and anonymous replied...

hello there once again. great weather today. a whole day of rain, just the way i like it.

despite the fact of the existence of the internet, and more specifically google.com, people still have the cheek to ask questions like how can one learn guitar by themselves, blablabla.

with the question on being musical.. well i have several viewpoints with regards to that.

i reckon you know who marty friedman is. all his solos in megadeth were improvised, and that says a hell lot. in his instructional video he showed the stuff that goes on when he improvises. he follows chord notes closely, saying that the more you think, the better you will play. the more confident you are of the notes you are playing, the more conviction with which you play them (whacking the strings!), the more impressive you will sound to the listener. because of the fact most of the stuff he plays over are your basic major/minor/power chords, it is simpler to well, know the chord notes and improvise accordingly.

but one thing he said was that anyone could just pick the right scale and improvise over a progression. but not many follow the notes closely, saying how he adds his own little things in when following the notes, like passing notes and bending in or out from an out-of-key note to a sweet note, etc. he said that all these little things would make you unique in your own way, which would of course be better for our musical health, rather than just wanking away like so many shredders do. personally i'm not a fan of shredding done in overdoses. you can train a monkey to play fast, but you can't for the love of god make him play something slow with feel and nuance. still, shredding impresses your everyday ignorant man, which is basically what too many wannabe musicians (psst, singapore) crave for.

in his words, it is "the way you do the things you do", adding on that it would be a great song title. hah.

to be honest, i am as clueless as anyone on how to be extremely musical either. for me, i like to sing the notes consequently while playing them. when i improvise i think to the extent of the caged positions (or the caged system in relation to the mode i'm playing in), and my start and end notes for every different chord which to me, make all the difference, adding passing chromatic notes every now and then. and your odd octaves or two, with some funk picking here and there. sounds big but its chicken shit. it's basically playing blindly in one sense, but i do have a subconscious sense of how the notes sound all across the neck if you get what i mean. its that sense of familiarity within a scale that you get after practicing it for so long. it becomes somewhat an extension of yourself. that is also how you start getting stuck in a box as you have been playing in its boundaries for so long. hah.

you do know the application of modes yes? on how we use the modes, over which type of chords, what type of progression, etc.

now, all this leads to another question. does one want to be a good jazz improvisor or a rock/blues improvisor? neither one is better than the other, just different.

with relation to a more jazz context, i have seen joe pass's instructional video as well, which was needless to say mindblowing. the walking bass lines and melodic lines going on around the bottom two and top three strings respectively... well, he's joe pass. now, au contraire to marty, he said he does not like to complicate things, trying to keep things as simple as possible. how he likes to think of a 1-6-2-5 progression with the 6 being a minor chord, simply as a passing chord that is not as important as the 2 and 5, etc. basically, i learnt how to play pseudo-jazz and learnt chord substitution from that video.

but keep in mind, he has practiced all the scales including the augmented and diminished scales (in all keys!) since young for basically twelve hours a day, so much so that the guitar has truely become his second voice. you can see that when he does this little thing that i have noticed, where he plays the same combination of notes, across three strings as an ending to his whole "performance", for example the e string, then the a string, then the b string. i'm not sure if i make sense here... i am not particularly adept in communicating to anyone, let alone someone i do not know.

at the same time, i have watched a couple of andy timmons (if you don't know him, check him out, he has an amazing feel to his playing) videos a long time ago, where he said the best thing that he ever did playing guitar, was learning by ear. even though he eventually learned theory to understand and be more... enlightened with regards to what he was playing.

if you have managed to see guthrie govan in action, i hope you do feel inspired by such a great player. he was, or rather, still is my muse in guitar playing.

i know i owe it to myself to learn more about chord theory and chord building to improve in improvising, more specifically, in a jazz context. problem is, for awhile now i have been more interested in improving as a songwriter, rather than a guitar player, if you get what i mean. it was a pivotal moment when i decided to blow my two months work pay on an acoustic rather than a new electric. hah! i've become your sensitive acoustic-bearing songwriter writing love songs for no one and about no one, and dreaming of the day when he actually becomes brave enough to perform and comes out and everyone goes "he's amazing!".

i know john mayer once had such a coming-out fantasy.

oh, before i forget, your remark on how players like steve vai and yngwie would be if such resources were available to them back in the day. well, i have observed a couple of healthy debates on this from harmony central before, and i have to say that, they are great at what they do, and that i don't think they would be any more great of a player than they already are, just that they would be able to get where they wanted to be in a shorter time. after all, they would in my mind still be as successful as they are now, not because of the wide availability of resources, but because of their devotion and passion to the instrument that is way above everyone else's.

all of what i've said is of course, is in my humble opinion. i hope i have been of some help to you. one should always lead by example instead of preaching, and i think i have been preaching way too much. i wish you luck in your journey, and i'll end with charlie parker's quote - "You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."

oh by the way, here's an interesting little thing to train your ear. (relative pitch)

http://www.good-ear.com/servlet/EarTrainer

regards