Eric Johnson is the Fucking Man · 4:00am Jan 11th, 2015
So I spent a good three hours a day for the last week transcribing this song:
Because I'm going to play it on clarinet next month at this music showcase thingy at my school. It reminded me of two things I'd forgotten. First, that transcribing things from a concert-key polyphonic string instrument to a Bb key monophonic woodwind instrument is tedious, and secondly that Eric Johnson is one of the most gifted guitarists who has ever lived.
Cue the Johnsontage:
The reason people like Eric Johnson are so great is because they can pull from a number of different styles. Johnson is one of the best technical masterminds in the history of instrumental guitar but he can also play incredibly beautiful and melodic music. Oh also he can sing, but he doesn't do it very often. But I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that the truly great artists are not those who excel at one thing, but in many things. I think it's a lesson that a lot of authors on this site could learn. There are many of us who want our story to be that next big thing, want our stories to be put in the same category as Past Sins, Background Pony, or Solitary Locust. You know, the classics of the fandom. But we tend to focus too much on drawing inspiration from other stories than creating our own, unique story. None of those stories I listed were anything like what had come before them. Beyond the fact that they were all incredibly well-written, they became successful because of that uniqueness. Memorizing a bunch of blues licks does not make you a good guitarist, and neither does memorizing a bunch of tropes from the stories you liked best. Forget success. To be truly good at what you do, you must approach things from your own, internal inspiration, not an amalgamation of all the media you've consumed. Be like Eric Johnson. Make your own distinctive voice, and if you are so bold, step out of that voice and create another just as powerful.
And yes, that means writing fanfics of other fanfics is definitely a shitty idea, in case you were wondering.
