… and how to break free!

At some point or another, you’ve probably noticed an overabundant repetition of specific patterns, licks, runs or progressions from either yourself or some of your favorite guitarists.  There are actually a number of jokes out there about guitarists using a “signature run” or just reusing the same patterns in nearly every song they play.

The truth is, just about every guitarist runs into this problem at some point and there is a really good reason why they do…

Muscle memory.

That’s right, one of the greatest assets to learning and memorizing things on the guitar can also become a major hindrance.

You see, when you’re writing a melody, guitar solo or even improvising with the guitar in your hands, you’re not just thinking in terms of melody.  Instead, little chunks of scales and patterns come up as a result of your playing habits.

Your fingers have been trained where to go and it’s almost like that puts a fence around everything else…

Everyone has their own habits of playing and those habits can easily become limitations for playing style and even song writing.  But that’s not the end of the story.  The guitar actually has built-in limitations based solely on how it’s tuned and how the notes are laid out up each string. 

Scale and arpeggio patterns on the guitar, for example, hugely inform the types of music and melodies you might write with the guitar in your hands.  It can also boil down to simply which notes are parallel to each other.  This isn’t inherently a bad thing.

One of my favorite examples of this is the chord progression for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana.  Here is a progression that probably never would have been thought of if it wasn’t for the standard tuning of the guitar.

If you don’t know how to play this progression I highly recommend looking it up real quick.  It will only take you a moment to learn.  When playing it, you can easily see how Kurt Cobain could have been fiddling around with the guitar and stumbled upon this progression.

It seems that when Kurt Cobain’s personal tastes and music “sensibilities” were combined with the layout of the guitar, that chord progression emerged.

Now I should be clear that I’m not putting down Nirvana or that chord progression at all.  I personally really enjoy that progression and that song.  I also think it’s a great example of the benefits of limitations in music.  In fact, without any limitations it would be virtually impossible to come up with any finite ideas.  There are just too many possibilities otherwise.

The instrument, the genre and many other factors provide limitations that can help the creative process along.  The only trouble is, these limitations can also hurt the process and box you in.

Regardless of whether you simply want to continue to expand your horizons as a guitarist or a song writer, knowing some tricks to break out of these limitations will be invaluable for you.  As these things can either positively or negatively affect things like your melodies, overall playing style, chord progressions and even your rhythms, you definitely want to have control over them.
 

How to break out of the box

What you should do to break free from the negative effects of limitations depends on what you’re trying to do.  I simplified it by breaking it down into three applicable categories… and then I complicated it by elaborating on a variety of methods to try for each.

1. Chord progressions:

If you find yourself stuck in a loop, coming up with the same few chord progressions over and over again, there are a few things that I would recommend to help you break free.
 

Bring something new to the table

Something you can do immediately would be to start learning some chord progressions from different genres of music.  You can easily just incorporate some new and unusual progression into your practice time each week. 

You may not end up using any of these specific progressions for anything but this will help you get a sense of what types of options you have and how one chord sounds after another in different contexts.  After awhile, you’ll find yourself coming up with completely different (and more interesting) progressions than you otherwise would have imagined.

Use a different instrument

Another trick that is particularly effective is to try coming up with chord progressions on a different instrument.  The piano, or keyboard, is the most obvious choice to come to mind.  Simply because the piano has a different layout, you will find yourself working creatively in a completely different headspace than you do when working on the guitar.  The most important factor is that you don’t have any of the same habits for the piano that you do on the guitar.  Because of this, you’ll be forced to write the progression based solely on how it sounds without your playing habits or muscle memory getting in the way.

Notating with midi

If you work with midi, you can also try writing some chord progressions by building the chords one note at a time on the midi piano roll.  This takes some time to do, but it’s a great way to try out new ideas and learn more about how a chord progression really works. 

In truth, each note of the chord interacts with the previous and next chord in one way or the other. Certain notes can pull you in the direction of the next chord and even setup a transition for later in the progression.  It’s all about tension and release, dissonance and harmony.  Each note of a chord interacts with each other harmonically, but they also interact with the notes of the following chord both melodically and harmonically. 

With midi, you’ll see firsthand how chord progressions are actually just a shortcut for composing polyphonic musical passages.  I highly recommend trying this if you haven’t before.

2. Melodies:

Your ability to write new and interesting melodies is hugely influenced by your guitar playing habits. Thankfully, there are some very easy methods of breaking free and writing melodies based on what you hear in your head.

