I've been playing guitar for a bit under a year, and I still pretty much suck at improvising music. I noticed that my creativity/ability to improvise comes and goes dramatically. Like for example, sometimes I have no problems coming up with good-sounding, detailed riffs...but others I can't even get a basic melody started. Does anyone else have this happen? Will I be more consistent when I get better? I don't really think it has anything to do with skill though, just state of mind...
yeah i get that, improvising just comes with practice.. i play the keyboad and at the moment i find it hard to come up with an interesting rhythm with my left hand to work with my right hand. perhaps you should learn some more scales and work around them...if u haven't already that is
oh and you'll probably get better replies if you post in the 'Performing Arts' section next time, its more musician based there, this is just mainly music in general
in order to get better at improvising, you may want to practice modes (ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, lochrian) and the pentatonic/blues scales learning about chord progressions will also help you out in deciding when to bring certain modes/scales into play http://www.wholenote.com - all of that stuff can be found here
yeah like once said, learning scales can help a lot, but it's not necessary. maybe you can learn some theory too but that's not what's music is all about... maybe you aren't going trought a time of your life that your soul feel like singing!
or have you ever taught about using the wonderful effects of DRUGS I heard that they make miracles! Yeah I heard... because I don't do drugs, never :X
Well, I may have practiced a few scales intentionally, but I must say, I probably smoke more joints in a couple days... Anyway, I believe creativity can come from tone and being a taoist with your gear. People are leaving their tone pots maxxed out on 10 and not getting the full potential of their grear. I mean, I don't mean to be one to whine... It *IS* rather irritating that people actually have the leave their tone knobs on ten all the time. It's irritating because your disrespecting the guitar's ability. I don't think there's anything I can't stand more. People just do not get the most out of their playing or their gear that way... generally because the of the loading effect. Take a Les Paul for an example, With the tone control full on... If you consider what the situation would be for the higher frequencies, where the impedance of the cap is relatively small, you still have what amounts to a 500K tone pot in parallel with the volume pot.... As such the net loading on the pickup is two 500K resistances in parallel, thus being only 250K (It can vary a bit, some pots are a little off). The point is that even with the tone control full on there is still a small loading effect on the pickup at the higher frequencies. If you then disconnect the tone pot/cap, the loading on the pickup becomes only that of the volume pot, 500K or whatever. This would better allow the natural responsiveness of the pickup to be realized. Somewhere on the Seymour Duncan web site they had some graphs of pickup output versus frequency response.... The variable between each graph was the amount of loading applied the pickup, 100K, 250K, 500K, 1Meg, or an open circuit virtually no load. The results were that the upper mid response of the pickup was reduced by the excessive loading of the 100K and 250K pots, while the larger value pot/lower load allowed the upper response to be seen a lot better... It might be possible to go too far. Some people have tried using the lower output cleaner weaker pickups and found that without a tone control or with a 1Meg volume they start to sound a little too harsh, a little too brittle, and just not quite right. What they are probaby describing is the upper mid responses from the pickup becoming too overpronounced for their tastes...bah. A traditional PAF style pickup with 42 gauge wire having a total coil resistance of around 8K may be okay with those 300K pots Gibson has been using in the production LPs.... If you wanted to keep the loading effect to a minimum you probably would want to have at least a 35 or 40 to 1 ratio between the value of the pot and the pickup coil resistance, just my rough rule of thumb. Once you start getting into the Gibson 498T/500T or the stronger wound higher output Seymound Duncan models (JB, Duncan Custom, Custom Custom, Duncan Distortion), with windings in the 13K to 16K range or more, a case can be made that a 300K pot is an excessive load, too small of a pot, 500K is called for, and a 1Meg could even be justified. Part of the effect with pickups is also due to the very fine wire gauge used in the coils.... AC power or higher power speaker cable will be up in the 18/16/14 gauge area, while pickup coil wire is way down in the 42, 43, or 44 gauge. You just can't get all that much current happening through a piece of 42 gauge wire before it would overheat and self destruct. The light gauge coil wire contributes to the pickup being sensitive to the pot loading effect. I hope somebody swallowed that(?)
lol.. i play guitar and Keyboard and Voice.. improvising is Always a journy.. It can sound good and it can also Sound bad.... but music is music If you made it, i'm sure some Aspect of it Means something.. tonight i wqas playing guitar(i suck at this instrument).. aNd i tried improvising and stuff.. and it didn't sound too bsad.. but then there were times where i wanted th throw the guitar on the street... lol The more you mess up.. the Better you get at playing.. in Any instrument.. Piano and VOice are my main instruments.. Vocal Skatting is fun.. lol Sounds wicked awsome!
As long as my guitars are in tune and I have something to jam to, that'll be enough inpiration for my creativity... Oh yeah, and playing with my gear/tone.
LOL, I should have added that the only times that I have no problems improvising at all are when I'm on some type of drug. Mushrooms are my personal favorite for musical creativity. Alcohol actually helps too sometimes.
taking mushrooms wont enhance your ability to play guitar if you never had it to begin with and I cant imagine how much it could possibly broaden your improvisational skills if you have that much trouble with them when youre sober unless you are extremely fluent with the guitar, drugs probably wont do much other than hinder your ability to physically play the instrument, to whatever extent according to the particular drug/amount that you took
Well you can think whatever you want, but I'll tell you 100% for sure that I can play at least 4x as good when I'm on mushrooms. Maybe you're right, and the creativity really is there when I'm sober. But trust me, it's not just my imagination.
maybe while you were on mushrooms you had more confidence/enthusiasm than you normally do, which in turn caused you to play better I suppose if thats the case then mushrooms do help you in that respect, but theyre definitly not necessary to achieve that mindset... you are the one in control
Pink Floyd used to make light effects (well I think at the begining) to inspire them to create their songs. So I guess it's about the same visual effects the mushroom does. It's never the same going from a person to another, no one react the same.
anyways man... how many song have been inspired out of drugs effect...! Oh! so many my friend! Don't say drugs don't help you in creativity
I remember smoking some really good weed one time and then I forgot who I was and started talking to nobody but I thought I was talking to Chet Atkins.
