I went out to rehearse with my buddy's band last night and... I've tapered off more than I ever imagined. When I play by myself (on very rare occasions), I feel like I've still retained a fair amount of the skill I built up in high school, but when I sat down to play with these guys that all disappeared. When I got out of high school, I traded in my guitar for beer and women........ and I lost a good majority of my knack for playing other people. I was garbage. Their lead guitarist kept giving me openings to solo and I didn't know where to go with any of my old riffs anymore. I was irate and uncomfortable the entire time. I guess what this boils down to is that I need to start playing on a more regular basis to get it back. I know what I need to do to gain it all back and it won't take long, but it's like hitting the gym after having taken years off... it's frustrating not to be able to do what I used to.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Commiserate with me.

 

All the time man, In fact I just had one tonight. I am a fast learner when it comes to musical instruments. As long as I practice a bunch, I can pretty much learn anything. There is a problem to this though, and that is that I don't practice enough, and when I do I don't practice the right things (such as just the notes to the song and not the theory behind the notes). Tonight I had an opportunity to play with a very musically gifted group of individuals and I just felt really out of place as they kept telling me to solo in the key of ___ and to play in this and that time signature.

Now, I've been playing for about 4 years now and I play in a band in front of a live audience every week, and i've played gigs in front of crowds of 6k-8k people - but it is stuff that i'm reading off a sheet and muscle memory. As I head off to college there are people who know of me and want to start a band, but I just feel like i'm going to let them down because I don't know the theory behind the music. That makes it very hard to write your own material, which is essential to a band...

</rant>

 

I know exactly what you mean man. I've always been a very quick learner with musical instruments as well and that's makes this that much more frustrating. I picked up the guitar and figured it out almost immediately, learning all kinds of classic rock (zep, jimi, cream) by ear with ease. I know how to play but my fingers just don't cooperate with me anymore. I assumed (wrongly) for a while that it was like riding a bike, but it's really not.

As far as what to practice though man, you can't really practice theory. The best thing you can do to pick up music theory as a guitar player is to hop into a jazz band or to at least start looking into some of the more complicated jazz chords. Just learning those will help you to write music, too.

Be careful that you don't get wholly caught up in them though. That's been my downfall. I played guitar in Jazz band for 2 years in Junior High and 3 years in High School and I learned those chords very well, but I have a hard time straying from them when I write. They're great because they all have some kind of sustained note in them that needs resolution that leads to another chord, so on and so forth and the song can almost write itself with you as the vehicle through which it's heard. Those sustained/transition notes also work well as lead melodies that can be played on top of those chord changes.

There's nothing wrong with reading sheet music and basing your riffs off of solo music. Everyone starts off with canned solos. What we both need to do is to pick apart more solos from whatever genre we're going with and to break to riffs apart and internalize them so we can play pieces of all of them whenever we'd like in any key.

There's work to be done. I intend to put my best foot forward and make this happen. The best resource I can recommend for you to allow to do the same is: http://www.myguitarsolo.com/soloes_tabs.htm

Use that entire website. I started getting into it about 6 years ago and never really invested the requisite time to better myself, but I now have every intention of doing so. Hopefully I can report back with some good news in a few weeks. It's time to build those calluses back.

 

Yeah, good points. When I listen to a song, I can always imagine really awesome sounding solos and stuff that would sound great, but I can never seem to achieve that with the guitar in my hands. I think a lot of my insecurity stems from the fact that the other guitar player in my band just got a 4 year scholarship to the berklee school of music in boston.

Something else that frustrates me, I never really mess up live, or when i'm playing by myself - but when i'm teaching lessons or playing for a few friends, I seem to mess up on the EASIEST things, and it frustrates me a lot.

On a positive note, In the last 2 weeks I think I have gotten better as a player than in the last 2 years I have been playing. And just for the record, i'm pretty much self taught.

 

Me too. I just need to further that education.

I hear songs and I automatically understand how to play them and can hear other complimentary riffs in my head too, but when I have a guitar in my hands that understanding doesn't translate to my fingers. Part of the reason I want to exploit that website is that if offers all different types of little licks in different styles, random scales to solo in, cool chord changes, and very useful finger exercises. All of that will directly translate to playing what I'm thinking.

****, I sound like I'm getting paid to promote that website...

I know what you mean though... there's something different about playing for a large audience of strangers than for a small group of friends. I rocked the star spangled banner in a hendrix-esque style in high school and nailed everything I was going for, but I easily stumble over myself in smaller sessions. What can you do though? It's just different.

 

i wish i could play guitar

 

i have a guitar, but can't play. can't learn w/o at least some theory, but everyone local offering private lessons can only show you how to finger chords, and can't explain why those chords are what they are. If I wanna know fingering, i can look it up online, I don't need to pay somebody. Until then, i screw around with 3 chord garage band songs, and have to use something like mxtabs.net to learn them.

 

Hey ssbaudi:
Do you take any musical instruments down to OSU with you? im hella rusty right now, like, beyond rust, haha, but i played drums for about 13 years straight, me and my buddies where im from had a little band sine like 8th grade, long time. we mainly just played in the basement, did a few shows here and there, we always struggled finding singers, small town, no one really know how. but anyways, i took my drums down last year and they just sat in my place. i mainly used them at 3 a.m. when my neighbors would come home from the bars on like a wed night and blast their music wakin everyone up. i have an old acoustic i take and dink around with as well.

 

I'm gonna be taking my acoustic, electric, and my amp and all of my pedals and such. I've already met a few cute (read: HOT) girls who want to take lessons from me, which is going to kick off the year pretty well

but i've also met up with some guys that are great musicians, and we're actually looking for a drummer. I'm not sure what our goal as a band is but most likely just to have some fun. what kind of stuff do you play?

 

Bullshit. You can learn quite a bit without theory. You really only need to get into music theory on the guitar when you plan on getting really, seriously deep into your soloing ability. You can write and play without it. Don't over-complicate things. The guitar is enough of a beast as it is without people making it complicated on a ridiculous level. Do what you do and expand as you see fit.