Name your top 5 *non-guitarist* influences

[Huggy Love]

After the recent top 5 guitarists and top 5 guitarists that influenced you threads, it got me thinking of my influences and I realized several of them are not guitarists. It's not a common thing but I know I'm not the only one that has picked up chops from sax players or vocalists. Aside from axe slingers like Santana & EVH, I also got a lot out of playing the melodies and improv from the following:

-Grover Washington jr
-Chaka Khan
-Stanley Clarke
-Paul Rogers
-Marvin Gaye

What about you?

 

[veinbuster]

Stevie Wonder
Clarence Clemons
Stanley Clarke
Michael Jackson
Miles Davis

 

[Huggy Love]

Stevie Wonder
Clarence Clemons
Stanley Clarke
Michael Jackson
Miles Davis

I would have included Miles in my list ............. but I can't play anything like him.
...... but I did play a short series of gigs with a killer bass player, almost completely from Clarke's School days album. We called it "School Days" a Stanley Clarke tribute, and started & ended the gig with the title cut. One of the funnest gigs I ever did.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

So is this non-guitar players who influenced your chops? Or is it non-guitar players who influenced you musically? (which could be your love of music, desire to play music, etc.)

 

[Huggy Love]

So is this non-guitar players who influenced your chops? Or is it non-guitar players who influenced you musically? (which could be your love of music, desire to play music, etc.)

"Chops" are just a solar system in the vast galaxy of the musical cosmos. Go with your love and desire, the chops will follow.

 

[veinbuster]

So is this non-guitar players who influenced your chops? Or is it non-guitar players who influenced you musically? (which could be your love of music, desire to play music, etc.)

I think we each get to set our own rules.
I went with people who got my attention with phrasing that I would like to work with. I’m a sucker for asymmetric rhythms and slippery phrases.

 

[Lee B.]

Miles Davis
Peter Erskine
David Garibaldi
Jim Gordon
Sonny Rollins

What can I say, I love great drumming. I was so tempted to just put a bunch of drummers. But post-bop is a lifelong guilty pleasure of mine, and I couldn't leave off arguably the two best phrasemeisters of the whole movement.

 

[Huggy Love]

David Garibaldi
.

Yes!!

 

[Deleted member 5962]

ok, I'll go with people who influenced me to love and want to play music. I'm not sure there were any non-guitarists whose riffs influenced my style of playing guitar.

Dad
Mom
Keith Emerson


re: the first two, I grew up in a family of musicians and singers. Not only was there always music on in my house, but my parents were always playing and singing. Mom was a concert level classical pianist. Dad was a great singer, had several vocal albums, was music director at church, and played trumpet, guitar and piano. Between the two of them, I grew up surrounded by music all the time, and just grew up loving music. Playing an instrument and singing was "expected" in my family. Everyone did it

Emerson is a musical genius. He and Holdsworth are my two all time "genius" musicians. My older cousin had Brain Salad Surgery and with a mom who was a GREAT piano player playing in my house every day, I was still totally blown away by Keith before I was even 15 years old. Jimi died when I was 10. All my older cousins and neighbors had his albums and I couldn't believe it when I heard them.

I'd have to think more about #4& 5, as there were numerous other keyboard players in cool bands that I loved and that made me love and want to play music.

 

[walrus]

This one is tough. Elton John, for sure, but I'm stumped for any others...

 

[Lee B.]

Yes!!

I recently made friends with a converted drummer who played keys in a ToP tribute band, and I swear we spent about two hours over dinner recently just talking about Garibaldi grooves. Annoyed the heck out of my wife.

 

[Steve's addiction]

Just my sister and my cousin. They were older than me and they LOVED anything Motown. I heard it all the time and fell in love with the style. No matter what style I was into always came to R&B.

 

[Wakester]

What did I do!?!?! This is AWESOME! I love how my rather benign question has became a jumping point for so much more.

My other influences include (in no order)

Fish (Derek Dick) former lead vocalist and lyricist for Marillion - a poet, a jester, a master of his trade
My Dad - because he always explored new territory and continued to learn throughPop out his life
My Mom - for her scientific mind and curiosity for anything scientific
Pope John Paul II - even though I am not Catholic, he was a Christian in every sense of the word, loving, generous, everything I wish myself to be.

It is their pioneering spirit that drives me to play and experiment and find tones in the ornate wood and metal we call guitars.

 

[Alnus Rubra]

Stevie Wonder
Peter Gabriel
Sting
Billy Joel
Paul Rodgers

I want to add a whole load more, because 5 isn’t enough!

 

[Steve's addiction]

Also my drummer friend Greg who taught me to strive for perfection and to believe in myself as a musician and a human being

 

[Huggy Love]

Everybody that put Mom & Dad gets 2 more picks because our parents are our musical DNA.

 

[Steve's addiction]

Huggy thanks for reminding me. Mom & Dad were not very musical but my mom's dad played guitar & dad's dad played bango. And sadly my one grandfather had a D-28 back in the late 1920's that he had to pawn due to the depression. Always wondered what happened to it

 

[bodia]

Ok, my sister is 19 years older than me. When she moved out, she left her 45s behind. My folks encouraged me to use the record player. That would make my influences:

The Beach Boys
The Monkees
The Beatles

After that:
Kari Cherryholmes - a neighborhood friend that decided saxophone was cool at 12 years old. I copied.

Mr Boscoe - my Jr High band teacher that moved me from B band to A band. Got me palying the Bari sax in Jazz band and solidified my love for music. Oddly enough, he was a big enough prick that I quit band when I went to high school.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

This is easy for me, since I'm a guitarist second, so most of my influences aren't even guitarists.
Mike Oldfield -- even though he is a guitarist, he's more of a multi-instrumentalist...extraordinaire
Vangelis -- multi-instrumentalist, plus he writes the most beautiful music, I can't even emulate him
Tangerine Dream -- not just Edgar Froese, but pretty much every major bandmember, including Peter Baumann, Christoph Franke, Johannes Schmoelling, and Paul Haslinger -- they all make music for the sake of music, and that's my thing, right there, distilled, in 7 words or less.
Hillary Hahn -- strives for excellence and challenges herself constantly, commissioning experimental 20th and 21st century composers to write works specifically for her
Neal Peart -- ditto, and if you've watched the Work In Progress DVD wherein he explains everything he wrote for Test for Echo, you understand how meticulous he is about his craft
Anneke van Giersbergen -- no, she's not a multi-instrumentalist, but she's willing to collaborate with anyone and do any style, from her work with The Gathering to working with Devin Townsend on the Addicted! album ("Ih Ah!") to working with Árstíðir and working with the one brother from Anathema, she just really loves to make music of any kind, and it shows in her output

 

[Huggy Love]

Got me playing the Bari sax in Jazz band and solidified my love for music. Oddly enough, he was a big enough prick that I quit band when I went to high school.

You should have stuck with it ....... the world could always use another Gerry Mulligan.