Everybody has a favorite guitar player…well, almost everyone. We have those licks we learned from our favorites. That’s how we get a vocabulary of ideas. For me, I have gone through phases. I played along with recordings of people like Stevie Ray Vaughan and The Allman Brothers Band. That gave me a good foundation in lead guitar.
The only problem with this scenario is you only end up stealing ideas from other guitar players. Since we play with our fingers, we fall into convenient patterns that fall nicely on the fingerboard of the guitar neck. You end up playing via muscle memory a lot of the time. This becomes almost like a reflex to spew your favorite licks out again and again. You end up repeating yourself.
Lately, I have been listening to a lot of Jazz. However, I have not been listening to that much in the form of Jazz guitar. What or should I say who have I been listening to? Horn players for one. They play melodies. Guitar players do too, but again we fall into patterns. A lot of these are the same ideas recycled. The other issue is most guitar players have no formal music education.
Most guitar players don’t read a note. They learn from their friends, videos and magazines. Some take lessons but even that has limitations if the teacher is essentially uneducated. Horn players know how to read for the most part. They struggle through beginning clarinet books starting sometime in grade school. Those books are written by people who understand music. Horn players learn intelligent musical phrases, so they play intelligent musical phrases.
Another instrument to listen to is piano. The average piano player has a chord vocabulary that exceeds most really good guitar players. They understand harmony. Unless, you go past the basic chords on the guitar, there are limitations. Part of this also is due to the tuning of the guitar. Some voicings are extremely difficult on the fingerboard. Having said that, you can still learn how to play hipper chords than you find in the guitar books some of us started out with.
Drummers can point you in another direction regarding rhythm. Most us can’t even count bar lines, myself included sometimes. This is important! Where is one? If you don’t know, learn!!! All playing music actually requires is the right notes at the right time. That’s it! Rhythm is 50% of that equation, and at times even more. You can actually get a lot of cool rhythmic ideas from piano players too.
Now, this sounds like I am bashing my favorite instrument and its players. I am not! I am simply stating facts here. Listening to other instruments just might help you find your voice on the guitar. Another concept to explore is actually playing another instrument. Drop me a line if you like, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Until next month, ciao.
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