Here’s a video I love, by Scotty West. This is the type of improvisation I’m focusing on for past couple years, do you guys have any advice?
Ofcourse he himself has a lot of lessons.
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its like if bob ross and mr rogers blended together to form a music educational television program. lol cool stuff! i like this vhs vibe.
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Yeah man, it’s a shame his youtube has so little views, he’s got great lessons. A hidden Jem I think.
Does anyone have and advice on doing this kind of vocal connection to the guitar?
I’ve been working on it for a few years and I think it’s the ultimate goal, at least… for me.
Being able to replicate the lines in my head on the guitar I seriously believe is the best way to learn guitar. Not playing licks, or practiced lines, but being able to actually talk on the guitar through your inner voice will produce greater results than learning other peoples licks and just mixing them up to play. I personally don’t learn any licks or songs from others in my attempt to realize my ability on guitar, perhaps it will fuck me over… but I don’t believe so, I can play crazy stuff in my head from a lifetime of listening to music like I’m sure you all can, getting it out on the guitar is really hard tho. It’s really slow compared to learning some precomposed licks to make it sound good fast. Thats easy. Like they say, any monkey can learn a technique.
A major one I know of is doing it all on one string, as it’s up n down just like our voice, so it’s a great way to get a feel for the intervals you need to move your hand to, to replicate what you’re doing in your head.
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maybe you could try switching to piano to take away the fact we are sync’ing two hands together so at least you take away one less brain process of having to sync two hands. have you ever tried doing it with piano or a mono bass synth?
you could even try to recreate a fake voice patch on the synth. or get a distorted guitar sampler pack to put to a midi keyboard. even if you cant do it in real time i think using a keyboard can cut down the time once you learn its nuances with its simplification of the octave with its white and black keys.
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I’ve had that on my mind for awhile, but I’m a bit scared of the time it might take, tho as far as I know it should be far faster due to my experience already. I need to get a simple n small keyboard. I’ve no idea about keyboards tho, I have one, but it’s massive, I can’t just pick it up like the guitar, do you know of any good cheap small keyboards I can sit in bed with?
the only one i have that i can kind of do this with is my novation bass station 2, but i still have two cables the power and headphones. also if i want reverb now i have one more cable to route, and if that pedal needs power that total becomes 4. two power, 1/4" instrument cable, and headphones. however it isn’t cheap, but the sound is super nice. i use to have an arturia keystep, but i gave this one away and i wish i didn’t. however the pitch and mod touch screen sliders were kind of jank.
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Akai MPK Mini MKII plugged into an iPad/iPhone.
Use Garageband or something like Audiokit’s SynthOne (free and ridiculously powerful).
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you are lucky, at least you can manifest random things in your thoughts. for me its either mimicked snippits of something i heard just reaudiated in my mind, or i can only think from one note to the next. I honestly think i just need to sit down like a snake charmer, and play to some drone notes for a few months, just basic meditation style stuff, to see if it might help me learn to think more in sound with my own creative thoughts, with less lick-meister and pattern based doodling or none at all.
I’ve got a bunch of drone tracks Ben Eller created a while ago. I was a Patreon member for a while (all of a buck a month). This was available and almost certainly still is. 36 tracks, all 12 keys: one Major chord, Minor chord and just the single tone. His original premise was to play various scales over them to get a feel for their sound.
In truth, YouTube is filled with various backing tracks. Search for single chord or one chord vamp or whatever. Ben’s are just really well done and in one place. Sign up for a month, pay a buck and cancel once you get what you want. Whatever.
If you to the YouTube route…Don’t make it harder than it needs to be by picking one with a bunch of chords/verse/chorus/bridge nonsense. That’s not the point. What I do…
I don’t do this often enough…but I’ll pick a key (last night it was G minor), and start noodling. Eventually, you find something…RECORD IT. You won’t remember it, no matter how much you think you will. When the track ends (9 or 10 minutes long)…I’ll either start over or move on.
One chord, one key. You don’t have to anticipate any changes (but you can add your own in-key).
Literally just horse around and have fun. Just play your guitar.
Good ideas rarely come when you’re “trying”. They usually come when you’re relaxed and not worrying about anything.
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