble getting my head around it.

lateralus fucked with my head on an unfathomable level, with it's freakyass times and stuff. also john5 from marilyn manson is severely underrated - just check the live album.

cheers.

ps if you can play parabola on anything you deserve a medal (or ticks and leeches).

[Ollie]

I frequantly play Parabol then into parabola...its one of my favourite things to play...where my medal?
my friend and i have played the entire album once...from start to finish...it took us a whole day to get it right..and we tried to record most of it but gave up half way through.
but...my god..how good is maynards voice...no one can ever sound like him.

[TheAstronaut]

are tool from earth or another planet? ;D

[Ollie]

Tool are of course from the planet of the great monkey wrenches...all bow down

[billypilgrim]

Guitar Influences Dempsey, Ian/Guy(Fugazi) Sonic Youth, Mogwai, Joy Division, Josh Homme (QOTSA)

Bass Influences Joe Lally (Fugazi), Mogwai, Paul Simmonon (The Clash)

Songwriting/Structure Dempsey, Art of Fighting, Low, Mogwai, Tim Rogers, Fugazi.

[Control Alt. Delete]

if you are doing some serious song writing, I suggest not listening to anything for a while.

influences often act as a distraction or make you sound like them.

[Zombos / Elbereth]

Control said:

if you are doing some serious song writing, I suggest not listening to anything for a while.

influences often act as a distraction or make you sound like them.

Actually, I've noticed that.... sorta. Not that I've done any serious songwriting... let alone written a complete song, but I'll get out a pen to write some lyrics, and be totally distracted by whatever is on the cd player at the time... and start writing lyrics similar to that artist... and forget all of my own lyrics I was writing down at the time. It's very distracting and offputting.

If that makes sense...

I suppose that I should probably try writing lyrics in silence and see how that goes.

Anyway, I play guitar (poorly), and my original influence/inspiration was Kirk Hammett of Metallica, but now I'm more influenced by Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd. I love his slow bluesy solos, and hey, I'm a big fan of extended wanking... err... I mean solos. Check out the outro solo to the P.U.L.S.E. live version of "Comfortably Numb" to see what I mean.

Also lyrically, I like some of Dempsey's stuff... but I REALLY love the lyrics/style that Ani Difranco writes in. Check out some of the lyrics to her 'Dilate' & 'Educated Guess' albums to see what I mean.

- Brad

[Troy Dann]

its good tho to get some inspiration, it doesnt have to be music, you can go look at a painting or a piece of scenery that you just wanna describe, even an event in life, check out all the songs about a little thing called "love"

ive written 8 songs for the band, and its true that you dont just sit down and say "im gonna write a song" you fool around on the guitar playing chords and stuff, and then you get a riff and say "hey that sounds good..." then you build it up and sooner or later you get a song
to have a listen to some of the songs Day Trip To Carnegie MP3's and see what you think

[blake]

The most important thing is this - you can not force inspiration. It strikes in isolated incidents.

I've always found when I get stuck is listening to Frank Zappa. There's an absolute myriad of styles & genres in single songs! You can always pick somethingup from listening to him.

[Control Alt. Delete]

Recently I forced myself to write some stuff.

Nothing worked. I was dry of ideas. Then I started reading some of the older threads on this forum and now I have 3 new songs in about 4 weeks.

And I recently played one at my song writers workshop and it got some very coll responses so I am pretty happy with my new inpiration.......... the Say Something Forum.

[Delirium]

I've been playing guitar for quite awhile... at first all that got me going was intrest in guitar.

Then i took a break from it, my passion for the music left me. But lately i've been playing and loving it more than ever thanks to a guy named Mark Tremonti, he's the guitar player from Creed.. Now before all you Creed haters start hurling rocks at me, he is a very inspirational guitarist, and was being held back by creed, you cant really judge him with only hearing creed's "hits".

Paul Dempsey is a good guitarist, very creative and plays just for the song, no unnecesarry showing off (which i admire in guitarists)... but he dosent "inspire" me like mark tremonti does.

[HeadingEast]

i have one problem with creed
they covered tool
in my books, you just dont do that, but thats me

[fathershark]

If I may ask, which Tool song did Creed cover?