Creating the lines I want in play in my head, on guitar

General Music Discussion
#1

Let’s set speed aside for a sec. I believe this is common, but I’m not sure. Often I like to come up with solos, riffs, songs, etc. in my head first. I do also come up with material by messing around on guitar too, but for me that is an entirely different and separate process. I find that a combination of muscle memory, having certain notes within reach of my fingers, the guitar tuning, playability, etc. act as a filter/modulator for the notes that I end up using.

This filtered/unfiltered thing is not a problem for me when it comes to writing riffs or songs. I use both methods and have come up with material I’m proud of both ways. I probably write from the head about 90% of the time, just my preference.

Now the problem for me lies in soloing. With songwriting, there is no problem, as the process is stop and go, and at your own pace. My issue is with improvisation in real time. If I sit and listen to a backing track, I can “play” or hear the solo in my head in real time with the backing track. For pre-written solos, this is often what I do. But for improv, there is no other option obviously but to play the solo through the filter of the guitar. What ends up coming out is always 100% different from the solo I truly want to play in my head.

My question is, how would I go about “removing” this filter? I.e. getting what I want to play in my head, out on to the guitar, in real time.

I suspect it’s a matter of sitting down, going line by line, “playing” the head solo first, and then figuring it out on guitar. Or, possibly going much slower, singing the solo out loud, with my playing just a tad bit behind. But I have to say, I don’t if I ever see myself being able to do this in real time, all the time. Maybe it’s impossible, or at least impossible for me, and that is the beauty of the instrument. What are you thoughts?

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#2

It sounds like you are nearly there because you have notes in your mind! Can you give an example of what your mind thinks vs. what comes out of your fingers? Is it that you can’t find the note on the neck in time, or that you find the wrong note, or…?

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#3

Ok so here’s a fictional situation that might help me explain it: Imagine you can rewind time, and I can listen to a backing track twice, for the first time, both times. The first time I use my head, and I’m goin along “playing” a cool solo that I’m really happy with. Then rewind, and everything’s exactly the same conditions. If there was no filter between my brain and the guitar, the exact same solo would come out. But what comes out is completely different. I’ll play patterns I’m used to, notes that are maybe more convenient for my fingers, I’ll play or avoid notes because they are or aren’t on the same string, while i don’t suffer from “run up and down the scale” syndrome I still think the patterns I know affect how I move around the guitar. There’s probably a ton of other things that go into it I could list if i thought hard about it.

I hope that makes sense lol. to put this all briefly, the nature of how the guitar is constructed in terms of where notes are, and how it feels to play, either both influences or completely determines the notes I choose

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#4

It’s training. It does take time. It’s an ideal, I don’t think anyone ever gets exactly there, we all just try to get closer and closer.

I believe it’s mainly two things:

  1. the ability to hear something and recognize what it is in some sort ‘tangible data’ kind of way. Eg, you hear someone else play 3 notes and you go “oh, that was 7th, root, third” or “ti, do, mi.” That’s the ear training component - hearing things and knowing what they are. Everybody can do this to some extent just depends on what the parameters are. Eg, one whole note unaccompanied, front and center in the mix, vs three measures of 16th notes from holdsworth. Personally I can hear and identify the one note confidently, not so much the 48 16ths notes. Like 99.9% of the musical population, right now I’m in the middle.

  2. The ease of access of this ‘tangible data’ on the fretboard. That is, once you’ve identified “oh yeah that’s ti do mi” then being able to play “ti do mi” on the guitar, no matter what the key is or the position on the fretboard you happen to be in. Personally I think it’s really important to be able to play the same melody/lick in a hundred different ways on the fretboard, so you have a way to access that if you needed to, say, start with your pinky, or start with your first finger, or be in X key or Y key on Z fret or N fret yadda yadda.

These things don’t have tangible endpoints, they’re just skills I think we all try to keep getting better at.

I think the practice of singing along while you improvise is one of many useful things to do for this goal.

strong opinion alert: I think noodling and scale practice and ‘technique’ practice can sometimes work hard against this goal, so we have to be careful. It’s a bit like ‘you are what you eat’. If our experience playing the guitar is running scales or noodling, or playing without being sensitive to the intervals, melody, etc, then that’s what we’re going to get physically used to doing. And that’s when the fingers just wiggle around.

Don’t get me wrong I definitely think technique practice is useful, I think if we want to be melodicimprovisers it has to be balanced out with a healthy proportion of more “melodically mindful” activities

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#5

If I understand what you’re saying, (a) you want to play a particular note, and then you (b) decide not to play that note but some other note that depends on geometry.

