On a Go Slow

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VikingBlues
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On a Go Slow

Post by VikingBlues »

OK .... I know .... sorry .... another David Wallimann BT ("Slow Aeolian" from GuitarPlayback.com). :roll:
It's just his BTs make my musical taste buds water. :drool:

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11514186
Mellow improv in key of A. PRS SE middle pups selection (ahhh - more P90 sounds for the blues room :D ) panned right concentrating on Minor Pentatonic and Natural Minor. The home made Strat had the dust blown off it and is panned left and doing runs on A Minor 7 (on middle/neck setting) as a change in tonal colour to the full Aeolian scale notes.
.............................

A query for those of you that play around with different genres - does the playing affect you in different ways?

1) Playing blues - I seem to need to get myself in a frame of mind - a sort of will to win to help me dig in - if it works when I'm playing I get a sort of clenched teeth satisfaction (fortunately for the state of my teeth it doesn't happen too often) - I enjoy listening back to it if it works but I can listen to it quite relaxed.
2) Playing rock - enjoy it at the time - letting rip and getting rid of tensions - but I nearly always hate hearing the results afterwards if recorded as it usually sounds crass and horrible.
3) Playing melodic (like this recording) - playing and listening feelings are very similar - I just find myself drifting in the tones and colours and sounds. A bit like the flavours from a favourite food or wine - you can just savour the moment. It can get almost trance-like at it's very best.
Last edited by VikingBlues on Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
An improv a day keeps the demons at bay!
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CarsickPhil
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Re: On a Go Slow

Post by CarsickPhil »

Dear Viking Blues
Very smooth track as ever. Nice controlled playing.
I find myself becoming a bit obsessive when putting something new together in any genre. All becomes rather intense. Also tend to record things too early before I've really let the musical thoughts sink down into bits of my brain where playing can become more automatic. Learnt about this in a lecture by musician and neuropsychologist, Gert-Jan de Haas. What he had to say seemed to fit with my experience. Trying to keep it all together for a new recording when pushing myself to try new things is quite a strain. This can be literally quite a strain, when my hands, back and head ache a bit afterwards. What seems to be better is to spend quite a bit of time figuring out what is to be attempted, studying/writing out the chords/melodies etc., hearing the music in the head, perhaps checking things out a little on the guitar, mulling it all over, and only then spending time actually playing repeatedly to refine those thoughts and push them down into smooth automatic motor actions. Then recording is more fluid and relaxed. This is my new game plan.
Your experience of playing different genres may relate to the above. You can sometimes pick up the guitar and play blues in really natural way, because your working with ingrained automatic motor functions with you just tweaking and structuring things a bit consciously. If you dive in to try something completely new without allowing enough time for thinking, reflecting, planning, practising, absorbing, then it is inevitably all a bit hit and miss.
Something else Gert-Jan said, which I fully appreciate, is that it is not a good idea to keep battering away making mistakes, because the motor functions are then trained to stop, stumble and screw up. Better to put the guitar down, take a break, imagine it sounding good, plan how to get there, sleep on it, start with some simple phrases and give time to let it all drop into place.
I spoke to Gert-Jan. He is going to publish a book, but there is nothing much out there at the moment, although I'm trying to lay my hands on 20-page booklet he's written in Dutch, which my partner is interested to see and may be translate. I'll keep you all posted.
Best wishes
Philip
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VikingBlues
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Re: On a Go Slow

Post by VikingBlues »

Interesting thoughts Phil - thanks for sharing them. They have been useful in clarifying some thoughts.
CarsickPhil wrote:You can sometimes pick up the guitar and play blues in really natural way, because your working with ingrained automatic motor functions with you just tweaking and structuring things a bit consciously. If you dive in to try something completely new without allowing enough time for thinking, reflecting, planning, practising, absorbing, then it is inevitably all a bit hit and miss.
I think there's a similarity in what you say there with what I am experiencing. I think the time when I can play guitar in a natural way (with "ingrained automatic motor functions with you just tweaking and structuring things a bit consciously") is when I'm playing the melodic modal stuff.

My guitar playing method for lead is very simple - I hear the melody / lead line in my head and my brain can (usually) tell my fingers where to go on the fretboard to play those notes I'm hearing in my head. When I'm listening to the likes of this "Slow Aeolian" backing track my brain is sparking and creating melody lines because of the rich harmonies and the varied chord voicings and structures. Therefore it becomes a very quick process to reach the stage of recording.

With a standard basic blues backing track the voice inside my head is not so strong and my imagination is not sparked so well as there is less material in the backing track to latch onto. To make up for this shortfall of inspiration I therefore have to use more determination and try to wring some emotion into the playing by techniques of bending, vibrato and those few licks that I can remember.

I think what I need to do is to keep listening to more and more blues, and keep trawling through blues lessons and reading posts on this forum to get the character and nuances of blues music embedded deeper in my subconcious - it needs to become natural to me - if I think much when I'm playing the creative flow seems to be damaged. That's why I love being able just to drift along and let the melody just unfold for me in the modal / melodic recordings.

I am very bad at memorising anything musical. I played classical guitar and took lessons at a resonably high standard for a while, but I could never remember a piece by heart and had to read it from the page.

I don't write down what I do now - I don't have the patience to work out all the notes, and I know that I cannot write down the proper timing and emphasis of the notes. My only chance of playing the same lead part again is to record it, and then hear it so often that my brain remembers it and doesn't start chucking in new ideas when I'm playing - it does do this of course, so every attempt at a re-creation will have different note runs to some extent. If I do multiple takes of a lead on a new recording I'm trying for the first time they will all be very different takes.

