Do you ever get the FEELZ?

Based on what I’ve seen in a thread about warm-up time, I want to be one of those people who can just pick
up the guitar and play what I want with at least 80% efficiency of max ability right off the bat.

I have a riff that always stumps me and some days I can do it and some days I can’t. This morning, for reasons inexplicable to me, I just “felt” that I would be able to play that riff effortless without any warm up. So I picked up the guitar, tried and I nailed it. It was such an incredible feeling. But the interesting point here is, I haven’t play in about 2 or 3 days, but I just had this feeling inside that came over me suddenly that I probably could nail it and I was right.

I’m starting to wonder if this is just being in tune with one’s own body, or is something psychological like building yourself up with confidence telling yourself “I can do it!” before you even try?

ever have the FEELZ and are they usually accurate for you?

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Yep I definitely have some days when I feel more confident and as a consequence I have the impression that I play better as well. Let’s hope tomorrow will be one of them :slight_smile:

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Consistency is a result of volume of practice I think and not related to the skill barrier to playing something.

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We’ve talked about warmup before and frankly it’s always unpredictable for me. I can find no particular correlation, not even sleep or general health. I can blaze with little warmup on days where I’m totally unrested or even physically ill. And I can have off days when I feel totally fine. Sadly this pretty much maps with every other kind of physical activity I’ve ever done, including weights, running, etc.

It’s a mystery!

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well, except for MAB and the like. I think you had said that he is able to pick up the guitar and play like he has been practicing the whole time and already warmed up.

Actually I was referring to the feeling you have BEFORE you actually touch the guitar, kind of like a 6th sense.

Is it possible that you already play at 80%? Meaning, so many things go into the last 20% that are unpredictable and not definable that perhaps you are expecting more? My playing at beginning of warm up mostly reflects my skill level at the time, how many hours I was playing the previous week, whether I’m able to relax to think well, etc. The real advances have come when I have assimilated a particular skill well enough to exhibit the skill “cold.” You kind of have demonstrated this well with your example of confidence on the “stumps” riff. Then there are the learning curves to consider, backsliding or stagnating until another jump in level… I don’t know, @Troy, were you able to replicate the pop-tart riff from the point of discovery onward?

Can’t really comment on specifics because it was so long ago. But I will say that dwps dramatically improved consistency of my playing, pretty much instantly and permanently. Playing technique was initially random and unpredictable for me. The animated superhero scenes that we did for the original Cracking the Code series were meant to dramatize this aspect. I used to think maybe warmup had something to do with it. Turns out it really didn’t. I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Graduating from “no technique” to “a technique” was a big deal. Any differences in warmup from one day to the next were (probably) mostly imperceptible to me at the time, because they were so much smaller than the difference made by attaining any sort of repeatability in my playing.

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I don’t know about the 6th sense thing for me, but there are days that I just don’t want to pick up my guitar at all. Whether I’m just tired or whatever. Then I have those days I feel inspired and I practice for hours. I’m trying to find things that inspire me to want to push harder. I agree with what Troy said earlier about DWPS. It changed everything for me. Not only speed is being obtained, but accuracy! I sort of have gone back to the drawing board in that I am working on foundational techniques, training not only my picking via DWPS/UWPS with touch sensitivity for each string, but also retraining my fretting fingers for optimal movement like pistons and even minimal pressures for each finger. I’m working this things out while warming up. Then I move on to learning licks. For me, it makes learning a new thing easier and somewhat faster. I find my weaknesses and destroy them. I turn them into strengths. Apparently, I have a lot of weaknesses! LOL!

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A professional jazz pianist friend is often amazed that some of his best gigs, where he can really get out of his own way, are on days when he’s really tired, really stressed, has a pounding headache… somehow, he can channel the discomfort/disease into the proceedings.

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and here I thought “feelz” would be a listing of short musical passages that provoke chills, skin orgasms, eargasms… whatever term you like.

Two that come to mind for me are:

  1. Rush, “YYZ”, the live version on the album Exit…Stage Left. Alex’s solo break with the heavy synth behind it, right after Neil’s solo concludes, is spine-tingling!

  2. Genesis, “Los Endos” on the album A Trick of the Tail. Check out the bit starting at around 3:55. The creepy ominous percussion and perhaps backwards effects, the fake vocal synth patch playing augmented triads that slowly slowly build… Freaks me the hell out every time!

  3. This one is from an Yngwie album that gets no love, but should! Track 4 on the Fire and Ice album, “How Many Miles to Babylon”. Check out the intro! Unlike just about every other album, Yngwie’s guitar tone is more focused and doesn’t dominate everything, and I think this album has some of his best playing. Not sure what happened after this… Amber Dawn and too much coke?? :slight_smile:

(in the current climate of #metoo, I wonder if Yngwie is worried? I actually have a friend who he came onto rather aggressively back stage, while Amber was off her head in a corner).

Last weekend I had that feeling… like I could play the song I’d been practicing on 100bpm without mistakes. I took the guitar and… nope. Still lame ((

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My goodness. Should I reply to this? :thinking: Here goes… But I may get pissed and delete later. :grinning:

First off we should try to be respectful to people like Yngwie because you never know if a opportunity might arise where The Code can work with him in the future. With his past, it’s hard, I know. I’ve deleted stuff I’ve said. I would presume that his current wife/manager April would scan this site and check it out before agreeing to anything. I have no authority, or right, to tell anyone what to do on here. I was just mentioning this. You should be free to say whatever you want IMO.

