It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
If you agree, certainly learn lots of cliched musical phrases to trot out over 12-bore-blues.
Twisted Imaginings - A Horror And Gore Themed Blog http://bit.ly/2DF1NYi
.
Learning from other guitarists is part and parcel of the learning curve, so yes learning licks is a good idea.
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
Learn them, change them, play them backwards, add in between notes, make them purposely sharp or flat. Whatever. How can it not benefit your playing?
Ed Conway & The Unlawful Men - Alt Prog Folk: The FaceBook and The SoundCloud
'Rope Or A Ladder', 'Don't Sing Love Songs', and 'Poke The Frog' albums available now - see FaceBook page for details
Let's say you learn 50 "classic" major 251 licks inside out. You won't just know 50 licks, you will have improved your ear for what works in that context, you will have identified much of the dna common to those licks, you will have improved your capacity to compose your own licks or create them in the moment, you will have improved your physical ability to play, you'll have learned some of the vocabulary and grammar of great players and you'll almost certainly have given yourself some good imaginative ideas.
People say "it's no use mechanically learning licks" but unless you're some kind of weird automaton, your intelligence and imagination will ensure that's never all that's happening. It might take longer for the other stuff to come through, and at first it may feel like all you've learned is some licks. Some of the other stuff works at a subconscious level, and you might not know what's happening until suddenly you are playing and you realise you can do stuff you couldn't do before. That's a fantastic feeling.
You hear a lot about the straw man whose learned a gazillion licks but can't use them to make music, but I think it's largely hooey. In the vast majority of cases, guys who know lots of licks can play.
I agree that learning other people's material is a good way to work out how it is all done, but then I think it's good to move forwards and create and use those lessons to express one's own voice rather than just emulate.
It's my way of seeing things and working in the world. Not necessarily for everyone. I do think that learning licks can help to give inspiration and change one's own pattern and push the envelope of what you're playing, making you play differently, which can be good.