I'm looking at starting to put in a bit of practice again. Same old story, in a bit of a rut, been playing for 25 years now and have reasonable legato technique; not so bothered about speed picking.
The specific problem is this - I can learn a new scale or arpeggio and understand its relationship to underlying chords. That bit's fine.
When I come to apply it in a run in my improvisation I just end up running up and down the notes in sequence and it (predictably) sounds crap. What can I do to practice the patterns differently? I need something methodical to break the muscle memory.
Any advice appreciated!
Comments
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
Yes. You need to learn and use the alphabet, but not every word has the letters abcdefg in that order.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
It stops the running of scales and makes you think of melodies and note choice more..
I also think one octave scales are more useful...less to think about and easily joined to make 2 or 3 octave...i think iff you just run up and down scales thats how your playing ends up sounding..
Two strings at a time, whole and half step ghost bends and bends, patterns, a bit of licks made from said scales, think the that these days is to spread out the intervals as much as possible in a simple lick without sweeping. Erm patterns are handy in as much as they make you hear how things sound, mainly in pace, but that's about it, if you start using them all the time, they can be as bad as scale triplets or something. To break muscle memory and get the best use of patterns look at Malmsteen's stuff and practice different ascending and descending patterns on one string with that scale, then all the strings.
The best way of invention is to hear it in your head first though, the solo progression or the weird intervals etc. even if you can't put your fingers on them. Obviously playing patterns will help that when you want to learn what something sounds like with intervals faster but they are more a tool rather than an aid.
I've found a bit of stuff to work on - here's an example: http://www.guitarworld.com/scale-sequences-15-hot-patterns-will-fire-your-solos/25194
But more importantly, there's a bunch of stuff to think about here. I like the idea of using two strings at a time in particular. Also using one string I think will help in terms of understanding a scale perpendicular to the neck, if that's what I mean - escaping from those boxes.
Cheers again guys, you're great!
Plenty of food for thought here to get out of that rut. Need to apply your thinking to more complicated scales. It's a weird mental block, but I guess we all have different ones that we think other players would find stupid.