Innovative Practice

[Radius_Vector]

Guitarists! Okay - we all now know the pentatonic box shapes so well that you can play them asleep, the standard 3 nps legato runs, the brave yngwie might even rip out a couple sweeps. BUT what Id like to hear from my fellow guitar mates over here - how do you guys overcome that creative barrier or rather prevent yourself from hitting saturation point?

My personal technique of late is to move up every standard shape by one fret to observe the different tonalities I get. It gives me very interesting, different ideas at times.

Another good excersise which I picked up from some youtube vid was to work through various scales two strings at a time, throughout the fretboard - some of the textures I find by this method are really inspiring.

How do you come up with something that makes you go 'WOAH' how did I do that?

 

[adamqlw]

I find the best way to break out of your comfort zone is simpy that.. play outside of your comfort zone. If you're good at playing 3 note per string stuff, then start Pat Martino type licks that don't lend themselves well to 3 note per string stuff. Try playing some country licks that have a *lot* more bending that say your usual rock stuff. If you play alot of rock/metal and you're used to play even 16th notes and triplets, start playing with a swing feel and really try and make it groove. If you're comfortable with the usual major/minor sort of thing, start experimenting with 4-note chords, altered chords, suspended chords etc.

Basically, if you just keep playing the same stuff faster and faster you'll hit a point where you're just not really going to excite yourself anymore. Once you hit a kinetic limit where it's "just more speed" then the only way to keep it interesting is to start making it sound musically different. Challenge yourself! You never know what you'll find a new genre of music that will either enhance your understanding of a genre you already love, or will open the door to new experiences.

The most amazing thing that a person can discover is that there's a bottomless well of musical experiences to draw from. I know that the day I had the epiphany was the day I realized how much I *really* sucked and suddenly music was fun and challenging again. The difference between a beginner and a master is a beginner realizes how much he knows, while a master realizes how much he doesn't know.

 

[thor666]

1. Play scales horizontally instead of vertically. Licks and riffs sound much more fluid horizontal than vertical.

2. Pick up a guitar book to learn. Lots of stuff to learn! Most importantly, research on what is good out there.

3. Grind, set your metronome to as slow as you can get, practice your drills and discover how bad your timing is (I did).

4. Observe bad players. Observe mistakes. Think about how to rectify.

5. Dump music theory in favour of rhythm practice. Throw in your blues shuffle, 16 beat chuggas, rock anthems, ska/reggae strumming, etc etc.

 

[adamqlw]

5. Dump music theory in favour of rhythm practice. Throw in your blues shuffle, 16 beat chuggas, rock anthems, ska/reggae strumming, etc etc.

All good advice but I personally disagree on this point. From the perspective of someone who neglected music theory for many years, my own experience was when I *stopped* dumping music theory I started learning a lot more *and* playing a lot better.

To me, the important thing to remember about music theory is that it's not a rule, rather, it's an explanation of what exists. It doesn't dictate what you can/should play, but it provides invaluable insight into what you might be able to play. This is particularly useful when trying to identify what it is about something that gives it a particular sound/feel. Theory doesn't define boundaries, it merely attempts to explain what can be observed. And of course, rhythm is but one topic that is discussed in music theory.

I still like Victor Wooten's description of music best. He says it's like a language. You learn all the rules and the grammar, but when the time comes to speak, you don't think "subject verb object", you just speak. Likewise, with music, practical benefits can be reaped from studying theory. Theory itself is but only the first step, it needs to be coupled with practical execution for it to have any tangible benefits in terms of advancing one's playing.

 

[thor666]

Read the thread title.

No, I'm not saying you shouldn't learn music theory. For you to even dump music theory, you need to know it to begin with.

To clarify - what I mean by dumping music theory when playing rhythm - is to focus on rhythm alone. My experience is that focusing on one thing at a time reaps greater benefits.

Again, to be innovative, you need to break conventions. Conventional practice should be a requirement - innovative practice has to shun whatever you usually do though.

 

[adamqlw]

Read the thread title.

No, I'm not saying you shouldn't learn music theory. For you to even dump music theory, you need to know it to begin with.

To clarify - what I mean by dumping music theory when playing rhythm - is to focus on rhythm alone. My experience is that focusing on one thing at a time reaps greater benefits.

Again, to be innovative, you need to break conventions. Conventional practice should be a requirement - innovative practice has to shun whatever you usually do though.

