Learning to "Noodle"

BillDL

Roland said:

Here’s a useful exercise: play along with music on the TV. It teaches you to find the right key by ear, and select notes which work over the backing. It can also break you out of 120 bpm or whatever speed you naturally play at.

That is exactly what I used to do when I was 17/18 and just starting out.  It used to drive my parents nuts.  I had a tiny basic headphone amp (built from a kit through one of the guitar magazines I used to buy) and I used to sit with one ear open listening to the TV and one ear listening to the guitar.  At the start it was really useful for being able to figure out the key as quickly as possible, especially music that has more of a "tonal centre" with "outside chords" than being in a distinct key.  I used adverts as a bit of a challenge to try and hear where the I, II(m), III(m), IV, V(7), VI(m) chords fell and figure out the chord progression before the advert finished. The next time it came on I would try and figure out the melody.  As I went on and learned more chord inversions and scales and became familiar with how melodies in movie soundtracks or advert jingles worked against the chord movement I found that I was starting to improvise with bends or slides up to the target notes.  It's a very useful exercise to listen to the radio and try to figure out elements of the next song that comes on, whether or not it is music that you would normally listen to.  Old shows used to have quite long sections of the theme music at the start and end that were useful for trying to hone in on the melody and hear what works and what clashes. Even if the chord sequence is pretty complex you can often improvise along with it on a few different levels, from finding the bass movement and improvising to that or just picking out the single string melody and embellishing it a bit.

BRISTOL86

MrTee said:

Jack who demos for Peach comes to mind when I think of great noodling, but that's doing him a disservice. Never seems to play the same thing twice, not really recognisable as any songs I'm familiar with but really musical and with plenty of feel.

I know of his videos, and god yeah, you’ve hit the nail on the head there with what I’d love to be able to do haha.

guitarjack66

BillDL said:

Roland said:

Here’s a useful exercise: play along with music on the TV. It teaches you to find the right key by ear, and select notes which work over the backing. It can also break you out of 120 bpm or whatever speed you naturally play at.

That is exactly what I used to do when I was 17/18 and just starting out.  It used to drive my parents nuts.  I had a tiny basic headphone amp (built from a kit through one of the guitar magazines I used to buy) and I used to sit with one ear open listening to the TV and one ear listening to the guitar.  At the start it was really useful for being able to figure out the key as quickly as possible, especially music that has more of a "tonal centre" with "outside chords" than being in a distinct key.  I used adverts as a bit of a challenge to try and hear where the I, II(m), III(m), IV, V(7), VI(m) chords fell and figure out the chord progression before the advert finished. The next time it came on I would try and figure out the melody.  As I went on and learned more chord inversions and scales and became familiar with how melodies in movie soundtracks or advert jingles worked against the chord movement I found that I was starting to improvise with bends or slides up to the target notes.  It's a very useful exercise to listen to the radio and try to figure out elements of the next song that comes on, whether or not it is music that you would normally listen to.  Old shows used to have quite long sections of the theme music at the start and end that were useful for trying to hone in on the melody and hear what works and what clashes. Even if the chord sequence is pretty complex you can often improvise along with it on a few different levels, from finding the bass movement and improvising to that or just picking out the single string melody and embellishing it a bit.

This just shows how much groundwork us late learners have missed out on. I'm sure this kind of stuff was priceless and enabled you to perform at gigs and stuff much sooner than if you'd followed a more academic or methodical route alone?