QUOTE (Zephyr @ Jan 4 2008, 05:45 AM)
Hmm... maybe you are spending too much time on theory? Theory is important, but no where near as important as the music itself... that sounds strange, but it's true, in my opinion!
You don't need to know music theory to play amazing music. Having soul and creativity in your music doesn't come from knowledge, but just from you. Theory is a tool that can help you understand why music works and sounds the way it does, but knowing hows it works isn't the same as knowing how to play it!
I would advise that you just try to not worry so much about theory for a while, just sit with your guitar and play what comes to you. See what happens. I don't mean that you can't think about theory at all, but, for example, find a backing track/song, find what key it's in, and just mess around. See what sounds good and what doesn't. The rules of music are just made to be broken, anyways, in my opinion...
And, most importantly, have fun, and play what you're feeling!
Shouldn't have said improv, I meant just soloing, whether pre-planned or improvised.
My guitar heros are Michael Romeo and John Petrucci I watched Romeo's instructional video and he is like "Ok now we are gonna use HW Dimished over Emadd9, then play F#11 arpeggio over this Phrygian Dominant cycle of 4ths progression, etc, etc, etc." So after seeing that it really inspired me to learn theory all day, because I want to play like him. Blues, jazz, and funk soloing is cool and all but it just doesn't do it for me sometimes. I like progressive and neo-classical soloing mainly, so when I make my first attempt at making a solo or something, that is sort of the sound that I want to come out.
Kinda got off topic but yea, I don't see how you can just mess around and come up with progressive and neo-classical style licks, they always end up sounding pentatonic and bluesy to me, which is the sound I am trying to aviod.
EDIT: Actually the post I just wrote kinda reminded me of David Walliman's lessons, maybe those will help me understand how to "jam."
EDIT again: And, forgot to say, the main reason I like to read about theory stuff all day because I can instantly see progress. For example I read something that says Major chord= 1-3-5. There in 2 seconds I just learned a huge thing instantly. When I try to go back to actual playing that "instant" progress that comes in learning isn't there in playing so I tend to just drag back into more theory stuff.
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This post has been edited by shellshock1911: Jan 4 2008, 06:10 AM