I've Learned Some Stuff, Now What? Options

[waynedcoville]

To Whomever it May Concern,
I love your lessons and your teachers are great but I have a concern about what to do with everything I've learned. I've learned several lessons so far, but now what? I now have some awesome parts in my head and under my belt but how do I use what I've learned? What do I do with these pieces of music? I'm writing because I could not find anything on your site about what to do with the parts once they are learned and/or using the parts in a band setting. I hate to just lift the parts and call them mine. Obviously, the teachers wrote them but are they copyrighted? Is it okay to use the parts if I change them enough to make them my own? If so, how would I alter the pieces enough as to not infringe on copy-write laws? And if the pieces where to be altered, would they still retain what I learned in the original lesson? Otherwise, I'm not sure how to benefit from these awesome lessons. Please don't think I'm asking for permission to rip off these great teachers. I'm asking for a hint as what the next step may be. Thank you.

[PosterBoy]

Don't worry they ripped off some other guitarist!

Seriously though.

You've probably got a lot more out of the lesson than just learning the piece of music.

Maybe analyse the pieces, look at each section and the chords being played and what chord tones are in the solo, how the notes are approached etc. See why the solo works. You can use this knowledge in your own compositions without ripping off the instructor

[Dinaga]

[Nihilist1]

+1

[Cosmin Lupu]

Behind all these lessons are techniques, theoretical concepts, rhythmic formulas and ideas which you can implement in your playing. Learning the lessons will place things in a context, but you have to use the concepts behind each lesson in your own way.

It's like learning a foreign language - read Shakespeare in English and you will learn more about how to express yourself in that language if you need more help, I am running a mentoring program where we could talk more on this matter.

Cosmin

[Gabriel Leopardi]

Cosmin explained it perfectly. Here you will find musical lesson but also many lessons where we share tools that can be used to create your own music. The musical lessons are practical examples of what you can do with the scales, chords and theory, so the idea is to analize what we are using (we explain it in the lesson's texts) and you can also use the lessons to train your technique. I'm also running a mentoring program so feel free to tell me if you want to join.

[Ben Higgins]

Don't worry they ripped off some other guitarist!

Good point ! I probably owe Friedman and Schenker royalties !

A couple of the main advantages I see with learning the lessons are learning an actual technique like sweeping or something else..

If it's an 'In the Style of' lesson then the lesson should be showing you what typical elements that guitarist uses in their playing, like what groups of notes they typically put together so if you're a fan of a particular guitarist you can gain an understanding of what they do / how it works so you can apply the approach your own way.

For example, from a Schenker style lesson we can glean that he uses a lot pentatonics with an added major 3rd and chokes a lot of his notes with the pick to make them staccato. Marty Friedman likes to use the minor scale without the 4th & 6th interval to get his sound. If I wanted to use their approaches and take what I liked but play it my own way with my vibrato, tone and phrasing the notes in a different order then I can.

When it comes to playing phrases, that's something each guitarist hopefully crafts over time to become very personal and unique. The way they play an order of notes, typical licks that they use a lot. The idea is that your phrasing is like the result of the melting pot of other people's licks that you've studied over the years etc.

When it comes to scalar runs etc, I don't think it matters if you're pulling a lick from somebody else because most scale runs have been done before in some way and you can't copyright a scale

This post has been edited by Ben Higgins: Apr 30 2012, 09:16 AM

[thefireball]

This is great!!

[SirJamsalot]

download gobs of backing tracks and try to implement fragments of what you learned to a backing track that didn't accompany the lessons you learned. Practicing to backing tracks should be a ritual - devote yourself to it, and try to throw in pieces of what you've learned here and there. That will help solidify the sounds you create in a musical context that you create while playing.

Keep on keepin on!

Dear instructors ~ some lessons on how you personally practice to a backing track would be awesome.What I normally do is throw on a backing track, begin with familiarizing myself with the backing using chords to learn the key, then replacing chords with licks I've been practicing in that key ~ constantly changing it to incorporate what I've learned into a musical context.

[casinostrat]

download gobs of backing tracks and try to implement fragments of what you learned to a backing track that didn't accompany the lessons you learned. Practicing to backing tracks should be a ritual - devote yourself to it, and try to throw in pieces of what you've learned here and there. That will help solidify the sounds you create in a musical context that you create while playing.

Keep on keepin on!

Dear instructors ~ some lessons on how you personally practice to a backing track would be awesome.What I normally do is throw on a backing track, begin with familiarizing myself with the backing using chords to learn the key, then replacing chords with licks I've been practicing in that key ~ constantly changing it to incorporate what I've learned into a musical context.

This is excellent advice! I struggled with this type of thing as well, and only started to improve when I started to just put on a backing track I knew the key of and experiment. Sometimes I just download the backings of the lessons here at GMC, and use them to jam over and experiement with, before ever actually trying to learn the lesson itself.

[Todd Simpson]

Don't worry they ripped off some other guitarist!

Seriously though.

You've probably got a lot more out of the lesson than just learning the piece of music.

Maybe analyse the pieces, look at each section and the chords being played and what chord tones are in the solo, how the notes are approached etc. See why the solo works. You can use this knowledge in your own compositions without ripping off the instructor

Very true As they say , " A good artist borrows, a great artist STEALS!" But yes, it's a progression of influence that lets music evolve. So every musician/artist stands on the shoulder of giants so to speak, as each takes the stuff they love and tries to make it their own or just play it as close as possible to the original, or usually a bit of both.

So take the stuff you've learned, and try to create some music yourself. Create some backing tracks and try to solo over them.

Todd

[waynedcoville]

I thank all of you for the great advice. I'm excited to break everything down and reformulate the individual concepts that I have learned.
PS., I'm a bass player so some of this stuff is quite difficult with the much longer scale length, but I think I will come out a better musician as a whole. Thank you all!

[Cosmin Lupu]

We're here for ya mate may you have the wind in your sails!