THE ‘IMPACT PLAYLISTS’ – GENERAL INTRO
This is the first in a series of posts highlighting instrumentalists, vocalists and bands which have had a particular influence on the music I write / play and the approach I take for If Not If.
It can only ever be trivially true for a composer to say “I’ve been influenced by everything I’ve heard in my life” – hearing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” for the first time, perhaps aged one week old, likely will have been as important at that particular time in transforming my view of what music could be as, for example, hearing Pink Floyd’s The Wall for the first time and seeing their Live At Pompei film on TV aged 10.
So, rather than producing meaningless, navel-gazing (and bizarre) playlists of anything and everything that “might possibly have contributed in some-or-other way to who / where I am musically”, I thought I’d create playlists that have a more specific relevance – instrumentalists, vocalists and bands I come back to the most these days (which I guess is the same as saying the ones that have made the greatest lasting impact).
Inevitably, some musicians are going to appear in more than one playlist – for example, a bass player featuring in the bass playlist may be playing on a track in a band with a guitarist who featured in the guitar playlist. As a general rule, for any particular instrument playlist, I’ve picked tracks that show the ‘featured instrumentalist’ upfront, and appearances of any other players already appearing in another list are a bonus!
Please note the playlists aren’t lists of tracks in order of my ‘favourite players’ – the track order is more about making some kind of sequencing sense. For what it may be worth, particular ‘favourite’ players (ie those I come back to most of all / who continue to resonate most) are mentioned in the intros to the instrument playlists.
There are a lot of tracks in the playlists, but the playlists would be incomplete without all appearances and I hope the playlists are interesting / enjoyable dipping into – I’ll be updating them periodically, so please feel free to return…
As Spotify playlists, they can be listened to in the embedded Spotify playlists below or at If Not If’s artist page on the Spotify app.
GUITAR IMPACT PLAYLISTS
I’ve created two guitar playlists – ‘louder’ and ‘quieter’ – to avoid jarring mood shift jolts when listening.
The ‘louder’ playlist is sequenced with instrumental tracks appearing at the start and songs following on.
For what it’s worth, the guitar players I come back to most would probably be: Jeff Beck, Pat Metheny, Carl Verheyen, Al Di Meola, Larry Carlton, Shawn Lane, John Scofield, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Frank Gambale, Guthrie Govan, Allan Holdsworth, and Scott Henderson for ‘louder’ moments, and Pat Metheny, Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, Clive Carroll, Paco De Lucia and Adrian Legg for ‘quieter’.