Why don’t you just stop doing (b)? What am I missing? :thinking:

Ah, does this mean that you can’t find the note that you want quickly enough, so you have no choice to play some other note that you don’t really want?

#6

Most of my practice right now is purely technique stuff. This is because I’m not happy with what I can play currently, I so i’ll create exercises to target my weak points. I’m totally aware this is not moving me towards this goal, if not hindering it. But I’m almost at a point where I’ll be content with my technique for a bit and what I described above is my next goal.

as for 1) i have no issue here, ear training/identifying notes is one of my strong suits

for 2) this is an area where I definitely need work. I know my scale shapes, chord shapes, arpeggios etc. but I find that they are not linked together. Each one appears visually to me independent from the others.

#7

Not exactly. I have no trouble finding notes on the guitar, and I’m definitely not playing some notes when I wish I could be playing others.

It’s more a case of when I’m playing the guitar, the “head” solo process disappears. I’m still thinking about it and deliberately choosing notes, but I find the physicality of playing guitar makes it a completely different solo. And I prefer the one that I come up with in my head.

I hope that helps, this is a pretty abstract concept. But I do know it is indeed a thing. For instance I had a chance to meet John Petrucci, and I asked him this question. It was at a clinic, and I was too shy to speak up in front of the crowd, so I asked him real quick when he signed my guitar. His paraphrased answer was this: “Man, I wish you asked me this earlier, because I could go on about it for hours. But that’s really it dude, that’s it. Chase it.”

I’m most likely just not explaining what I mean very well. I guess a better example of this idea of the guitar affecting note choice is look at soloing across different instruments: Let’s take the saxophone. People often recommend learning saxophone solos because they are just so odd to play on guitar. Tricky fingerings, different intervallic leaps, etc. I believe has to do with the way the saxophone is designed, and how different it is from guitar. Or look at the piano. A wild arpeggio run from bottom to top, or crazy intervallic leaps, are just not doable on different instruments. So I totally believe that the set up of the instrument affects the player and their note choice. When I sit without an instrument, I’m “playing” purely unfiltered melodies and lines. Essentially, I’m looking to remove the influence that the setup of an instrument has, and play purely from the head/heart

#8

I realized I forgot to give you an example, whoops! Really, you can take tons of them from cracking the code, as they are determined by pickslanting and physiology. Now those are really with the goal of playing fast, so it’s slightly different, but i think the general idea is the same, or similar.

Another example of this lies in songwriting. Many guitarist choose to write in E, or whatever the lowest string is tuned to. So already the instrument setup has affected their note choice. If they come up with a riff idea in there head, there’s a good chance it’s not going to be in E, so they’ll just transpose it.

One more: using open strings. There’s all kinds of cool tricks you can do by utilizing the open string, and you hear them all the time in riffs and soloing. Take away the guitar, and I don’t think people would be writing these riffs/lines

#9

I totally grasp your point about each instrument having “hard” and “easy” aspects, and your observations about how one can arrange or even write music to maximally leverage a particular instrument’s capabilities (like tuning to E and then writing in E, etc.).

You also bring Alan Holdsworth to mind, where he said (if I understand) that he wanted to sound like a horn and then thought of innovative ways to make his guitar technique be able to express what he wanted (that whole “legato” thing, etc.).

But I get lost at the next step: You have a solo in your mind, and although it might not be (say) optimized to guitar, what stops you from just playing it? It sounds like technique is not the limiting problem?

#10

Nothing stops me from playing it if I think of it, and then write it down, then learn it.

The issue is in real time. The influence of the guitar just completely takes over, and I run with those notes instead. I’m still actively thinking about sounds, intervals, etc. but I believe this to be a different process than when I sit without a guitar in hand

I could totally do it, but I would have to play, stop and think, play, stop and think etc. Or play much slower, and have a decent amount of lag between the two. I want to make the head soloing and guitar soloing the same process, as I play.

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#11

Regarding the fretboard stuff, yeah, instant access takes time. I think “practicing improvisation” is in part working on knowing the fretboard, really, really well, in a lot of awkward ways.

MODS: let me know if it’s not cool to post one of my own videos in this case, not meaning to directly self promote it’s just relevant and otherwise I’d be typing out the same stuff I’m saying in this vid:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAlEw6TnjiD/

fretboard stuff is a little more tangible, but don’t overestimate your aural skills either, as it’s all part of it. Like, think of the variables maybe as:

  • speed of recognition
  • complexity of material
  • length of segment

Whatever you (or I) are able to hear and recognize right now, there’s always the possibility of recognizing/assessing it faster, being able to identify more complicate sequences, and/or longer sequences. Iwasdoingallright.com is a great site for that kind of stuff.

