I’ve been doing weekly guitar lessons for the past couple of years, and my ability has improved a ton. I can play things that seemed impossible a while back. Theory-wise, I know my way around the guitar pretty well — arpeggios, inversions, jazzy 9th chords, and about a zillion ways to play a major scale.
But I often find myself with a guitar in my hands, but I’m almost frozen by the theory. I’m not one of those people who thinks that knowledge gets in the way of self-expression. That’s obvious bullshit, and the only people I ever hear spouting it are guitar players.
But I would like to be able to let go and just groove. Do you folks have any tricks to get the learnin’ out of your heads and just play? Sometimes I get it, but then I start getting theoretical ideas in my pretty little head.
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It just takes time, because although you've been doing it for a couple of years that isn't long enough for it to become automatic.
It will come, just keep working on it.
Try not to push too hard though- option paralysis often happens when people are trying too hard to play outside their comfort zone.
Also look at how effective your practice time is.
It could be that you are doing a lot of unstructured playing, which doesn't push you further up the tree as structured, targeted practice, designed to achieve specific goals does.
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...but seriously get a trio, train it with any old chord combo and jam along. Before you do that, train your ears by listening to lots of music.
You can also try playing along with whatever is on the television or radio. This gets you listening to what’s going on, and playing what sounds right. It’s also likely that what’s playing won’t be your choice of music, which is a challenge in itself.
I’ve always got my exercises out of the way first, like eating your veggies before your pudding. You’re right though, I do feel drained afterwards. I’ll try that today! And I do sometimes play along to the radio, but usually as an exercise to find the key and then play along before the next song. The key part is easy though — pop music is mostly in C, and anything from the 80s with a sax solo is in Eb.
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Been uploading old tracks I recorded ages ago and hopefully some new noodles here.
Been uploading old tracks I recorded ages ago and hopefully some new noodles here.
It's the best thing you can do. If what I'm saying sounds over-simplistic, think about the process and consider this - you are dividing your attention, playing without focus and minimising brain processes that are getting in the way of playing without filter. Anything you've learned that's automatic at this point will surface. I don't think adding any more structure to how you're going about structured practice will help, it's just giving you something else to think about when what you need to do is stop thinking.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
if not got a friend to jam with get a pile of backing tracks of different styles and so on for songs you haven't learned. Play along to them without learning song or how it should sound and just make up what you think sounds ok. Its great Practising using your ear and trying to produce something you like. The more you improvise like this the better you'll get. Then at some point you'll find you will just play what your head feels is right and it will sound great.
Urgh. That sounds awful. It's as if you're sick of being a technician and doing your homework, and just want to make some music. Good!
Music theory and actual music are not the same thing at all. Your loads of major scales are of no use unless one makes a tune out of them. What songs have you learned? What parts of tunes that you love can you play? Have you worked out a tune for yourself by listening to it? Scales are a means to an end, not a means in themselves. I would say play the tune and then learn the scale from that, rather than vice versa.
From the tone of your question you're sick of theory and "work", so ditch the exercises for a bit. As has been said above, choose a favourite song, put on a backing track, get a Trio or a looper, and make some music. Record it if you like, although use something easy like a phone which doesn't need excessive fiddling with to get recording otherwise you'll lose the mojo.
And come to an FB jam session!
A couple of things which I've found do help:
1) Try coming up with melodies and harmonies in your head (or singing) and then find them on guitar. If you're used to just playing notes from scale positions on the guitar then it can stifle creativity as you end up thinking "why would I play a note that's not in this scale when these ones are known to go together perfectly". forcing your fingers to wander out of the scale shapes you've learnt is harder than singing something out of the scale.
2) Look at modes as a way of "spicing up" major and minor scales. Although this is more music theory it can help to break you free from some of the sounds that you think a major scale should sound like.
I’ve been taking the music theory and using it as a jumping-off point. For instance, I’ll lay down a few chords on the Trio, then play arpeggios over each chord. Before long, I find a groove, but I’m also — technically, anyway — practicing. Then, a twist of a knob on the Trio and I’m off somewhere else.
A few song ideas have already come out of this, including one very 80’s-sounding power-ballad. Thanks for the advice, all. It’s really helping.