I agree about breaking conventions, but then to truly trasncend convention one must understand it first. Your definition of innovation is correct in absolute terms! However, from the *content* of the post, and thus, taking the thread title in *context*, it would appear that there are a great many conventions that the poster (and myself!) could benefit from learning. Those conventions would generally be the rudiments of genres of music that we are not well versed in, because these conventions, while not innovative in and of themselves, are innovative when applied to a context that they are generally not found in.

I think Shakti is a great example of this. Jazz and indian classical music are discrete genres, however, when Zakir Hussain and John McLaughlin et. al. began mixing them together in the mid 70s, we saw innovation in action. In doing so they had to find the lowest common denomitor to establish a common ground and work from there. Unsurprisingly, and completely in agreement with your perspective, the lowest common ground is rhythm. I believe Zakir Hussain has said so himself, and it shows in his participation in things like Tabla Beat Sciene.

I'm not disagreeing with you though man, I completely agree. I feel that generally speaking, music theory is something that is often neglected in young and sometimes even advanced players honing their craft. I always cringe when I hear people say "dump theory" or something to that effect because that can be misconstrued as your back on an encyclopedia of knowledge. That may not be the intention of the person saying it, but along the way the little details get lost in communication.

You are of course correct to say that it's good to deconstruct the learning process into discrete elements, and then integrating these elements. However, if you focus too much on the micro, you miss the macro perpsective.

At the end of the day, we're both trying to help this guy, other people, and ourselves out in the whole learning process. So I think essentially, we're saying the same thing and coming from the same direction... which is trying to help people out

 

[thor666]

Glad we agree, and I -really- see your viewpoint. I'm teaching guitar lessons and am kinda racking my brains to see how I can teach music theory in a more informal, fun manner without boring my students out. Keyword is fun here. There's too much practice that's created in a boring manner to keep people's attention.

 

[adamqlw]

I know what you mean man. I'm a very boring person myself so it doesn't bother me that much but I often run into that problem when I've taught (I taught spordically over the last couple of years while finishing up my higher education).

One thing that I found really helps is to try and get students, especially new guitarists, to understand that this stuff is empowering. Students always want to learn songs and have a good time and the thing I really stress at the start and try and get across is if you learn this stuff now you'll really see your playing progress in leaps and bounds. The hardest part is to beginning because if they don't grasp the fundamentals, the rest just doesn't really come together and it falls apart really quick. Usually I give them a bunch of self study material and guide them along a little every class, but whenever they bring something to me and say "this sounds really cool" the first thing I do is break it down so I can understand what's going on in theory, and then show them that with just a little bit of theory, not only can they understand why it sounds the way it does but they can *learn* it that much quicker.

Of course, at the end of the day everyone derives something personal out of their instrument and approaches it in an individual way. I guess one could say there's no right way, but some ways are definitely more efficient than others. As long as people have fun on the way that's all that matters, but for people who hit a rut and suddenly feel like they need something new to stimulate their creativity, to me theory is really the answer.

My favourite quote in relation to this:

"After years of practice, the young guitar player will eventually overcome kenetic disabilities and being to focus more and more upon what is being played as opposed to how it is played. In other words, the quality of the music is now the primary concern. With this in mind, the maturing guitarist will temporarily sedate his on-going urge to play lightning fast guitar licks and flashy feats of fingerboard gymnastics. Finally, the guitarist comes face to face with the nemesis of every budding musical artist, namely, improvising over chord changes." - Pat Martino

 

[Radius_Vector]

Some good advice going on in this thread.
Thor I really like your horizontal scales idea, riffs sound less staccato that way.

adamqlw - What you are saying is right in most aspects, no disagreements there. But yeah, it isnt directly related to the thread. You seem to have experience - it would be great if you can share some of your ideas on how to practice differently, and effectively.

BTW, yeah, Ive seen "Shakti" live and theyre phenomenal. I was out of breath at the end of the show.

 

[adamqlw]

Hey Radius_Vector, had a listen to some of your music, sounds great man!

As for innovative practice ideas:

Try playing through scales in a cycle of 5ths/4ths in 1 position. For example, with the root on the low E, one would play the following

Key - Scale
C major - C Ionian
G major - C Lydian
D major - C Locrian
A major - C# Phrygian
E major - C# Aeolian
B major - C# Dorian
F# major - C# Mixolydian

That covers all the basic modes and makes you think about it as you go along. You should of course transpose this to different keys, start on different strings, and just basically do every permutation of it that you can think of.

When practicing scales, you can of course, do it in a multitude of ways. You could play straight up and down, or just create your own sequences. Try and come up with sequences that you've never played before because that forces you fingers to do something different so you actually develop the ability to play new ideas.