Fire And Ice was the only album Yngwie recorded with Elektra Records. That probably has a lot to do with it sounding different. I would think people other than Yngwie would have say over the final mixing and mastering there.

Amber Dawn and coke did happen after that. But in MY OPINION 7th Sign and Magnum Opus have some of his best song writing. And if you ever seen/heard him live during that time, he had the best guitar tone then. Also, Mike Vescera is a awesome singer, and for LOUDNESS fans, it was cool as hell to hear him with Yngwie.

I wasn’t around in the 80’s and I started playing guitar in '95… The bearded Yngwie was all I knew man. And he was badddddd aaaaaass live.

There are goods and bads to all of his albums. In my opinion Goran Edman was a horrible singer. I purchased Fire And Ice for $1 out of a “Cut Out” bin. Goran also was on the last Polygram album which he was probably the main reason to being dropped/not resigned off of that label. I think Yngwie would (has in past) agree to what I’m saying here. So I shouldn’t be out of line.

I don’t know what “climate of #metoo” and Yngwie worried means. It’s not '95 anymore. Amber is gone. Coke, booze and cigarettes gone. His wife April doesn’t BS around. That old Yngwie is gone. He’s a humbled old man with a family now. lol.

Sorry if I offended anyone. Let Yngwie come on the The Code April :laughing:
Later!
:bear:

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interesting that you had the FEELZ but it didn’t work out like you thought. Does this happen to you often?

Hi! Ok first, I perhaps should not have posted any of that, beyond “gee, I like the Fire and Ice album”.
Troy and the other mods, feel free to remove it. I wasn’t thinking and simply trying to stir up shit.

To answer your perfect pitch question, no, I don’t have reactions to individual notes on their own. I have reactions to intervals, especially within chords, but that’s probably the same tension versus release, consonant versus disonant reaction most people have, except I can name the notes involved. :slight_smile:

Interesting you mention notes and emotional reactions though, almost a personal feeling… I have a friend who is mildly autistic, and she talks about numbers in purely emotional terms. “Oh, 21, I hate 21. I like 8 a lot”… that sort of thing.

Another possibility is synesthesia, where one sense is experienced as another: hearing colors, smelling sounds, etc. I don’t have that, and I’m glad of it, but some people do. I’ve heard some composers talk about visual imagery triggered by various sounds, so I guess when composing, they’re literally building a scene, a giant building or something, in their mind? Gives a new meaning to “man, his playing is ‘tasty’”.

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Damn, that clip you posted is the best I’ve ever heard Yngwie! I take back my comments.

Has anybody seen him on the current World on Fire tour?
and how’s the album?

LOL, man I put my foot in my mouth all the time. It’s all good. Nobody will remove your stuff here. I don’t think anyone is offended either. The Yngwie dirt is entertaining as hell to me. I started realizing that the forum is public. Yngwie might read this stuff one day, You never know! :rofl: So I started showing restraint on the smack talk. I don’t want to be the reason a guitarist backs out of a interview here. That’s all I was saying. I wasn’t trying to censor you. Sorry.

Fire and Ice is awesome! That song above was off of Magnum Opus. He had a beard in the video. It’s funny. I first seen Yngwie with a beard. I was expecting the “hot chic” looking guy from the inside jacket of Trilogy. Not a bearded madman. It was pretty shocking.

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I know we’ve gotten far off topic bu this is really interesting. I have always heard guitar sounds in terms of food. For example I’ve always had an image of a big slab of steak like you see in the cartoons covered in sand paper when I hear Dimebag’s tone. Or sometimes, I’ll see a cheesecake with others, etc. I know it’s really weird, but it makes total sense to me.

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the brain is amazing…

what qualities of A-flat tell me it’s A-flat? Dude, you’re making this a lot more complicated than necessary. The frequency tells me. I’m just better at identifying and labeling the frequencies I hear than someone without perfect pitch. :slight_smile:

If learning something by ear, perfect pitch only gets you the first note. Develop good relative pitch, which anybody can train to do, and you can figure out the rest of the notes by their intervalic relationships.

Interestingly, I had no trouble learning to identify parts of the frequency spectrum when I took some mixing and mastering courses a few years ago. I just had to relabel what I knew as notes. Hmm, ok, so middle C is now about 260 hurtz. electrical buzz in the UK is a little sharp of first octave G. (50 hurtz). 1K? That’s really close to 5th octave B. etc. etc.

Kirk Hammet’s vibrato and intonation make me think of biting into a sour apple, but I doubt that’s what you’re talking about here. :slight_smile:

Oh kirk… we love ya. By all accounts, you’re a very nice guy, and you did play a pivotal role in 1980’s metal. I’ll always be a fan.

Hmm, what sort of food comes to mind when you hear Dave Mustaine’s “tone”? :slight_smile:
Or, what about Clapton’s “woman tone”? :slight_smile: hot apple pie with cheese?
Really, that’s just an excuse to post this hilarious clip!

Damn that does sound great though!

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my wife’s lasagna but that’s only for the RIP tone. Don’ t have any examples for the others!

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