Do you play the music you usually listen to...?

[hellogoodbye]

I'm learning to improvise right now, using different approaches. At this moment I'm still getting to know the fretboard, and it's going pretty well.
Quite often I practice by just jamming on my own, without anyone else or jamtracks, just to check if I can play anywhere I want to without making mistakes.
Yesterday I suddenly realize I almost always improvise blues music, with a rhythmic feel (triplets)! The fun thing is: I never ever listen to blues!
I began to study the guitar again because I wanted to focus on rock lead guitar. But everytime I end up playing blues with a groove...
I guess it also comes from playing in pentatonic a lot lately, since I found a method to do that quit easily, but I also frequently play the complete scale. And also this kind of blues isn't hard to play because usually there is no shred speed needed and the chord schemes often stick to one scale. Specially when Iplay without a band or jamtrack...

I was suprised by this myself. I'm even thinking about getting some good jamtracks (with REAL musicians, not midi...) in blues style. I do not have plans to buy some blues cd's though: I like playing it, not really listening to it!

I wonder if more people know this: you play the guitar because you like it and you play a style you like to play. But this isn't always the style you prefer to listen to!

Come to think of it... I spend about 20 years playing acoustic guitar (besides electric), playing classic stuff but also contemporary, modern things . I had a lot of fun doing so. I even performed for others. But I never ever (well, almost) listened to that kind of music! I don't have cd's with that kind of music, and I never went to a concert with that kind of music!

Isn't it cruel...? By performing that music myself, I made my family and friends listen to stuff which I would never listen to myself...

Anyone else has this too? Or am I an exception?

[Koala]

From reading your post I can only reach 1 conclusion:
-youre a masochist
you play the things you dont like, and you like it
lolol

[metaljustice83]

my solution to that, get a cheap tape recorder, make your own jam tracks with riffs of your own, or other riffs, of WHATEVER YOU WANT!!! doesn't have to be blues, still like the pentatonic, get some zakk wylde riffs, he uses the Pent. almost exclusively.

[jov]

I have this same kind of like to play, not listen relationship with
instrumental shred guitar music ( at least I try to play it ).
I think this is really good for practising, but I really don't enjoy
listening this kind of music too much (there are exceptions
of course.. )

Regards
jov

[loveguitar]

This is an interesting topic. I also like improvising blues, but did I listen to lots of blues songs? No.

It seems to me that as a guitarist, there's this "guitar music"
that interest me a lot, maybe because we play the instrument, we appreciate more of the technical beauty behind this music. But ask me to listen to guitar music and nothing else would be quite impossible as well.

Often songs that I like a lot are not guitar based. So I guess this is the "songs that I like regardless of the instrument". But do I jam over these songs? No.

But I guess this is common? Unless a time comes when my guitar skill is able to express any music I like

[nigel]

When you sit down and play without "pressure" (I mean practising for example), you automatically play things that you're comfortable with - things with no technical difficulties you know for a long time - things you got "in the pocket" - things that make you feel good Playing blues-based music can be fairly easy in terms of technique, theory etc. - so don't bother

If you play the pentatonic scale, it's fairly easy to sound "bluesy" - unless you take the "shred-path"

I play blues-based material every day since I started playing the instrument (22 years ago...huh...I'm old) - but I started listening carefully to blues music only a few years ago - when Scott Henderson released his "Tore down house" album. Then I went back, checked out Stevie Ray etc..

A lot of what you play comes from your subconscious. Maybe you listened to a lot of blues-based material when you where a child - who knows?

[Thorsten]

I think Blues is the foundation of electric guitar. If you stripp away all the technique, harmonic minor scales and theory knowledge Blues is always what you fall back on cause it´s just the natural thing to play on an electric guitar. I think if you ain´t got a feel for Blues you really lack some basic skills on the instrument.
If you listen to any rock guitar solo 99% of it is somehow blues based (including Yngwie).

TK

[Bongo Boy]

Originally posted by Thorsten
Blues is always what you fall back on cause it´s just the natural thing to play on an electric guitar

...it's because no one can resist bending those strings.