You can also take all these ideas and apply them to apreggios. One thing I like to do is pick a key and play through all the arpeggios in the key. For example if you're playing in G major you'd have the following chords:
G major 7
A minor 7
B minor 7
C major 7
D dominant 7
E minor 7
F# minor 7 flat 5

You can play these arpeggios anywhere that you fancy, try and play them in as many different ways as you can. You should also add color tones. One interesting thing to do is add the 2nd/9th interval. If you do this in A minor for example, you would have the following notes.

A B C E G

Compare this to the notes in A minor pentatonic

A C D E G

You'll notice that it's very similar to A minor pentatonic except rather than having the 4th interval, which is a perfect interval and doesn't sound major or minor, you now have a major 9th interval. If you were doing this over a iii chord, you'd use the flat 9 instead of the 9. This gives you an interesting sound that's somewhat like a pentatonic but more melodic, and it's a good way to break out of the whole pentatonic rut.

Another interesting idea is to take a 3 note per string scale, but instead of playing it straight through like you normally would, play the first two notes on each string and then bend the second note to the third note. This breaks out of that whole cliche 3 note per string sound, and also gives you lots of practice bending

You can also take any licks/songs that you already know and try and play them with a swing feel. This helps develop your timing and requires more control than just ripping through something with a straight time feel. One song I like to do this with is Mozart's Turkish Rondo.

You can also try playing any existing ideas with octaves. This doesn't work so well with shred style licks though

Basically to me it's all about doing things that you don't normally do, and the easiest way to do this is take stuff that you already do and turn it on its head.

 

[ShredCow]

Theory's integral and important. I like what is being said here. Interesting, useful and applicable stuff. This is surely better than being presented with plain licks and nothing more...

That said, the importance of theory isn't apparent to many...

Probably because you can get away without having to pick up theory.

That's the interesting thing about music.

However, I certainly do not support the "just wack la" mentality which seems to just box people up and throw them into a cool, comfortable but mundane cycle.

I do think that if you want to "break out" then you do have to put in the effort to hone your ears, create some new muscle memory and open your mind.

To which I'd suggest several things to the posts above:

1) Modal theory is dry, boring and worst of all, the results are not apparent on paper... since it IS a MUSIC theory. So... experience it - HEAR it.

Record (via midi or something) simple 2, 3 note bass lines and play/record your mode runs over them...

Focus on the notes that make the mode... e.g. the sharpen 4th in lydian... play those notes more...

Pick up the sonic differences.


2) Regarding familiarity with scales... every find yourself just flying over the notes with wanton abandon - that's mindless shred btw = and coming up with nothing... new?

An easy way to get a first break is to just... change your backing tracks.

Which takes us to...

3) Indulging in rhythm-ness!
What thor666 and adamqlw have mentioned is very very key. Your drummer shifts his beat = your old riff seems out of place... That is why, playing with a drum machine (cheap one = midi software) is > than a standard metronome.

Swing is a simple, great way to exercise rhythm... not too difficult an environment to get started in, but to make others swing to you is a can-do-till-die-but-still-cannot-make-it-why?! kind of thing.

Or just dial in a 7/4 rhythm... or something odd...

4) Do stuff you don't normally do
I can't stress this enough... Its... key to breaking out. The thing is to avoid feeling like you gotta comply with some "standard". Usually brought upon by the current music fads, the people you mingle with and the radio stations / albums / genres you listen to.



That's what I can think of at the moment.





Btw, adamqlw, its cool to see someone into theory spring up to contribute... I'm always on the lookout for fresh ideas, and I like your quote of Pat Marino - makes me realise the frustrating phrase I'm in might just be (hopefully) another step in the right direction of music...

 

[Radius_Vector]

Thank you for your kind words, adamqlw.

Shredcow - I totally agree - If I have ever read any material that managed to uninspire me, and turn off all possible reception in my brain - It has got to be those long articles on how modes are used and the yada yada behind them.

However, modes are the coolest thing a guitarist should know? Yep, well so I managed to teach myself modes through my ears, rather than my eyes.

Nowadays, when I teach my students, I cannot emphasize enough on the importance of modes and their applications - Of course, I find it hard to teach them through their ears alone, for effective ear training can be possible only if supplemented by a keen desire to learn from the individual's side.

What I usuall do is as follows

1) Hit the low E string and let it ring, and use it as my central pedaltone
2) Fool around on different modes, first the orthodox ones (ionian, dorian etc)
3) Add my own notes to the already existing orthodox modes, as adamqlw mentioned already
4) Now, this is my favorite part:
When quite comfortable with E as my pedal tone and its modes, I completely shift my base key to some other open string, say D for example, and I work on making the transition as smooth and interesting as possible

Now, doing that would require modal theory! But dont go to those books yet, first let your ears guide you more than those goddamn articles on the web!