Hum a tune

The easiest and most effective method for writing melodies without the guitar is to record yourself humming them and then learn them on the guitar later. 

If you don’t already do this, you should. 

This is a trick that is used by a huge percentage of guitarists and musicians for coming up with and saving new ideas.  Keep in mind that the melodies you write on the guitar are influenced and limited by the specific scale patterns and scale types you know on the guitar while the music you hear in your head will only be limited by the scales you’ve heard used in melodies throughout your life.

The best music that you’ll ever write will come to you this way.  The problem is, when this happens you need to have some way of saving the idea.  Thankfully, most of us have audio recorders built right in to our phones.  Personally, I’ve hummed and recorded at least a few thousand musical ideas on my phone over the years.

Different instruments… again!

Like with progressions, writing melodies on a different instrument is also very helpful and worth trying.  Again, the keyboard is a great go-to.  If you don’t own a piano or keyboard of some kind, just get an old cheapie from eBay or a garage sale.  It doesn’t have to sound good as you’ll be transferring the melody to the guitar anyway. 

Also, because of how the notes are laid out, you don’t need any previous knowledge of the keyboard to write a melody on it.  You can just fool around with it and see what you come up with!

Midi works here too

Like with progressions, you can use midi to write melodies by “painting” the notes in manually.  This is something that takes practice to get the hang of but eventually you can do it by ear very quickly.  The cool thing about using midi is that you can play it back and easily make changes to the notes or rhythm until you have it exactly the way you want it. 

Like with humming, once you’ve got it dialed in, you can just learn it on the guitar by ear.  If you use Guitar Pro, then you can also import the midi into a new tablature file and take your time determining which note should be played on which fret/string.

3. Guitar solos:

The options can become a bit tricky when trying to break out of the box for your guitar solos, especially when it’s a shred solo.  Thankfully, there are some things that you can easily start on today. 

Bring in some new patterns!

First and foremost, it’s important to expand your repertoire of scale patterns and scale types.  If you’ve only ever worked with one or two scales and scale patterns so far, then that is where your limitation is coming from right now.  Go out and learn a couple new scales.  Better yet, you could take the time to learn the modes up and down the neck of the guitar. 

To break out of the minor Pentatonic “box,” for example, learn the patterns that surround the pattern you use most frequently (these will be the same notes of the scale you know, just in different locations and octaves). 

Out with the old, in with the new… at least for now

If you find yourself reusing the same runs and patterns all the time, you can simply practice improvising where you intentionally exclude any of the old patterns you normally use.  Before you know it, you’ll have built up some brand new habits of playing that you can then incorporate with the old ones.

In the example of the minor Pentatonic box pattern I mentioned above, practice improvising with those surrounding patterns and exclude the box pattern for awhile. Then, once you have them down, come up with some patterns that incorporate both the old and the new.

Bring in some new techniques!

If you’re good on scales and ready to take things to the next level, the best thing you can do to broaden your horizons is to learn new techniques and then practice improvising with them. 

Reach out to other styles and genres and incorporate ideas that you’ve never used before.  If you’re a Rock or Metal player, Classical music and Jazz are both great places to start with this.  You can also just learn a couple Fusion solos and you’ll stumble upon all kinds of new patterns and techniques.

Experimentation and hybridization

You can also try combining aspects of different techniques you already know or using techniques in a different context than what you learned it for. 

A good example of this would be to take the sweep arpeggio patterns you’ve learned and utilize them for creating runs instead.  A sweep arpeggio is really just an arpeggio after all. 

Try building a box pattern out of them by inserting one passing tone per string in between the notes of the arpeggio (a passing tone can be any other note of the scale or even chromatic notes as long as you don’t end a phrase on them). 

If you get creative with mixing elements of different techniques or patterns, you’ll find that there are infinite possibilities to tap into.

Hum solo?

Probably the most effective (but also extremely challenging) way of writing a guitar solo that is completely unencumbered by your habits on the guitar is using the humming method like we discussed before. 

You can have an audio recorder setup to capture your voice and hum out some solo ideas while listening to a recording of the progression that you’re writing the solo for. 

The challenge here is that you’ll have to play back that recording many times to try to learn the hummed solo by ear.  The other difficulty is that you need to hum a solo that is both possible to play on the guitar and that also matches your skill level.  This method takes practice by itself but is hugely worth the effort.

