Learning mechanics "VS" creativity and musicality

General Music Discussion
#1

Hi Guys,

Great topic. I don’t post here much. But at nearly 50 years old, I can appreciate the many at CTC were inspired by the same players from the “Shrapnel” era as I was.

But even with the insights provided here by Troy and Co., it can’t be underestimated how much work it takes to get the mechanics down of these techniques, and even more so - be able to then apply the techniques to actual musical situations to some degree of satisfaction.

As the OP mentioned (albeit a while back, but no less relevant), dedication the this aspect of guitar craft can get to the point of blind obsession, to the detriment of actual music making.

I find a good stop point, is to ask myself “when was the last time I leant a new song”?

That then becomes a refresh, shunting the sweating 16th note triplets with a beat to the side for a while.

Chris.

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Building a solo
Community Jam - Track #1 - Profiles
#2

Hey Chris, I haven’t seen you around SLO for a while, but yeah that’s sort of the danger in a lot of this. It’s one thing to drill yourself in the technical aspects of playing, and another to apply them, and to apply them creatively and in a way that says something. Honestly the technical acrobatics are some of the easier aspects of it, making something out of that, that someone else wants to listen to, including yourself, well that’s something completely different. I’m sure there are many people who have wasted years developing chops just to find they were completely useless or just not applicable in a real musical situation.

I know this place is really designed for a very specific purpose mostly, but I do wish more topics like these would pop up here.

#3

Yes Mate,

Still lurk at SLO, (OT) but forum life is going away a bit . Think all that needed to be said probably has been there, and in most other places. Great resource though.

You are correct fella.

I’m risking a lynching, but a lot of the music that I listened to (and still do) showcases this technique via a skeletal vehicle rather than a composition (yeah, I’m getting old).

There are only so many players, say for small example like Frank Gambale, Marty Freidman or Alan Holdsworth, whos musicianship and compositional sense transcends their chops.

That is because it’s not easy to do (or as has been said, “everybody would be doing it”).

#4

Yep. Coming up with ideas is the hardest thing … or rather, it’s a different mindset. The mechanics are “easy” — hahahahahahaha /cough cough/

#5

The mechanics certainly are easier to master than the creativity aspect.

#6

Hey All,
I feel like these latest posts did not really address the “building a solo” challenge, at least not in a very focused way, so I created a new topic (I expect anyway that is is a “popular” topic for discussion in general).

Feel free to propose a better title for the thread of course, I just used the first thing that came to mind.

One thing I’d like to add, as part of the CTC staff, is that I don’t think it’s fair to say that we only care about mechanics.

If you scan any of the hundreds technique critique threads that @Troy and myself have worked on, you’ll see that we constantly suggest to people to move on to muscial applications as soon as possible. We never really recommend hours of sterile metronome exercises :slight_smile:

EDIT: and if you scan the hundreds of “Show and Tell” posts, you will see again that this community is very dedicated to making actual music.

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#7

I dunno @tommo, maybe I missed the CTC lesson module on musicality, but last I checked your guy’s roster, I didn’t see one or one that hints at it at least. They all seemed to be geared towards, using your words, at moving the pick faster and changing strings. Indeed a lot of the threads I see here more so pertain to this factor. So I don’t feel I was in the wrong to say that this aspect is the primary focus of both the forum and CTC, regardless of how unfair you may think that perception is.

#8

If you follow the primer as it’s laid out, step 1 is finding an escape motion you can do fast relatively easily, then step 2, you learn some lines using that escape motion. I don’t see where the confusion is there.

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#9

@jptk there isn’t confusion, that’s the point. To many’s perception, that’s mechanical practice, not music.

#10

I was talking more about the spirit of the forum and the direction in which Troy and I try to stir the various technical discussion around here. I think it is fair to say that we encourage people to move on to the “making music” aspect asap, as soon as we detect one or more promising motions. And I do see a lot of forummers (not from CTC staff) being focused on the musicality aspect, sharing compositions, discussing composition, phrasing, improvisation and whatnot.

But if you are asking specifically about the paid products, they go well beyond the “moving the pick fast and changing strings”.

Just off the top of my head: there’s a full Martin Miller interview dedicated to improvisation, another with Noa Kageyama about the art and techniques behind music performance, and between the Primer and all the interviews there’s about a million tabbed musical examples and even full songs that people can learn.

I personally try not to separate the two. This is my own personal opinion but I think mechanical practice that has no application is near worthless. I know because I did loads of it :slight_smile: That’s why if someone comes to me and says “I want to have better technique” I’ll immediately ask “show me the music you want to play”.

Then we can take it from there and extract the “exercises” from the actual music. Practicing “technique” in this context, to me, means making the whole piece sound good, not just running after some abstract bpm target on the metronome for a single looping lick. Once you can make stuff sound good, you are at the same time working on musicality and technique

#11

Playing music isn’t music….? Er… yeah okay :ok_hand:

#12

Agree with you Tommo, repetition to me is like a nascar oval race, and each lap really has it’s won thing going on, if you are playing against a metronome, drum loop or a section of a back track, you will find endless variations in rhythm syncopations, patterns without losing focus on what ever one is working on at that point of time. Change keys’ strings, if your in one position, memorize the note locations if you haven’t already, on wider repeating patterns make a note of your starting ending note names etc. So much to do, if it’s mechanical you just need to lean more on your imagination.