Another very interesting thing which Ive been doing of late, is to try the same excersise but with different tunings (Open G for example), and try to maintain a similar kind of a note progression.

Doing this makes sure that my fingers dont get bored either.

 

[thor666]

Hi RadiusVector,

If you've been trying out any of the advice given here, can you post back some feedback a while later? Would really appreciate your take on the practices suggested.

Cheers,
Raymond

 

[Radius_Vector]

Hi Raymond,

Id be glad to share whatever little I know. I will keep my feedback updated on this thread.

Meanwhile, Id really appreciate it if you could try some of my methods which I am using (as posted earlier) and give me some feedback. or see if you can come up with a better/ more inspiring way to practice?

Cheers

 

[thor666]

All right... keep you posted.

 

[thor666]

Back with feedback.

Observing the scales on 2 strings is particularly interesting. I didn't notice that most of the adjacent strings had a particular near symmetry to the scales.

For modes, I'm not a very keen user of them. Usually I just work with mental concepts on solos and I never tend to want to put particular modes into particular solos. The low-E drone thing feels to me too much like Indian music somehow and every mode i play tend to sound like that... :|

I still tend to work with the major scale, minor scale, blues scale, voodoo blues scale and the chromatic scales in my playing than modes. And sometimes mixing the scales together for different concepts in the songs.

 

[Radius_Vector]

Thanks for the feedback, Raymond.

About the low E thing , what modes are you improv-ing on? Because I notice that I tend to sound like Indian music only on the harmonic minor, natural minor, and arabian scales.

However, I was able to get a real cool blues shuffle kinda riff going, with the drone on as well. Maybe we can record clips and exchange?

And yes, I spent some extra time working on my rhythm playing. I took a simple 4/4 metronome click going, and i emphasized every 3rd beat with a "tock" .. for example

click click click click click click click click is your normal pattern
click click TOCK click click TOCK click click TOCK - this was quite simple actually, as it is standard 4/4

As i got bored, I indulged in something more -prog

click click TOCK click click click TOCK click click click click TOCK
- Getting accustomed to this time signature was very hard, but once I managed to lock in with the metronome, i was able to get some real cool rhythm patterns going - All in all, this is a great, fun excersise to be performed! (Thanks Raymond and Shredcow) Would definitely recommend this to the folks reading this thread

 

[thor666]

Low E thing... on modes. Am not too sure - am I missing something about modes? I find I can't really appreciate modes that well.

For the rhythm, you can try what Tomo Fujita recommends. Slow down the tempo to half of what you want. Then the clicks will sound off on the 2nd and 4th beats of a bar. This kinda simulates a snare drum. You'll have to "imagine" the 1st and 3rd beats in your head when practicing.

That's mainly what I just do when I work on the practice part - set to 40, work on exercises.

 

[ShredCow]

Try setting a drum beat and a 1 note bass line. That might make it easier.

Also, note, modes have to be emphasized. You got to play that different notes, or the notes that make the mode. So in lydian, you have to keep playing the #4 in order to reap the vibe. It would be MUCH easier if you have chords with the #4 in them (e.g. Satriani's Flying in a Blue Dream) but since you don't...


Putting it all into sound - here's a little doodle I just did for you.

Drum loop and bass line with 1 note (A). 1st section is Ionian mode, your major scale... then the rest is lydian with a few passing notes thrown around. However, the 2nd part, its lydian but a negative example - just playing faaaassssssttttt and yeah, I'm hitting the #4 but its not emphasized. Its blah. Then the 3rd part is how I would emphasize the lydian tonality... and uh... I like dissonance lah so I used a little of that.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=641337&content=songinfo&songID=5983458

 

[RoRK]

Interesting thread. SInce you guys are more into theory than myself I tot it will be good to put in my 2% GST into this thread.

Playing scales/modes or essentially playing your usual runs via different strings/patterns is one good way.

But what I find most useful is playing interesting chord progressions and chord fingerings. Simply picking up a good song, a good song is defined as one with no-traditional/simple chord progresions, perhaps one with lots of etended chordings, will do wonders once you play over them. I don't do this often but I find that it's really useful.

Also, look into trying to come up with a meaningful song idea/title and then build around that idea using only chordings that help to accentuate the feel. Of course if it's a sad song idea, it doesn't have ot have sad chord throught, you can go for contrast, and have sad and happy parts.

There is only so much you can do if you stick with standard chords and standard chord progressions. Worse is to play over them.

Cheers
RoRK