Tricks to breaking through a wall in your playing...

SmokinHalfNote said:
One more thing that is aimed at me as much as it is anyone . . .

Take the time you would spend on a message board and use it to practice the basics (chord voicings, arpeggios, scales, modes) in every key until you know them cold.

And yes, I'm aware of this post's irony. :)
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Yes!

And I'm guilty to a certain extent as well (although I consider this board a chore like watering the plants...)

This is not a knock on the OP, or even smokin', but I find this has to be the single largest contributor to 'why can't I play better?' The guys with 4000+ posts (on SEVERAL BOARDS) are the 1st ones who say 'sorry about the clams' on their recordings.

Single minded, PATIENT, dedicated practice on technique will improve your playing. I think it's more than that tho. The MORE you play, the better your feel is, the less time it takes to 'get in the groove'. When I say more, I mean at least once a day for an hour or preferably more. DO NOT SKIP DAYS. I think that's a killer IMO.

So even if you don't do a rigid technique practice, when you're watching Project Runway, run through scales or tinker around on the guitar. Find time in the cracks. I've heard from many a professional that to keep that link in between you and your instrument, you need to do something with it every day (um, kind of like a wife...)

R
 
BrainalLeakage said:
Usually, when I hit a wall, I put it down for a few days, and reflect. Same thing for writers block. Sometimes to move forward, it helps to NOT do a thing. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Best thing to do with writer's block is to just write. Doesn't matter what it is or how it sounds put the pen to paper and force yourself to write anything - just keep the pen moving.
 
Another idea you might consider is picking up different instruments. Get yourself into piano/keyboards. It will change your whole outlook on your music and your guitar playing. Use it as a writing tool. Use it a an idea generation machine. Many are the time I've sat down at a piano, fucked around and come up with something inspiring to myself and taken it to the guitar for something totally new and different. It's a great way to find another gear.
 
PacoCasanovas said:
Then start with the secret power of major/minor pentatonic (before jumping into deeper and sophisticated areas) - most people just use the minor pentatonic......:D Cheers Paco
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+1!!

I thought I understood the use of the Pentatonics, and brushed it off as beginner-ish, but after going through a lesson on applying major/minor Pentatonic mixed over a changing chord progression it sounds 'jazzier' than anything I did with a mode.
 
VHDon said:
+1!!

I thought I understood the use of the Pentatonics, and brushed it off as beginner-ish, but after going through a lesson on applying major/minor Pentatonic mixed over a changing chord progression it sounds 'jazzier' than anything I did with a mode.
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Pretty much every AC/DC song is a minor pentatonic scale being applied over a major key signature. Back in Black for instance is in E major, with the main descending lead riff an E minor pentatonic blues shape.

You Shook Me All Night Long - is in G major. The entire guitar solo is G minor pentatonic over those chords.

A lot of country licks are using the same line of thinking, except in country, they do jump to major and mix all of it together.
 
Modes are absolutely awesome to learn. You can use the mode patterns to learn the entire major scales along the entire neck. This can help expand your playing into multiple areas while soloing. They can also be used to set the mood of a song, maybe the guy who made the statement does not realize the depth of the modes and only knows what he learned in a lesson. I have seen lessons on modes where they only show you how to play them within one pattern on the guitar explaining just to begin on the next note of the scale. I think the important thing here is to remember there are no stupid things when it comes to guitar but many things that you can continue to learn throughout your lifetime. There is so much to learn I have been playing for 46 years and I still take the time everyday to improve upon a technique that I find challenging. Also I believe its important to actually implement what you have learned and practice improvising so that you can learn to let go and let the music take you where ever it wants to go.
 
Modes are absolutely awesome to learn. You can use the mode patterns to learn the entire major scales along the entire neck. This can help expand your playing into multiple areas while soloing. They can also be used to set the mood of a song, maybe the guy who made the statement does not realize the depth of the modes and only knows what he learned in a lesson. I have seen lessons on modes where they only show you how to play them within one pattern on the guitar explaining just to begin on the next note of the scale. I think the important thing here is to remember there are no stupid things when it comes to guitar but many things that you can continue to learn throughout your lifetime. There is so much to learn I have been playing for 46 years and I still take the time everyday to improve upon a technique that I find challenging. Also I believe its important to actually implement what you have learned and practice improvising so that you can learn to let go and let the music take you where ever it wants to go.

One more thing eliminate the word stupid from your vocabular, that word should not have become a word if you ask me. Try to leave yourself open to the possibility with all guitar techniques and scales there is so much music just waiting to be created.
 
claham said:
Elaborate please, I'm note sure what you mean?
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MODES are simple. They predate harmony and chords. When most people, guitarists play modes they aren't going very deep in their understanding and tend to play things that sound scale like. To really understand modes you have to go back to Gregorian Chants and ancient church music. There's a drone with notes floating above. Every note is equal to every other note. John Coltrane is the guy who re-established modal playing. He wasn't the first but he was THE GUY. Then, as a way of INSTRUCTION, people started applying modal thinking to chords, but it's mostly not quite right because they're being played on top of CHORDS, which in reality have nothing to do with modes. To make scales sound musical on top of chords you need chords (arpeggios), passing tones and chromaticism, which is a whole other subject, and above all good musical and aesthetic taste. But generally speaking NOT modes.

Some music IS modal. There can be a chart that says Eb Phrygian. That's NOT necessarily Eb minor. Or you can have Eb Phrygian natural 3, b6th mode. These aren't chords.