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#13

@Tommo, I think the point you make about exercises being musical is a very pertinent one. It’s incredibly easy to fall into focusing so much on the mechanical aspect of playing that you you forget the musical aspect of it. I spent hundreds of hours practising the chromatic speed exercise on Rock Discipline for hours and hours and to what end? I made no music with any of it and it just (understandably) tired my hand out massively, so much so that I was too tired to play any music after that! Thinking about CtC, I was seeking answers within that exercise and thinking that this exercise combined with a metronome would elevate my technique to god-like status when it was never going to, as it is a case of pick angle and string escape, something I doubt even Petrucci realised. My point is that, as you say, the technique only exists to serve a musical purpose as opposed to an end in itself. Practising musical passages is far more useful and enjoyable.

My original post question was part of a ‘remedy’ question about how to get back to the music armed with proficient technique. I originally thought that technique and improv would be the answer but if you’re purely improvising then it’s going to lack the coherency of something which had been thought of and worked at compositionally speaking e.g. theme and variation, repetition etc…

My benchmark for being a good picker almost exclusively came from Paul Gilbert’s aggressive and superb technique on Intense Rock I and ended up being what I aspired to. Having practised technique to death, I’d like to actually create something meaningful which will give the technique a proper purpose. I guess what’s kicked this all off for me has been listening to Andy Wood talk about technique, music etc… and how his technique has been the biproduct of focusing on accuracy. For me, it became the other way round as an illusion; that great solos became the biproduct of technique. What a fool :joy:

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#14

Never stop learning songs and or writing your own.

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#15

I do agree that you personally do say that, but that’s very different than focusing on what that really is or what it means. To a big degree it’s personal, but the “here are the tools, it’s up to you how to use them” is very different than focusing primarily around musicality. BTW, I don’t disagree with that sentiment. Music is personal, and it’s up to you how to make it, and what you chose to do with the tools you have at your disposal, but if we are objectively talking about the majority of CTC focus, I would say it focuses more on technical aspects of guitar playing, and there is nothing wrong with that.

A lot of this from my experience here at least, are from the more advanced group of people that already had this part worked out before trying to increase speed. But if we are talking the sheer ratio of these instances than the ones just about moving faster and changing strings efficiently, well….

Misconception of what? How you personally view it, or how anyone else does? A broad Misconception implies that everyone else shares your thinking on the matter. They may, they may not. It would have only been a misconception if I misjudged how YOU personally view it.

#16

Sorry poor choice of words. To avoid getting sidetracked, I just edited away that statement from my previous post :slight_smile:

#17

Just my $.02

CtC is for people who are struggling with the mechanics, first and foremost. That’s the niche.

I think it’s a nice bonus that there is plenty of sentiment that exercises in and of themselves are counter productive and ‘real’ music phrases (i.e. riffs from songs we like, writing our own etc) should be the way to apply the mechanics we’ve hopefully learned. If people on here learn such amazing technique that they choose to do nothing with it other than playing sterile music…I guess that’s not CtC’s fault :slight_smile: They’ve provided enough rope to hang oneself lol

I think creativity and musicality are so subjective that if it were the focus, at least half the users would feel like they got ripped off. I honestly have no clue on you even teach that. And I hold a (completely unused) 4 year degree in music theory and composition. It’s debatable but I’d go so far as to say you can’t teach that. It’s something inside of people that grows over time and develops.

I think the best we could do, from a discussion standpoint, is to describe what about certain pieces are creative or musical. That could tease out bits we could apply to our endeavors.

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#18

Ha this is more broadly a good point! I have been focusing on defending what we do but another (more) worthy topic is how we can move forward!

I think it’s perfectly fair to find things that are lacking in this Forum, but then the beauty of this space is that people can create their own threads to fill these gaps. So let’s all go ahead and fill the Forum with more musicality :slight_smile:

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#19

NO NEED MOAR CHOPS!!!

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#20

I’m just sifting through all this, and I think there are basically two points being made:

  1. We run a web site where the specific goal is teaching instrument technique

  2. Our general attitude displays concern only for “playing fast” and in some way evidences disregard for making music, being creative, etc.

Am I correct that this is what is being said here, in summary? Because I don’t want to put words in anybody’s mouth.

Obviously, 1 is true. It’s what we do. 2 however is not. Given all the things I’ve said in lessons over the years about the amazing creativity of players like Eric, Yngwie, and Eddie, I actually can’t really imagine how someone who has actually watched any our stuff would even think that. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that lots of the Cracking the Code “old timers” actually don’t think this about us.

I could give you a hundred examples in our lessons of how our general attidue is one of mechanics in service of musical goals. Since there are so many, I guess I’ll just quote myself. Here’s the end of this lesson, which has been viewed over 300K times:

“The power of this is really limitless. One of my favorite ways of being creative in lead playing is to take interesting mechanical concepts and marry them to interesting tonalities. And we’re thrilled that so many of you feel the same way. This kind of picking knowledge would have been science fiction when I was a kid. If you showed up to a guitar contest with this kind of firepower, that would be like rolling up to the club in a time-traveling DeLorean that you found in a barn. But if this kind of knowledge, and the creativity that it can inspire, is now becoming accessible enough that we can get over 100 correct responses in a matter of an hour, that is everything that Cracking the Code is about.”

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