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vracan
Joined: 03 Dec 2008
Posts: 23
Location: montreal,canada
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 Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 8:17 pm Post subject: |
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True! Some people TRY harder to improve than others, and those will find NUMEROUS ways to go about improving, with or without a band.
All I am saying is playing with others is only one of the ways to improve. If one finds themselves in a plateau but still truly wants to learn there are numerous ways to go about it. For me it was just plain hard work, alomst completely on my own (and the internet), because I could'nt find any musicians around here better than me to learn from. I wish I could but hard to come by in this city I live in. Everyone is onto hiphop it seems- YIKES!! ... You must be so lucky to be surrounded by good musicians.
I'm surrounded by DJ's?!?!!
About "sounding musical"-- Yes it's true musical is very subjective. But even if I don't like a song or genre of music, I could at least tell if it's musical. Ex: I really do not like Celine dion, yet I can still objectively say that she is quite right on musically. It is not taste I am talking about, but a general musical quality that is obvious to ANYONE listening, especially a musician. At the very least the player of piece must think it "musical" when listening to it played back.
That said, I do play with other musicians time to time, and nothing can replace the magic you can get from that! |
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M
Joined: 02 Jan 2009
Posts: 331
Location: Northern VA (USA)
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| Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 12:52 am Post subject: |
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| vracan wrote: | | You must be so lucky to be surrounded by good musicians. I'm surrounded by DJ's?!?!! |
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MangoTango
Joined: 08 Sep 2008
Posts: 307
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:43 am Post subject: |
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DJ's? Think yourself lucky. It's ********* karaoke around here!  which as we all know, is the work of the Devil  designed to torment musicians who have studied and practiced for years to hone their talent, only to see venues give the gig to a bloke with a karaoke machine and a bunch of howling drunk buffoons who have no shame but put much money over the bar in order to see one another look v. stupid. Or perhaps I'm very old-fashioned. 
As Wikipedia would tell us (if it had a sense of humour), Karaoke is Japanese for "I'm drunk and I can't sing". Although this heinous practice is widely thought to have originated in Japan, it was in fact invented by a Sikh gentleman from India; his name was Gorrupta Singh.....
Of course it's true..... 
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“It's like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something" - Duke Ellington |
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Jens
Joined: 20 Feb 2007
Posts: 416
Location: The Hague, The Netherlands
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| Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 1:31 pm Post subject: |
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| vracan wrote: |
About "sounding musical"-- Yes it's true musical is very subjective. But even if I don't like a song or genre of music, I could at least tell if it's musical. Ex: I really do not like Celine dion, yet I can still objectively say that she is quite right on musically. It is not taste I am talking about, but a general musical quality that is obvious to ANYONE listening, especially a musician. At the very least the player of piece must think it "musical" when listening to it played back. |
Can you also tell if Grindcore, an Alban Berg Piano sonata or an indian raga is a musical performance or not? I really doubt that it is a general musical quality. I cannot tell good 12 tone music or Metalcore Punkdeath growl from bad half the time, and I constantly meet people who say that jazz is nice except for the solos, apparrently Charlie Parker and John Coltrane are unmusical to them, while they are "Mozart and Beethoven" to me.
Jens
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http://www.jenslarsen.nl |
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vracan
Joined: 03 Dec 2008
Posts: 23
Location: montreal,canada
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| Posted: Thu Apr 09, 2009 2:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Ok so when I say "musical" what I mean is "general musical" in our western hemisphere and staying out of the "eclectic" style zone. Hope that is clear enough. |
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Krah13
Joined: 14 Dec 2012
Posts: 7
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| Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 11:53 am Post subject: Re: Reaching a plateau how to progress further? |
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| sparkhall wrote: | I wonder if any of you more experienced players could give me some help. The problem is I feel that I have reached a bit of a plateau and am unsure of how to progress further.
I have been learning jazz guitar for a couple of years, I have got a reasonable number of chords down, am pretty happy with basic jazz blues progressions, can play melody or chords from a lead sheet reasonably quickly (reading not too bad now I have abandoned tabs!). Despite having learned modes of major scale and a fair number of arpeggios I struggle to improvise over a chord progression- can't seem to get beyond minor pentatonic over a blues progression. So my question is what should I do from here to develop my ability to improvise (when I get frustrated I start to wonder if I'm just not going to get it).
I find many books tend to be long on examples and short on explanation. For my sins I seem to need to know the theory behind what I'm doing, I tend to be a bit too cerebral about it perhaps.
Any suggestions of how to proceed very welcome. |
I really want to help you. I have experienced many times this feeling of dead end. I 'll share with you the method that helped me start improvising over the changes.
Some years before I decided to start playing jazz. I learnt some scales, some arpeggios, some chords, but I couldn't solo over the changes.
The things started to change when I learnt the changes of a tune by heart. The tune was "All of me". I learnt the melody and the chords of the tune and I started improvising by using only chord tones. Only arpeggios. It was really difficult, but after a lot of practice I was able to hear the changes through my solos.
This was the method that helped me. You can try something similar.
I hope that this will help you.
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Krah13
www.lost-in-guitarland.com |
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