My guitar playing is stuck in a rut.
This is something I hear from students all the time. Here are two easy cures for this symptom.
Students who have been playing for a while get tired of hearing themselves. They come in and tell me that their playing always sounds the same, it's always predictable, and they want to break out and have fresh ideas. I think all musicians can identify with this. In my opninion, the two following tips are the easiest and fastest ways to spice it up. I'm all about getting the best bang for your buck. The most results from the least amount of work.
1) Learn new licks. If all you ever play is minor pentatonic in the same old box with the same old licks, of course you're going to sound the same! But if you take the time to stop and learn even one new lick, you can get a whole a new perspective. Learning a lick that you really love is like getting a private guitar lesson from your favorite player. It doesn't end with memorizing the lick though. You then need to get this lick into your playing by soloing along to songs with different grooves in different keys to actively apply this lick. Do it every day, at home, on gigs, when you're jamming with your friends - until it sounds fluid, and you can get in and out of it. I have wasted many hours learning licks that never made it into my playing, simply because I tried to learn too many licks at once and didnt give each lick time to marinate. Like a steak. That you bought from the butcher. That he recommended would be delicious. So you bought and cooked 10. And you couldn't eat them all. And you wasted them. And you felt bad and full cause you ate too much steak. Get what I'm saying?
Remember, One lick alone could be enough to give you new ideas. You can always morph that lick into different positions, or superimpose it over different chords. So it's not just one lick in one box in one key. That one lick is the acorn that grows a great oak of musical ideas. For example a you can apply a major country country lick to the relative minor key in a R&B song. That's a fresh idea. It might sound great. It might sound terrible. It's a new idea!
2) Learn new concepts. Ok let's take that same example, and say all you ever do is play the same old minor pentatonic box with the same old licks. What if I told you you can play major pentatonic by simply moving that entire Box down three half steps (e.g. A to F#) and that over a blues you can go back and forth from major and minor pentatonic by just moving that shape back and forth? Or if you take that same box and move it up a half step and then back down you can get some cool outside sounds?
These two simple concepts can open a whole world of ideas for you. No new licks to learn. Just a new concept, and that might completely change the way you play guitar.
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