I don’t actually listen to a ton of guitar music. I want to add more licks to my library besides pretty basic pentatonic stuff and repeating scale segments. Is there any other way? Just youtube videos?
YouTube can definitely be a great place to find musical inspiration. Second to none with sheer depth of content, as the de facto video search engine for much of the world. The main downside is there’s so much it can be hard to sift through and find the good stuff.
I know a lot of musicians and teachers post stuff to Instagram. It’s well-suited to short videos, and following a variety of accounts there seems like a nice way to pick up some good short-form musical ideas.
Soundslice is great and they have a “Channels” feature where you can share musical ideas and follow others, kind of a music-specific Instagram or Twitter: https://www.soundslice.com/channels/ Fairly new so less material overall, but I’ve seen some great stuff here. (And hey look it’s @JakeEstner on the front page!)
We have quite a few musical examples on the Cracking the Code Platform as well. Of course, grain of salt, full disclaimer, we run the site, and this material is a premium (paid) member feature…but I do think worth mentioning! We have 2,000+ musical examples and counting, across our instructional stuff and interviews covering a range of musical styles.
Most of the interviews we do include a few songs / longer pieces, as well as dozens of shorter licks demonstrating techniques and musical ideas. We include slow-mo video for everything, as well as interactive Soundslice notation, which has some great features that specifically help with learning, like the ability to loop sections of a piece, variable speed playback, metronome, transposition, and interactive fretboard.
If you’re particularly interested in a certain genre, you can probably find some great resources focused in that area. Several of the players we’ve worked with have further material available. For example Joscho Stephan has an online Gypsy jazz school. Martin Miller has lots of fusion / hybrid picking material. Frank Gambale has you covered for blues and sweeping. Oz Noy has solid material on funk, blues, and improv.
Whether you’re into blues, jazz, metal, bluegrass…probably something out there that’s a great fit for the sort of thing you like to play. I’m sure there are plenty of other great sites and resources we haven’t even heard of yet. Curious to hear what others have found most useful!
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Lots of the great jazz guitarists I’ve talked to and watched interviews of say that they also don’t listen to lots of guitar stuff. Most of their ideas came from transcribing music written for other instruments, like Sax and horn and keyboard lines. Why not try going down that road?
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Thanks guys! @Brendan, I’m not a full member at the moment but once I get paid, I’m going to hop back in. It’s tough being poor :). This content is definitely worth it though. Masters in Mechanics > Eating.
I’d forgotten instagram and that’s obviously a great start. Soundslice looks super promising also.
@element0s I don’t really like Jazz, but I’ve never given it much of a shot either. I think I’m going to listen to some Miles Davis and see what I can pick up.
I use the bookmark feature on Instagram quite a bit. It’ll let you save your bookmarks into collections.
From there I use whatever comes up when you search “Instagram to mp4” and then drag the resulting file into Transcribe.
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It’s not free but all Jamtrackcentral packs I purchased are amazing and they cover quite a wide range ( JTC Guitar ) and come with a cool backing track 
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Honestly, it’s amazing how many things I’ve learned over the years where I still remember the exact source I got it from, and how many times this source was music playing in the background on a TV commercial.
That 5 to b7 trill thing that you do over a dominant chord in blues piano, I picked up from a beer commercial. I always heard it, never knew what two notes you were supposed to use to get the effect.
One good example of something that you can understand can almost unlock a whole musical style. I’m exaggerating… but not really!
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You don’t have to do jazz specifically, that was just an example. What are you really into these days? Try learning some stuff from that music and incorporating it into guitar playing
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Thanks for the mention, @Brendan!
@RyanMW, what’s wrong with just learning melodies from what you do listen to?
If what you listen to has vocals, great. People dramatically underestimate the value of learning vocal melodies (better than learning guitar riffs, in my opinion!)
If it’s instrumental but not guitar, than like @element0s said, nothing stopping you from trying to figure out the notes anyway - regardless of genre.
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@JakeEstner I don’t really listen to much of anything anymore honestly. Kind of strange considering I’d describe myself as someone with a tremendous passion for music. These days I’m always practicing or working on my own stuff. Sometimes I listen to Kpop, but I don’t frequently just listen to music for enjoyment anymore. unless I happen to stumble upon an album or an artist that I really love.
It makes sense; I’m not too different in this sense. Do you ever have things you hear in your head, buzzing around, melodies, ideas, etc?
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Learning to play those high octave synth lines from 90s g-funk with a whammy pedal is a lot of fun.
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I have a nice collection of guitar and music books, covering pretty much anything from Heavy Metal to Contemporary Composition. Always comes in handy when looking for inspiration. Could be a lick, a concept or even an inspiring story from someone’s biograpgy. Even a tiny section of , say, a Gambale lick will generate tons of stuff to practice.
This is what I’ve been doing for the last week…I have on my music stand a transcription of John Coltrane’s solo on Straight No Chaser (Miles Davis, Milestones). Tackling the whole thing is a frightneen afair, what I do instead is this…The tune is a jazz blues in F and I study what he plays on the I chord in each chorus. And what when IV comes…etc. Even just one those lines, generates material for me to practice and get inspired by for months. It keeps the excitement alive.
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@JakeEstner All the time. I actually got into guitar playing as a kid to write songs–not strictly to play the guitar. Which is why, after 20 years of playing, I’m only an intermediate player. I wasn’t inspired by Slash or Jimi until much later–after I’d already been playing a bit. My original inspiration was just the basic desire to create music, in a fully fleshed out way.
The stuff I hear in my head is almost always fully fleshed out, but small snippets. For example, a chorus complete with drums, bass, guitars and vocals. But only that. It leads to me having TONS of unfinished, multi-tracked, 30-90 second projects in logic.
Sorry for the overlong response. I don’t often get an opportunity to answer such a cool question. Nobody in my real life is a songwriter and very few actually know I have this passion, which is why I love participating in forums like this one.
lol the other day I was jamming out to the violin solo from Paula Abdul’s “Rush, Rush.” Amazing song and video (Keanu Reeves stars).
If you call that a long response, you and I probably haven’t corresponded much 
Personally I think the most direct thing for what you’re asking is if there’s anything in your head that is a melody, chord progression, or even root motion for a chord progression - try to play it. If you try and it’s not quite it, adjust and go from there.
If you don’t like what you came up with, see what can be adjusted.
If there’s music you like or at least think is interesting, then you can learn it and analyze and see what you can learn from it and take elements to bring to your own music.
If there isn’t stuff that inspires you, then, in my opinion, you have an artistically and existentially more difficult challenge in front of you: you have to figure out what it is you like and want to hear.
Personally, and again I can’t stress enough this is all just my opinion, I don’t think there’s much use in learning licks and other people’s riffs if there’s not at least something you like about those licks/riffs.
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Transcribe music, short phrases, licks that you like (and what chord the lick is played over) and learn to use them, make them yours, put them in your library, one by one