[LarryJ]

It's pretty simple actually. I'm in the same exact situation, and for me, its because I dont know the use of the other scales well enough, and the underlying chord pattern. The only thing I can come up with , is bluesy sounding riffs that cop the 'feel' of the rhythm, and include lots of bends and stops etc. This is usually done to classic rock type stuff.

When I try to play something along to a palm muted 200 bpm heavy riff, i'm completly lost. It's too fast and too hectic to play over. For right now, at least, my mind can't think up a riff to tap instantly while improvising, or a fast descending run or whatever, it can only handle slow bluesy and, at the risk of being flamed, easy stuff. I can play this type of stuff no problem when just noodling around, but when musics being played under it, I'm lost. Maybe you shouldn't be improvising so much. Try to get a more structured approach to writing a solo, once you have an 'arsenal' or collection of riffs, and licks and runs for whatever the type of music is you play, then you'll be able to pull them from memory and play the type of solo you want. I think the problem is, everyone knows the pentatonic, and the classic bends associated with it and riffs, so you have to break away from that. Thats what I'm trying to do now, it's working out, although slowly, and I'm also trying to look at underlying chord patterns and staying in key, although this is pretty tough to get started with and I haven't made much progress yet. Anyways, Good luck!

-larry

[hellogoodbye]

Originally posted by LarryJ
Maybe you shouldn't be improvising so much. Try to get a more structured approach to writing a solo, once you have an 'arsenal' or collection of riffs, and licks and runs for whatever the type of music is you play, then you'll be able to pull them from memory and play the type of solo you want. I think the problem is, everyone knows the pentatonic, and the classic bends associated with it and riffs, so you have to break away from that. Thats what I'm trying to do now, it's working out, although slowly, and I'm also trying to look at underlying chord patterns and staying in key, although this is pretty tough to get started with and I haven't made much progress yet. Anyways, Good luck!

-larry

Well that's funny!!! That's EXACTLY what I thought a short while after posting my post!
Until now I never really looked at riffs and licks from others: I wanted to do my own stuff. But I noticed that didn't exactly give results that would please anyone else but me...

Just today I accidently heard a B.B. King cd (someone at my work played it: he never did that before!) and I thought: that's the music I am playing now! This guy (B.B. King I mean...) has been around for ages and knows all the tricks: I'd be stupid not learn from him! So this evening I downloaded some King and Blues stuff from Truefire.com and tomorrow I'm going to listen and learn for the first time from a master. So I'm not playing music I never listen to, I am playing music I begin to appreciate and like! (As I said I already liked playing it.)

When I got enough tricks and now how things are done I'm sure it will be easier to develop my own thing. I'm also looking for some good blues jamtracks, so I won't just be playing into the blue.

Anyway, your advice is great and a confirmation of what I discovered myself today!

P.S. Staying in key is difficult indeed. Everytime I improvise on my own I think I'm the best. But as soon as I turn the radio on and try to improvise along with the music that I hear (whatever is on) I get completely lost... Also of course because I don't know which chords are played and what to expect, but even songs I know are quite impossible for me... Still got a lot to learn...!

[Oliver Maison]

I sort of get something similar but not in that I don’t listen to the music I play but I can’t ever play the music I listen t a lot.

What I mean by this is when I listen to a lot of Queen I played blues every time I went to the piano (And now guitar), and could never play anything like Queen could, I tried to listen to there song and learn some Queen-esqe stuff but could never emulate them, Then later on in life I stared to listen to Van Morrison a whole lot and some how stared not to be able to play blues/jazz/roots stuff any more but was more included to Progressive rock sort of playing mainly focusing on The major, Harmonic sales.

What I found out was, whenever I listen to a type of music I played the exact opposite, And when I listened to a lot of different style I couldn’t play anything at all as I was torn between two widely different ideals of music.

I wasn’t sure if I was reacting to the music or whatever, but I stared to use it, and when my friend wanted to do a blues jam on the weekend, in went Durran Durran for the week. Work like a char.

Dunno if anyone else gets this as well?

Cheers

Oliver Maison