First off let me just say I’m generalising here. What I’m about to say doesn’t apply to every guitarist at the intermediate level. It does however apply to a large amount of the ones I have listened to for many years. If you are one of them, and there’s a chance you are (although you might not realise it), get ready to be offended … Your guitar playing sucks! You haven’t got better, you have got worse!
Your timing isn’t as good as you think it is. Your articulation is poor. Your bent notes are not in pitch or in time. You aren’t muting strings that shouldn’t be sounding. Your scales and licks consist of notes that are hard to decipher, there’s no clarity between the notes. Your rhythms are messy and inconsistent. You aren’t listening to the beat and most of all, you aren’t listening to your guitar! Harsh words I know but I’m not about to apologise. If this concerns you, I’m doing you a favour.
Myself, and another musician I often play guitar and sing with, we have a pact. When we sound like c**p, we tell each other and we tell it straight. No beating around the bush, no hard feelings. Why? Because most people don’t like to offend you. If you ask them what they think, they’ll always say you sound good. But what if you really do suck and you’re about to play to a crowd of two hundred people. What they have actually done is traded their awkwardness for your humiliation. Not their fault, that’s how most of us are wired. But it doesn’t do anyone any favours.
Now obviously I can’t know what you sound like because I haven’t heard you. But do yourself a favour and record yourself. Listen critically to what you really sound like. Ask people to be honest. Even for the experienced player it’s sometimes very difficult to spot when you don’t sound very good. There is however something guaranteed. Guitar played incredibly basic, but done well, will always, without fail, sound much better than something complicated played badly.
I have lost count of the amount of guitarists that would sound much better if they just played down strokes on the quarter note and nothing else. Most of them aren’t necessarily bad, their playing is just a bit messy and needs tidying up, but they can’t see it and won’t believe that they will sound far better if they done much less. The most common problems without doubt are timing, consistency and an unawareness of unwanted string noise. All of these things can be cleaned up with a bit of practice, but first, you have to realise it’s a problem. That’s the hard part because most of the guitarists that suffer from this don’t notice it.
Whether you believe this affects you or not, remember this. As an intermediate guitarist, you are never too good to practice the basics. Do yourself a favour and fire up a metronome, play something simple and play it perfectly, cleanly and in time. Make it a part of your regular practice. Record it and learn to listen to yourself with a critical ear, you won’t regret it.
Hey,
I really was searching for tips, I play for 3 years now, I played more than 100 gigs, both bass and guitar.
Im actually pretty good at technical things and im proud that I can show feelings in my playing. But I always fail at jam sessions and sometimes at improvising solos.
I consider myself a leadguitarist, so I cant just stay with the rythm stuff.
Your advice to concentrate on the basics, may help me.
Im trying to get better (without shredding all day) now.
thanks,
Sebastian
Hey Sebastian.
What style of music are you jamming and what do you feel is letting you down with improvisation.
Hey,
Im mostly playing blues when jamming.
I think im a little stuck in my structures. I mostly use pentatonic, and always start my solos with a bend of the g-string. Always.
I just play the same licks over and over… And after a few seconds I just start shredding, cause I feel like im playing not enough notes.
I really want to play like John Mayer, and I really have the skills, but I just cant get away from my structures…
Sorry, shouldve replied to your post 😉
No worries, I’m not exactly swamped in comments! 🙂
It’s common to start with a bend on the G string, I still do and so do many others. I’m guessing that bend is also using the pentatonic box pattern. The thing to remember with blues is it’s very pentatonic based so one of the first things you need to do is know that scale inside out across the entire fretboard. Here’s something that might help with that. http://www.fretmeup.com/stuck-in-the-pentatonic-box/
Once you know the pentatonic inside out you will start seeing how so many blues solos are built around it, making it easier to get ideas. For a start, choose another pentatonic position, one you aren’t used to and jam with it for a whole week solid, then do the same with another position. I’m presuming you are already okay with techniques such as bending and vibrato.
Find a ton of blues jam tracks and jam over them every day. Go on youtube and find a whole bunch of new blues licks to learn, use them over the jam tracks, get extremely familiar with them. Buy some books with blues solos and more licks, learn them. Learn the chord tones if you don’t know them already. Every new lick you learn, figure out how it relates to the pentatonic scale or a particular chord. Practice this stuff in every key. Keep at it everyday and I guarantee you will see a massive improvement within a few months.
Generally speaking, blues is mostly the pentatonic scales, chord tones and a large repetoire of licks that have been practiced so much that you can mix them up and get creative with them on the fly. If you can transcribe yourself then transcribe some John Mayer solos. Don’t worry about them being exact, just get them near enough. If you can’t, then see if you can find some tabs or lessons on youtube for his solos.
Don’t waste time looking for formulas and tricks, just build your repetoire as much as you can and before you know it you’ll be where you want to be, or at the very least you’ll know where you’re heading and what you need to do / learn to get there.
There are some great books for learning blues solos and licks. One of the best in my opinion is the ultimate blues play along ISBN 1-5762-3581-5 it has some full solos that sound great and are fully tabbed, played by guitarists like Robben Ford, Scott Henderson. Another good one is Blues by the bar by Chris Hunt. The Blues you can use books are also quite good. It’s really all about getting ideas to work with. Stick at it and keep learning something new and keep using jam tracks, often!
Hope that helps 🙂
Lee
Thanks for the advice, Ill try to follow it 😉
Greetings from Germany and Good Luck with your website.
Good article!
I will be using this to help me. One question though why censore the word crap?
Can sum1 help me out with my solo i can only solo with major pentatonic scale. And i dont really understand appergios
Harsh words but very true. It’s very easy to fool yourself into thinking you sound great. But it’s another thing to play perfectly.
This is soooooo true! Learning guitar, like anything else worthwhile, is a lifelong process! If you can lock yourself up in a room for 12 hrs./day/365/yr. and have the tremendous amount of mental discipline it takes to study, memorize, create, practice, study, did I already mention study(?), apply, practice, memorize, etc., then maybe you could achieve “Rockstar” levels in approximately 3-5 years or so? Maybe! And that is assuming you don’t injure yourself (e.g. tendonitis or other muscle/tendon issues, etc.) in the process! So my point is, what’s the hurry? How about practicing DAILY (KEY!!!) for 20-30 minutes/day, keeping it fun, but disciplined and achieve an admirable level of playing in 6 months to a year? Anyway, I suppose I went off on that rant just to say that no matter what level you are at or how many years you have been playing, there is always something new to learn on that fretboard! It is “refreshing” and well worth humbling yourself, by going back to the beginning and maintaining that “beginners mind”, in other words, don’t think you are the baddest cat on “24 frets of rosewood, ebony, maple” (whatever!) in town. Slow down, go back and you may learn something! Cheers!
Thanks Jeff.
Absolutely. If ever there was nothing left to learn, the fun would be over. The challenge of always trying to improve or learn something new is what makes it all enjoyable.