still musically helpless
Wed, 03/27/2019 - 18:26
- Hi David , shot you a message a while back about how I feel my improv is progressing or lack of . You suggested I spend a lot of my practice time on taking riffs from study songs and doing that as a good portion of my practice . Problem i have is all i feel like i can do is play the riff and repeat it and every time i try to change vit up it sounds godawful bad.Ive been at it pretty consistantly for 4 years now and i just ran into a video of a guy who has beenn playing for 2 years and seems more advanced than me.I have to admit i tend to jump around the lessons but try to return to the one i didnt spend a lot of time on in the past . Any thoughts /advise on where to go , feeling a bit lost after seeing that guy play the other day - he seems like hes so much closer to being able to sit down and jam with people- starting to think i just may not get this. Thanks Frank
Hello Frank. One universal thing you can count on... we never feel like we've accomplished as much as we think we should with the amount of time we've put into it.
Music is an art, with many, many different elements that have to come together to make some aesthetically pleasing.
We all have our talents, and weaknesses... it sounds like this guy in the video has a knack for improvising.
There is one thing you can control... the amount of effort you put into it. The players that do the best are the ones who have an insatiable appetite for learning songs and licks. So... keep learning/memorizing songs. Don't focus on improvising right now. Learn those songs... as many as you can... that will lead you down the path of being able to improvise. Creativity in improvising will come from having as many been-there-done-that moments, and those moments are learned from your study songs.
Keep at it, you WILL be able to do it, you just won't know when.