♫♪♫♪

Regardless of you’re level of playing or your personal guitar goals, these methods can help you along the way.  Everyone gets stuck in a rut eventually and it can be frustrating and discouraging.  If you keep these methods on hand, you can keep yourself inspired and growing at all times.  

Just by trying a few of these methods you will get some entirely new perspectives on the guitar that will benefit you from then on.  I can’t recommend it enough.

If you missed last week’s article, be sure to check it out here – Guitar Speed: How fast is fast enough?

Stay tuned for next week’s article where I will go into more detail about how you can get creative with the techniques you already know.
 

Dan Mumm

Ready for that next challenge?  Check out my massive catalog of guitar related products, covering everything from Metal versions of Classical pieces, Neo-Classical Shred technique, Sweep Picking, and more!   See what’s on sale today at the link below:

www.Sellfy.com/DanMumm

Taking on the belief that you have the potential to play anything that someone else can play is incredibly powerful. When you run into someone playing something that you haven’t already mastered, taking it as a personal challenge will lead to tremendous growth in your guitar abilities. The question comes down to, where do you draw the line?

You have the potential to be the best guitarist who ever lived. However, the reality is that you will almost certainly never achieve that distinction.

Why do I bring that up? To discourage you?

On the contrary.

If your deepest motivation comes from working towards being the “best” player of all time, then I say go for it. Setting aside things like subjectivity, artistry, etc. there are ways of objectively measuring aspects of guitar playing that make it possible to earn the title of “best” (at least in a specific area). But if your true motivations come from elsewhere, than anything related to the idea of being the “best in the world” is nothing more than a burden that will get in the way of your real purpose.

There can be no question that the “best guitarist who ever lived” is someone that nobody ever heard of. The reason is, that player sat at home and practiced their entire life away.

If you really want to be impressed (and possibly discouraged), look up the Guiness Book of World Records record for guitar speed. It’s a testament to human determination and potential.

Now check out the video on YouTube and read the comments. You’ll find tons of fellow guitarists rationalizing away the achievement. They will say snarky things like “yeah, but what’s his best original song?”

The only trouble is, you’ll also find comments like that on a video for a great original guitar song saying the exact opposite – “yeah, but how fast can they play?”

So which is the right gauge to determine who is a great guitarist???

Well, the answer to that is: Both, either and neither.

If your goal as a guitarist is to be the fastest player on record, I say that’s fantastic and get to work! You absolutely have the potential to become the next Guinness Records title holder. But you have to ask yourself, is that really what you want to do as a guitarist? Will that process be rewarding?

I can tell you from personal experience (and I never even got remotely close to the Guinness Records speed) that in order to play cleanly at extreme speeds, it requires ungodly amounts of practice. The only trouble is, if you ever lapse on keeping up that practice, the speed goes away.

I went through a phase some years ago now, where I took on any “challenge” that came my way. I wanted to get my chops to a much higher level in order to stand out better as a musical artist and I got incredibly ambitious with it. For a time, this was both extremely effective and rewarding and it took my playing to an entirely new level. I built tremendous momentum and I was having a blast, sometimes practicing 8 to 10 hours in a day.

The trouble was, it eventually reached a point where I was practicing the guitar solely for these reasons. The amount of time required took away from the things I really was passionate about and I began losing interest in the guitar altogether.

This is the reason that I dropped songs like Paganini’s 5^th Caprice from my performance repertoire. It just wasn’t fun for me to have to keep running through them every day. I knew that if I stopped practicing it, I would lose it. This sort of extreme “maintenance practice” eventually became nothing more than a chore that threatened to kill the passion I had for the guitar. I’d pushed myself harder than my personal interest in it could sustain. And I never was anywhere close to being the “fastest.”

I learned the hard way how important it is to strike a balance between interests, passions and goals.

I love the guitar and I love killer techniques and speed, but my deepest passions are in the music itself and composition. Plus there are many different aspects to the guitar to work on, many different styles to integrate and many different kinds of techniques to master. I got sick of putting all my attention in one or two areas. Setting down my “need” to maintain the speed I had achieved was one of the best things I ever did for myself overall as both a musician and a guitarist.

You may very well be different than I am in that regard. Perhaps reaching that new level of speed each day is something that gives you the kind of rush that you appreciate most. If that’s the case, you know where to spend your time.