A funny thing about aural skills is that they’re quite hard to self assess for this reason. But their importance is only relative to the player’s goals. I’d argue that with the problem you’re describing, however good your ears are, it will benefit you to keep pushing pretty hard in that area, because the better your ears are the faster you’ll be able to know what it is you’re looking for.

Additional note - I think this is such a good Q because it’s kind of like “how do I actually improvise and play music with some intentionality behind note choices, rather than just wiggling my fingers around.” Subjective, personal opinion: the world needs less finger wiggling.

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#12

I’m totally down to test and push my aural skills! I hate coming off as arrogant, but it’s just something i’ve had a knack for as long as I can remember, and something I pretty much maxed out in at music school in terms of what they had to offer. But in no way are they perfect, and could definitely be improved. I just don’t think it’s what’s holding me back currently, at least for the most part. I think it’s more the guitar-mind connection. And definitely fretboard knowledge. I got my shapes down (chords, scales, arps) but they are absolutely not connected. Got loads of area to improve there. But even then, I’m not positive that this area lacking is the root of the problem, I think it’s that the physical feeling of playing guitar takes over and makes the process so different from the one in my mind. I think it’s a matter of sitting down and trying to line these processes up somehow, maybe just very slowly, or with my playing just a step behind the notes in my head.

But this could very well be me just being headstrong and stubborn. I posted here for advice, and I should hear everyone out and put time into their suggestions. I certainly don’t have the answer as it is.

Thank you for these materials! I’ll check out your insta post and spend some time on that site. Maybe a ton of time.

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#13

I hear you, and obviously there’s a translation factor that I’m interpreting your words as meaning a thing that makes sense to me in my conception of music/practice/improvising, but it’s possible you’re experiencing an issue that’s slightly different than the one I have in my head, therefore requiring a different solution.

I think hearing stuff in your head and making it a reality on the instrument isn’t too different from hearing stuff on a record and making it a reality on the instrument. There has to be a way to translate the sound into some sort of tangible data, and then translate that data onto the guitar. Luckily, pitches either go up or down so it’s not all super crazy complicated, except that the guitar fretboard makes ‘up and down’ more confusing than it is.

For example if you hear a melodic line in your head and can’t on some level hear it as a “do, so, mi” etc then finding it on the guitar is a game of hunt and peck - that can be successful, but not very efficient, comparatively. If you hear a melodic line in your head and easily can identify and name what those intervals are, but can’t make that a reality on the instrument more or less right away, then yep it’s fretboard stuff.

I think it’s that the physical feeling of playing guitar takes over and makes the process so different from the one in my mind.

Again I know very little about your situation/goals/background etc, and these are pretty complex topics, imo, but I might argue that what I quoted above is mainly true because the physical feeling of playing guitar has been a history of movements, licks, gestures, noodles, etc (none of this being ‘bad’ per se) and playing without the kind of awareness of melodic and harmonic relationships that are required to have this deeper connection that (I think) you’re talking about.

Again it’s one of those matter of degrees things - arguably maybe ‘melodic awareness’ starts with something very small like “all of these notes are in the same scale” , then something like “these are wider intervals” but perhaps at its highest of the top of my head is something like listening to a cacophonous microtonal string quintet playing all together for a whole concert and then being able to sing and play back each players lines, note for note when the concert is over…in any key. Yeah I don’t think there’s a human that can do that (probably not Collier or Dylan Beato)

Personally - I often dislike what I play - BUT - I do feel like I’m playing what I hear, and my improvisational ‘inner voice’ is the thing I’m playing from when I improvise. I might just not be crazy about what my idea was, but I usually feel like I’m playing the idea, as opposed to resorting to familiar finger patterns/noodling etc. But it did take a hell of a lot of work to get there. I’m a huge nerd for ear training and fretboard navigation stuff, so I’ve always been pushing myself pretty hard with those things.

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#14

I’ve been told on many occasions that this is the key to the castle.

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#15

Then there you have it. This is where I want to get to, and you’ve reached that point, so I will fully push forward with your advice.

Then fretboard stuff it is! Whether or not this turns out to be the complete answer for me, I’m gonna start working hard at this. Because either way, it’s definitely not wasted time