Not really sure if this should be in technique or elsewhere - I am NOT a technical player by any means. I had lessons for a number of years but my right and left hands refuse to play together to make me anything of a technical player.
My main issue is the music itself - I am sh!t at improvising or coming up with anything musically original and thinking out of the box.
I have plenty of ideas for writing songs but when it comes to stitching them together, and particularly writing 'solos' (although I hate the term) I am the most awful guitar player in the universe. I can sometimes come up with some really great ideas but they happen once in a blue moon and only when Saturn is out of phase with Alpha Centauri.
I can often 'hear' the ideas in my head but they seem to have the wrong map of my central nervous system and get lost and then piss off down the pub instead of finding their destination to my fingers.
How can I change this? What can I do to inject some inspiration into my writing and improvising?
Part of the problem I think is muscle memory - the old fingers know where they like to be and what sound will come out when they're there. Breaking that comfort zone is proving difficult.
I have thought about taking lessons again but finding the time and opportunity is really difficult at the moment so I can't really commit to anything. There are some online courses I've seen which look good and I'm willing to pay but to be honest that takes discipline I don't seem to have - which is why I prefer 1:1 lessons as I have somebody expecting me to do something
TIA
There is no 'H' in Aych, you know that don't you? ~ Wife
Turns out there is an H in Haych! ~ Sporky
Bit of trading feedback here.
Comments
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
There is no 'H' in Aych, you know that don't you? ~ Wife
Turns out there is an H in Haych! ~ Sporky
Bit of trading feedback here.
Maybe you just need to loosen your sh!t filter and be less self critical.
I just churn stuff out, and half the time I'm thinking this is sh!t. But I usually see it through to a conclusion, as evidenced by my various entries and backing tracks to the monthly challenges. Some things I grow to like and some not. Perhaps some of it is sh!t (to some people) but I'm having fun
The more you write the more you experience, and improve. Your first songs are never going to be the best! As you listen back you can learn where to improve certain parts. It really helped me to analyse other people's songs and understand what they were doing, not to copy them but to take ideas and turn them into my own style.
“Theory is something that is written down after the music has been made so we can explain it to others”– Levi Clay
Hi Tia,
My advice is simple and maybe some help :-/ Get a looper pedal, record a rhythm part and then just loop it back and spend 20minutes jamming over it, mess up, hit 20 wrong notes but you'll start to hear certain notes you like and build on that. A quote that has ALWAYS stayed with me was Sting 'I'm here to play whatever sounds good - I'm not here to play some reverse appreciated 16/17th's timescale solo and impress you with speed, im hear to play what sounds good and if a 4/4 time scale solo sounds good I'll play that' Or words very similar.
Great advice!
By the way, I think TIA means ‘thanks in advance’
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
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