On the other hand, if you pursue those higher levels of speed and only find the process tedious and frustrating (even when reaching new heights), it may be time to reevaluate why you’re putting your time there.

I think the appropriate comment to leave on a Guinness Book guitar speed record video is one that focuses solely on the achievement being presented.

Likewise, the appropriate comment to leave on the original guitar song (sans speed) video is one that also focuses exclusively on the content at hand.

Rationalizing away the discomfort that might come from seeing a video like that is the worst thing that a person can do. If you feel discomfort from coming into contact with something like that, stop and ask yourself “why?” 

Really try to figure it out.

It could be that your deepest desire is to be able to do the same thing being presented in the video.

If that’s the case, the discomfort is from feeling dissatisfied with yourself – and that is the last thing you want to hide from. It may not feel too good, but it’s not a bad thing. Self-dissatisfaction is one of the most powerful tools for personal growth there is. You never want to truly be satisfied with yourself because that’s when you stop progressing and start wilting away.

So what do you do with that kind of discomfort?

Scream out “challenge accepted!” and get straight to practicing. (Also, here’s a pro tip – the video that made you uncomfortable has just become an invaluable resource for practice motivation. That is pure gold. Watch it at least once a day and you’ll be unstoppable!)

On the other hand, the reason for the discomfort could simply be from an obsolete belief you have that needs to be swept away once and for all.

If that’s the case, find and get rid of that belief immediately and move on. Leaving something like that unchecked can block your progress for a lifetime. It may be uncomfortable to face certain things like that, but just make like your tearing off a band-aid.

Do it quickly and be done with it.

You’ll feel some serious relief when you do.

Updating and modifying your old goals to suit who you are today is not the same thing as giving up on them. Those goals got you to where you are now and they helped shape your current interests and understanding of the path that you should take. The greatest guitarists and musicians found their way to greatness from knowing and following their truest and deepest passions.

Everyone has their own interests and motivations and their own reasons for pursuing the types of goals they do. You never want to have old goals with new, incompatible motivations.

If there’s any lesson to be learned from all of this it’s to always be aware of what it is you’re trying to do and why.

Taking on challenges is a great way to become a better player, but you never want those challenges to get in the way of where you’re really trying to go.

In the end, it makes absolutely no difference whether you’re the fastest guitarist or not – unless that is one of your key motivations for playing the guitar.

Focus your attention where it counts towards getting you to where you want to go and don’t get bogged down by the faster players. There will always be faster players. Their achievements only challenge you if you allow them to.

That Guinness Book record holder, how does he play so fast? Was he born with some kind of superhuman mutation that gave him extreme speed?

Not at all! 

The truth is, he just wanted to achieve that goal more than anyone else. The very fact that he holds the record and you don’t is proof that he wanted it more than you. It’s that simple.

So what do you want?

I recommend seeking out and accepting the challenges that are useful to you while never allowing them to become distractions (or discouragement) from what you’re most passionate about.

Obviously, the guitar is a lot more than a skill to learn. It’s an artform. It’s easy to get excited about mastering impressive and difficult techniques and lose sight of why you picked up the guitar to begin with.

Remember that techniques emerged over time as more and more efficient ways to express feelings and ideas on the instrument.

Now, none of this is to say that you shouldn’t continue to pursue mastery with new and difficult techniques.

You absolutely should.

It’s important to always be growing and moving forward.  But it’s also important to keep in mind that many of the guitarists that you look up to became who they are and got to where they are by hybridizing their own unique interests and inspirations and ultimately, by following their own path.

Holding the world record for guitar speed doesn’t really make you the best guitarist in the world. Not by a long shot. It doesn’t even necessarily make you the fastest.

What the record holders really become known for is being the first to go on record playing at that speed, under those conditions. Give it a few years, and someone else will take their place. Maybe it will be you…

Regardless, there’s only one sure way that you can be the best at something – be the first at something.

Stay tuned for next week’s article where we will talk more about how you can unlock your potential, break your limitations and set yourself right on track to where you want to go.

If you missed last week’s article, you can find it here:  Finishing what you start

Ready for that next challenge?  Check out my massive catalog of guitar related products, covering everything from Metal versions of Classical pieces, Neo-Classical Shred technique, Sweep Picking, and more!   See what’s on sale today at the link below:

www.Sellfy.com/DanMumm

Dan Mumm