Or you can apply them to chords and sound like a guy playing scales. It takes a lot of work to make them sound like modes and not scales.
 
henryrobinett said:
MODES are simple. They predate harmony and chords. When most people, guitarists play modes they aren't going very deep in their understanding and tend to play things that sound scale like. To really understand modes you have to go back to Gregorian Chants and ancient church music. There's a drone with notes floating above. Every note is equal to every other note. John Coltrane is the guy who re-established modal playing. He wasn't the first but he was THE GUY. Then, as a way of INSTRUCTION, people started applying modal thinking to chords, but it's mostly not quite right because they're being played on top of CHORDS, which in reality have nothing to do with modes. To make scales sound musical on top of chords you need chords (arpeggios), passing tones and chromaticism, which is a whole other subject, and above all good musical and aesthetic taste. But generally speaking NOT modes.

Some music IS modal. There can be a chart that says Eb Phrygian. That's NOT necessarily Eb minor. Or you can have Eb Phrygian natural 3, b6th mode. These aren't chords.

Or you can apply them to chords and sound like a guy playing scales. It takes a lot of work to make them sound like modes and not scales.
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But.....what would Ace Frehley do?
 
MaxTwang said:
Best thing to do with writer's block is to just write. Doesn't matter what it is or how it sounds put the pen to paper and force yourself to write anything - just keep the pen moving.
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I'm not really a "paper, and pen" kind of writer.

When writing lyrics, it's usually a matter of looping the riff, either in Garageband, or manually on a guitar, depending upon the riff, and blurting out lines till I have a topic to write about that makes sense. Then I pull out the thesaurus, and a rhyming dictionary. And I never really put any lyrics in stone till we've played it enough to be comfortable with the way it flows.

In the music itself, I try my best not to repeat myself, so it's usually a matter of finding a riff, or progression I've never used, and building a song around it.

Basically, what it boils down to, when I hit a wall, is that it's a mostly finished piece, and I haven't found the right thing to top it off, and it helps if I just stop, and go do something else. Play a video game with my band mates, go to Target, and look at things I don't need, get on Facebook, and read things that evoke emotions of all sorts.

Sometimes it's just a matter of simply needing to experience something new in order to get that last piece of the puzzle in place.

And I never TRY to write, at least not anymore. If I feel a song coming on, then I write, if I don't feel a song coming on, then I don't write.
 
Something I've found very helpful when writing music - I'm not a good lyricist - is to write with pen and paper. I can notate music pretty fast, so I'm fortunate that way. Generally I don't turn on the DAW until the piece is more or less finished. Then the DAW is for production. I find when I used to WRITE in the DAW, I tended to repeat things in a loop or just play it over and over. I listened to it, either admiring one thing or the other or not liking it. But the PROCESS changed. I no longer was creating it but listening to it. IOW it wasn't so much floating around in my head. It wasn't malleable. I was becoming glued to the performance, for better or worse. When it was just in my mind or when I was playing it on guitar, I could change tempos, keys, grooves, at a different bridge, rearrange things quicker than cut and paste. I could change the melody, turn it into a waltz. But the DAW more or less finished it. In a few days I was all worn out and bored by it.
 
After learning Kansas, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Larry Carlton songs and solos note-for-note in the mid 70's I realized I still could not improvise.

So I started spinning the radio tuning dial around, trying to improvise to music I had either never heard before or played before. I think this helped me the most and helped me see patterns on the fret board too.

Now I can wing it without even knowing what key I'm in if I momentarily loose my place in a tune because I have the minimum amount of skills to get back on track before anyone notices I got lost. :lol

Then I started to write bits and pieces of music (instrumental song fragments) using my ear which pushed my fingers to do really painful harmonic and melodic things with jazz-like chord inversions, etc.

That in turn caused me to hear melodies on top of the structures I was putting together that never would have occurred to me otherwise, and so on, and so on ...

You still have to woodshed in parallel - e.g., the theory, scales, modes, arpeggios, etc. - and fortunately we have some really great teachers in our Fractal community like Tom Quayle and David Wallimann and Chris Buono who make it soooo much easier to assimilate, contextualize and apply musical knowledge ... its a life long journey ... yet ... so little time! :)
 
Sometimes you forget in which thread you asked a question. I will contemplate your answer for sure. I never really understood what modes, modal music (jazz) is but I can relate to what you say "Or you can apply them to chords and sound like a guy playing scales. It takes a lot of work to make them sound like modes and not scales."
 
claham said:
Sometimes you forget in which thread you asked a question. I will contemplate your answer for sure. I never really understood what modes, modal music (jazz) is but I can relate to what you say "Or you can apply them to chords and sound like a guy playing scales. It takes a lot of work to make them sound like modes and not scales."
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scale. [0] a group of pitch classes arranged in ascending or descending order. E.g., take the pc set G, C#, A, F#, D, B, E and arrange it as E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D, E (with E as tonic) and you have an E Dorian scale.

mode. [0] an interval or ic series used to construct a scale. Examples of the traditional modes include: major, minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc. These are all interval series; e.g. major is T-T-S-T-T-T-S, where T=whole tone or whole step and S=semitone or half step. Notice that a mode is actually a series of gaps, or holes, between pitches and not the pitches themselves.

Note: The level at which each concept is most often introduced is indicated by the numbers 0-4 in brackets, where 0 is pre-college level, 1-4 are various levels of undergraduate theory, and 5 is graduate level.


You're meaning the difference between scales and music.


Zwiebelchen said:
...as you get it learned by any teacher out there.
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Not mine. He emphasized, and provided, tools for easy absorption of information and development of technique. Which I have used in all of life, and have had a great deal of success with, except in cases where it wasn't as easy as I'd like. Learning sucks. Knowing is awesome.
 
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I'd just be happy to have 1/10th of Steve Lukather's talent. Forget scales and knowing anything about everything, just let me suck the brain outta that guy and i'll be on my way.
 
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