How much talented are you?
For last couple of days, I was thinking about this question. I have asked this to myself sometimes. People sometimes asked me this (often NOT to encourage me). This question might give rise to self doubtif not answered properly or thought about properly. Here’s what I got
1. Your Talent is not something fixed.
a) I am not talking about your skill. Skill and talent are different. Skill comes from practice and time. Talent comes from your personality and gives identity to your playing.
b) talent, like skill, can be practiced and improved. You have to train your Brain/Mind to be more creative/talented. No it’s not vague. There are ways to do it. AND it has biological reason too which is too vast to cover here.
c) Only listen to those people who give you constructive feedback and know what they are talking about. Only a person with good music sense can tell you if your music is improving or not. Do not care about everyone’s opinion on how talented you are even it’s from your family. Just listen to those who YOU KNOW are knowledgeable (these persons are not easy to find outside this forum, trust me).
2. Guitar solos are not everything
a) You play amazing guitar solos. Implies you are good at guitar. Cool. But the opposite is not true always.
b) Guitar is not meant to played solos only. Maybe you are good at finding amazing riffs, amzing chord progressions, groovy rhythm patterns. Then you are good too.
c) If you try to be good at solos, that is amazing. But do not use that as a scale to judge how good you are. If you feel you are not ok with solos, try some thing else. See if YOU can come up with something like Buried Alive Intro or kick ass Metallica/ Megadeth.
d) I don’t know about your country. But here, most of the people do not give any credit to rhythm guitarists and their work/talent. Lead guitarists steal all the limelight almost always. If that’s same at your place, screw that. If your music is good, music lovers will eventually find you and appreciate your work, regardless of your ability to play good solos.
3.How to train your talent/brain/mind?
a) This is far easier said than done. But hey, where is the fun in easy stuff right?
b) Have you noticed if your practice sessions are becoming repetitive or not. You play the same thing every time you sit to practice. I don’t know about you. But it happened to me for a few YEARS. I was practicing licks,solos,scales. That’s it. There was no ME in that. It was all practice, no explore. Your practice sessions should be like Syn’s solos. No two are same. So practice, but also keep some time aside to explore.
c) Practicing and getting a kick ass guitar solo down is a very rewarding experience. But that’s all. It has nothing unique to you and thousands of others are already doing it.
d) so try one thing. every time you sit to practice, try to mess up known licks. Try to come up with something which YOU have made. It may sound good/bad or horrible. But if you do this again and again., two things are happening with your talent
Those 2 things are
a) You brain is being more and more used to accepting the random licks you are playing. It is getting more “DATA” on which notes work for YOU and which does not. Your brain gets a chance to figure out what YOU like to play,what YOU like to express and so on. Unless you do not come out of your comfort zone, your brain is not getting the valuable “EXPERIENCE” in composing and expressing your feelings properly.
b) you are shattering your finger/muscle memory. Your fingers are becoming more fluid, more “READY” to play outside familiar patterns. Your brain is getting more efficient at bridging the gap between what note you WANT to play and what note you ARE playing. This has to work if you want to be good at improvising.
I tried to make my thoughts as precise as possible. I was not brave enough to talk on this and make a video because I have a habit of drifting away from topic while talking. I would request Jak, Hector, Ids or any other member Synner to make a YouTube/ Instagram video on this just because I think more and more musicians need to think about this (also because this thread will be lost eventually but a video will stay longer). Just this question alone discourages many musicians I think ( and I have seen that too). To wrap it up, here’s me messing up a small lick from Buried Alive solo to show how to TRY to shatter your comfort zone. (and may be you can see, I am not comfortable at all. But I liked the struggle anyways)
Thanks for your patience.
For last couple of days, I was thinking about this question. I have asked this to myself sometimes. People sometimes asked me this (often NOT to encourage me). This question might give rise to self doubtif not answered properly or thought about properly. Here’s what I got
1. Your Talent is not something fixed.
a) I am not talking about your skill. Skill and talent are different. Skill comes from practice and time. Talent comes from your personality and gives identity to your playing.
b) talent, like skill, can be practiced and improved. You have to train your Brain/Mind to be more creative/talented. No it’s not vague. There are ways to do it. AND it has biological reason too which is too vast to cover here.
c) Only listen to those people who give you constructive feedback and know what they are talking about. Only a person with good music sense can tell you if your music is improving or not. Do not care about everyone’s opinion on how talented you are even it’s from your family. Just listen to those who YOU KNOW are knowledgeable (these persons are not easy to find outside this forum, trust me).
2. Guitar solos are not everything
a) You play amazing guitar solos. Implies you are good at guitar. Cool. But the opposite is not true always.
b) Guitar is not meant to played solos only. Maybe you are good at finding amazing riffs, amzing chord progressions, groovy rhythm patterns. Then you are good too.
c) If you try to be good at solos, that is amazing. But do not use that as a scale to judge how good you are. If you feel you are not ok with solos, try some thing else. See if YOU can come up with something like Buried Alive Intro or kick ass Metallica/ Megadeth.
d) I don’t know about your country. But here, most of the people do not give any credit to rhythm guitarists and their work/talent. Lead guitarists steal all the limelight almost always. If that’s same at your place, screw that. If your music is good, music lovers will eventually find you and appreciate your work, regardless of your ability to play good solos.
3.How to train your talent/brain/mind?
a) This is far easier said than done. But hey, where is the fun in easy stuff right?
b) Have you noticed if your practice sessions are becoming repetitive or not. You play the same thing every time you sit to practice. I don’t know about you. But it happened to me for a few YEARS. I was practicing licks,solos,scales. That’s it. There was no ME in that. It was all practice, no explore. Your practice sessions should be like Syn’s solos. No two are same. So practice, but also keep some time aside to explore.
c) Practicing and getting a kick ass guitar solo down is a very rewarding experience. But that’s all. It has nothing unique to you and thousands of others are already doing it.
d) so try one thing. every time you sit to practice, try to mess up known licks. Try to come up with something which YOU have made. It may sound good/bad or horrible. But if you do this again and again., two things are happening with your talent
Those 2 things are
a) You brain is being more and more used to accepting the random licks you are playing. It is getting more “DATA” on which notes work for YOU and which does not. Your brain gets a chance to figure out what YOU like to play,what YOU like to express and so on. Unless you do not come out of your comfort zone, your brain is not getting the valuable “EXPERIENCE” in composing and expressing your feelings properly.
b) you are shattering your finger/muscle memory. Your fingers are becoming more fluid, more “READY” to play outside familiar patterns. Your brain is getting more efficient at bridging the gap between what note you WANT to play and what note you ARE playing. This has to work if you want to be good at improvising.
I tried to make my thoughts as precise as possible. I was not brave enough to talk on this and make a video because I have a habit of drifting away from topic while talking. I would request Jak, Hector, Ids or any other member Synner to make a YouTube/ Instagram video on this just because I think more and more musicians need to think about this (also because this thread will be lost eventually but a video will stay longer). Just this question alone discourages many musicians I think ( and I have seen that too). To wrap it up, here’s me messing up a small lick from Buried Alive solo to show how to TRY to shatter your comfort zone. (and may be you can see, I am not comfortable at all. But I liked the struggle anyways)
Thanks for your patience.
.
