So, when I was a child, in elementary school, my gym teacher decided she needed to enact her facism tendencies on the whole of the 5th grade class with an atrocious Christmas play. She was never overly fond of me and unlucky for her, I ended up with the student of the month write up from it.

However, I done acting very few times in my life, I’ve come to appreciate some things about acting that I couldn’t really appreciate in my youth and that is a form of method acting, albeit slightly lesser in scale because I don’t go about getting acting gigs or forcing your fellow thespians to only refer to said person as said character to their utter annoyance.

So it started in 2008, when I was looking for ways to get deeper into the headspace of things I didn’t particularly understand, specifically crime. This was to help with cultivating my “book”, Pre-Crime. However, I used it to help create characters in my novel ideas, or screenplays. Whatever I was writing at the time. I then turned to using it to get better at guitar and I find it works very well.

So what I normally do is I will shave my beard or facial hair similar to the artist in question if they have any.

Next thing I do is go to Amazon and look at clothing styles similar to the ones said artists have and cultivate a look that is closer to them in the time frame and then try to modernize it, as if they were walking around today, assuming they’re still alive or not.

I go back to Amazon as often as I need to in order to get my minds eye in direction of the “character” so to speak.

This is a new touch, but I used to photoshop if need be, however thanks to the AI I can create images that help me better interpret the artist in question.

I listen to their music as much as possible and attempt to get into that headspace. I may try and create similar riffs or something as well, in order to get a deeper understanding.

I try to visualize how a movie or biopic could look, starting said individual musician. This helps to get a better feel for how said person is interpreted via different mediums like interviews.

I may buy myself a new guitar that is similar to said individual, because sometimes having said style guitar can help you facilitate a deeper connection to the musicians you like.

If you can get pedals to work on a tone, that is helpful too.

You don’t have to restrict yourself to just people that play your instrument. I improved my bass line playing on guitar by doing that same with Lemmy as I did with Hendrix.

I’ve done this about 4 or so times over the years and I personally think it helps.

At worst, it’s a fun waste of time, trying to better put yourself into the shoes of another human that’s deeper than just understanding where they’re coming from. It’s black like me, that documentary from the 1970s but without the benefit of it helping others integrate into society.

If anyone decides to try this, let me know if it works for you.

Stay Metal

🤘