What do you do when you find yourself repeating the same things?
In: Rocking in the free world Thursday Apr 10,2008
Nothing relaxes me better when I get home in the evening than a short session of playing my acoustic guitar! Just that I have observed lately that I have the tendency of repeating myself from time to time. It became kind of a overused record. Most of the time I play some improvisations, nothing planned. And I find myself repeating some of the licks and, frankly, I don’t like because sometimes, instead of being relaxing it annoys me. In this situations I do my best to seek links I have never played before, to learn a solo of some particular song, because in my opinion, playing other people’s music forces you to think on an other direction than your own.
Do you find yourself in the same situations? When starting to improvise, do you recognize overused patterns in your playing? What do you do to overcome this? How do you exit this situation?
Now, be honest, don’t you dare telling me that you never repeat yourself, OK?!
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4 Responses to “What do you do when you find yourself repeating the same things?”
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Ovidiu OprescuRomania, 31 years
Playing the guitar since 17 and enjoying every moment of it!
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Pribek
April 10th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
“When starting to improvise, do you recognize overused patterns in your playing?”
Oh yeah, all the time. But, one thing I’ve learned is, that is my perception and, often times, it isn’t that way at all to the listener. So, rather than making an effort to avoid those licks, I’ll go ahead and play through them. If I’m not worrying about avoiding the “overused patterns” it seems to free up some brain space, free up thought, and I start coming up with new ideas.
Ovidiu
April 10th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
well, you may have a point, but it sometimes annoys me. It is like in Malmsteen’s music, you know, there you hear all the time similar lick that’s why people say that he plays the same thing over and over again. But indeed, when you feel well and happy with yourself, without worrying too much about what you play there, you get the best results.
Remember that article Dr J pointed us here about those jazz musicians that were brain scanned while improvising? The article said a part of the brain is closing, the one about self control and the other opens up, the one about creativity. And the two can not be open at the same time
So it is probably better to let go and just play.
But those licks still annoys me
Borracho
April 16th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I lean heavily on my blues influence and it certainly can sound repetitive if you don’t work hard at breaking the chain so to speak. A lot of guitarist have their bread and butter licks and progressions that just feels so right to play. The key for me is to adapt different phrasing styles to my own style. I find that usually allows me to explore new licks and progressions that don’t bore or bother me. One way I do this is I go down a list of my guitar gods and do some research on their influences. Then I dig deeper and do some research on their influences influences! lol.
In the end I usually end up finding a ton of new ideas to play around. Ultimately allowing me to get out of that rut where everything just sounds the same.
Ovidiu
April 16th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Yes, I think that just playing somebody’s lick on your own style helps you break the chain. Every step, no matter how small, is an improvement in guitar playing and exploring other people’s work is a great improvement.