On the plus side - I REALLY enjoy the freedom of this approach I've ended up using - and I could never play lead lines that were any good before using this method. After the strait-jacket of classical guitar for so many years being able to "wing it" and make it up as I go along is a joy. :dance:
An improv a day keeps the demons at bay!
StratLover2
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Re: On a Go Slow

Post by StratLover2 »

Hi VB!

To me at least, playing different genres can be easy or fairly difficult depending on the genre. Rock/blues, are my stronger points I think, as I can simply use it as a tool to take my moody feelings out, as a punching bad. The soothing/melodic ones, are fairly challenging, in that I have to calm my self down, if I want to get a good melodic sound/feel going, but once I am there I am usually "locked" in that place, as they say.

I think it is thrilling to play the different genres, so that my lead playing never gets stale. That is why I enjoy playing over occasional country/metal/jazz (With the phyrgian/and assorted modes and whatever else) backing tracks, to give me fresh ideas that I can then carry over to the rock/blues side of things, if they work.

These are just my two cents as it were, I guess I have a lot of time to play/think about these things, as it is currently snowing at my place right now, right after a pouring rain storm yesterday, so it give me some time to exercise my musical creativity.

StratLover2
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vancouverois
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Re: On a Go Slow

Post by vancouverois »

Nice playing and good job! :clap: :thumbsup:

..."My guitar playing method for lead is very simple - I hear the melody / lead line in my head and my brain can (usually) tell my fingers where to go on the fretboard to play those notes I'm hearing in my head"...
A nice way of doing, it's a talent to be able to mentally build a solo and then to play it.
Jan 15th 2007
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tytlblues
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Re: On a Go Slow

Post by tytlblues »

Classic VB :high5: Nicely done sir, indeed! Grea tune. I think your passion lays in this sort of melodic playing/composition!!!! :dance: When you do these style of songs, It seems as if you always paint a picture of sorts.....kind of find myself drifting away listening to them. Love the multi guitar parts, sounds almost a bit haunting! Very nice VB :beer:
Tytlblues

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Blindboy
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Re: On a Go Slow

Post by Blindboy »

Hail Yeah! :clap:
I like this a lot. One of my favorite of your offerings. The dialogue between the two guitars works really well, I hear a LOT of nice playing here. I like the stacatto sounding licks at around 2:00 or so. You're getting some sweet tone... I like the contrast between the P-90's and the Strat... you are getting some nice variation in tone and gain from your picking dynamics with the P-90's. (We seem to be getting quite a few P-90 fans on this forum :cool: )
As for your question... I approach almost everything the same way... I try to "feel" my way through it. If I have to think too much about it, i have a hard time and it sounds stiff. (or just plain bad :roll: ) If I can catch the groove and get an emotional connection to the music, though, it usually goes better. This may be why I have a tough time with recording and BTs'. :icon_whoknows:
"Throw yo' big leg over me Mama, I might not feel this good again!"
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VikingBlues
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Re: On a Go Slow

Post by VikingBlues »

Hey guys - thanks for your thoughts on the playing method / feeling / genre thing. :thumbsup: I'm trying to evaluate what I do to see if there might be any tricks i can use to improve the weaker areas in my playing.

Also many thanks for your kind comments on the recording. :D ... Though bear in mind a LOT of the musical aspect of the recording comes from the backing track.
tytlblues wrote:I think your passion lays in this sort of melodic playing/composition!!!! :dance: When you do these style of songs, It seems as if you always paint a picture of sorts.....kind of find myself drifting away listening to them.
I guess you're right about the "passion" - it's something HBL has also said in a post. I'd love to be able to transfer something of the ease and mentally relaxed state of doing these sort of recordings to my bluesier attempts! :alright:
The "drifting away" is something I find myself doing sometimes when playing them - it can almost get a bit dream-like ... and I love it! :big_smile:
vancouverois wrote:A nice way of doing, it's a talent to be able to mentally build a solo and then to play it.

:shy: I "lucked out" - it really had very little to do with me as I chanced on two things - 1) a ear training CD thingie that sparked something inside my head - I'd never been able to play proper melodic lead before then, and 2) a teacher (David Wallimann) that gave me the key to playing modal with so little need for theory. I remember a talented musical friend of mine when I was young being baffled by my inability to "hear" the melodic flow of what I played - I guess he'd already found his "key". But neither of these two things involved me in a lot of work or difficulties - as I say - "lucked out".
Blindboy wrote:You're getting some sweet tone... I like the contrast between the P-90's and the Strat... you are getting some nice variation in tone and gain from your picking dynamics with the P-90's. (We seem to be getting quite a few P-90 fans on this forum :cool: )
The P-90s continue to impress me - I've never had a set of pickups before that have responded so well to playinf dynamics and methods of plucking / striking the strings. They have tones in them that do mean I sometimes lose my musical train of thought as I just find myself listening to their sound and enjoying the tones. I am glad there's more P90 users on the forum and I do feel there is a bit of a growth in their popularity generally, though they're still a poor third in sales behind the humbuckers and standard single coils (I'm baffled! :think: ).
An improv a day keeps the demons at bay!
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choucas09
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Re: On a Go Slow

Post by choucas09 »

Very, very nice Mark. Smoky atmospheric tone and playing both came through strongly. P90's sit rather beautifully between HB's and SC's making a wonderful allrounder sonically and I'm in full agreement with you on this front.
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