Help! I'm stuck!

[slickkon]

Hi a good evening to all brethren and sisthren of soft,

It's my first time posting here and I hope you all will bear with me and my newbie'ness. My main influences of music are reggae and a lil bit of ska, punk too way back in school days..

I've been playing the guitar on and off for about a year or so now, and so far I've been playing chords, chords and more chords, barre chords, cowboy chords. I feel like im stuck at this plateu and I'm really not sure how to progress from here.

Thing is I really would like to go into playing lead guitar but like I said earlier Im not too sure where to begin. I've been watching video after video on YouTube and I understand that soloing is mostly bout 'boxes'? But how to apply them?

I really hope ya'll good people can point me in a direction and give me some advice cos I'm quite frustrated with myself not being able to improve.. :/

I thank you all in advance!

Peace, Love and Inity!

Slick

 

[lester_music]

actually learning from boxes is kinda shortcut...however it will stilll get u somewhere

best is to learn go back to basic...learn your triads, cause solo is based a lot on using chord tones.....boxes are meant for you to try out your luck...some of the notes may not go well with certain chord progression.....

knowing that chord tones of all the chords allows u to play with notes when solo...

for example....C chord has 3 notes..C E G...you can use this 3 notes when u hit the C chord in a song...experiment with it and see what kinda feeling is u hit the C(ROoT) E(3rd) and G(5th) on the C chord...

some people get it by feel..some by theory....depends very much on what u are good at...

 

[mockingbird]

Well, if you're really keen to learn more, you can't be playing on and off. You gotta go all-in. I believe that once you've done that, everything else will just come together. Best of luck!

 

[J.custom]

cowboy chords? never heard of those before. I think a good place for you to start, is to learn solos from pieces. Start off simple first, don't rush into the crazy Paul Gilbert and John Petrucci shredding stuff right away (assuming you know who they are). Practice with a metronome, learn how to keep time, that's very important as well. Once you've learnt enough of them, you'll find that you tend to give your own twist to solos that you're learning, that's OK because that's the way you express yourself and you don't have to learn it note for note.

Boxes that you're referring to are the different shapes for different scales. IMO shapes are very important when learning how to play lead guitar, I find that I'm always visualising them and see how to connect one shape to another.

Create your OWN solo by incorporating the shapes+the influences that you've picked up on the way. That will be the way you express yourself and be your OWN sound and will be unique to yourself.

I cannot stress the importance of learning the shapes. Thinking of it as tools in a tool box and parts of a car that you're trying to build(just go with the flow for the sake of the analogy) Without these tools and parts, you will never be able to start building the car. Once you've acquired these parts, you then need the knowledge of how to put the parts together.

Hope this helps

 

[NooDles]

The one thing I've noticed in my music school I'm currently studying in:
The people who get good fast, They Transcribe.
Our lecturers would drill it into our brains to Transcribe as much as possible. Note for note ,of a song or a solo that you like.
I tried, it worked. My peers tried, it worked too!
For me, Transcribing trains so many aspects of my musical skills; Aural, Technical, & Memory.

By listening intensely to the track over & over again just to get the notes right, I train my aural skills. This improves my overall musical sensibility in spontaneous improvisation.
By practising it until i can play it (note-by-note with no rhythmic errors, & to the point that i sound almost exactly like the player), I train my technical skills, both muscle memory & musical memory. This improved my speed, accuracy & musical sensibility in learned improvisation.

The next time i am put into a context where i need to improvise a similar style & progression (e.g Rock if i Transcribed Slash, Jazz if Grant Green, Blues if BB King) I'd be able to hear more ideas in my head the next time i improvise since whatever I'm transcribing has already entered my body(hands & ears) & soul (mind).

Of course, do not neglect what everyone else mentioned in the previous posts.
Do what feels important for you, and keep practising.
You'll be flying within a year. -nD

 

[slickkon]

You know what.. You guys rock man! Thanks for the advice, I can 'feel' the music more now.
To bro Noodles I kinda get what ya tryna' say, and I'll practice as you've advised.. So gotta listen to tracks more carefully now.. Thanks dude!