my answer in an earlier post made me think about the great words of wisdom of a great man: Miles Davis, who said 'Don't play what's there, play what's not there'

In my opinion, what he actually meant was: playing has to included silence under the form of breaks so that the music can breathe. So, the question is - do you usually use breaks and silence in your playing? How conscious are you regarding these elements?

I for one have started using the idea of silence a while ago and the results are usually very interesting

Cosmin

You know I recently started trying to include pauses in my playing, and I agree, it adds a very interesting element. I also like to use the pause to switch sounds. For example if I am improvising over a slow blues tyoe of thing I will start out playing clean with a litle reverb and no distortion, play to the pause, and then switch to distorted tone, or do the opposite. Problem is we as guitarists tend to spend a lot of time learning how to cram in as many notes as possibe, it feels weird to actually stop playing completely, and create these pauses. But the pauses are just as important, and really add to the overall feel of a piece.

shhh

Without silence there is no phrasing

Well said mate!

Exactly! Silence is as important as the phrases. I liked Posterboy phrase. I enjoy a lot the guitar players that give as much importance to the silence than the notes. The best example that I have for this is an old instructor from here called Jonathan Burgos.

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/ls/Jonath...elodic-Soloing/

yeah! most definitely true man! I like this dude a lot as I have seen many lessons from him!