WIP Song composition

[Endrik]

When it comes to performance then to sound good one needs to play with authority. It's simply playing with certain force and looseness at the same time. There needs to be certain attack and presence with one hand, while the other hand offers firmness to get the right tone and intonation. The looseness is about playing that with certain relaxedness and comfort so the music would have enough dynamics and the rhythm would flow naturally. Self-confidence and control are much more important than constantly worrying about notes. If there's a mistake, one can record it again.

[Trem]

I strongly encourage anyone to practice over changes where one can't stay in the same key. It simply makes you pay more attention to what's going on in any musical situation. I'm very disappointed when some highly rated musicians have no respect for the music and for musicians they are playing along with when they ignore what's going on and just play pre-learned finger exercises in the main key position over everything. Some actually think they're the shit for doing that, I instantly want to throw changes with different keys to them so everyone could see what kind of charlatans they really are when the fail miserably in musical communication.

There's no science behind it. It's just hearing and acknowledging the harmony which thrives the music. Almost anyone can do it at basic level, you hear chord changes and you automatically sing with the changes. Just adapt that approach with an instrument and develop more advance language out of it.
Theory is just a collection of regularities which are labeled with certain names. If you work on your playing, figuring out what sounds good and what doesn't, transcribing the music you like etc. then you know what's going on anyway regardless if you know the name for the approach you can get from music theory book or not. The names are good when you want to talk about something and address the info quickly. Like 3rd interval or something like that, you just count if you have to, nothing hard there.

It's all about listening and adapting.

I totally agree. I came to the conclusion a long time ago once seeing players teaching licks and such. While fine and all, i never really wanted to learn so much of that as much as just being able to play what came out of my head. Also, partly, i don't have the aptitude or patience for that matter to learn other peoples "standard" licks so much.

Upon studying transcribed songs when i was younger in Guitar mags, i realized, well that's good for that player, in that song, for that purpose to get their point across, but ultimately i am not going to want to play "that" lick, just because i learned it and can play it? Maybe if it fits in a certain context, but in my own song will it have anything to do with that? Doubtful, ...if i'm doing it right.

Theory and stuff absolutely has it's merits, and people should learn as much as they can stand or absorb, true, but the conclusion i came up with that i think is the root of it and more important would be to learn every note on your guitar, learn exactly how it sounds in your head and then learn to hear the intervals in relation to those notes. Some great players at least profess to not know a lot of theory. EVH was one who just seemed to play using his ear more than clinically. Another reason i am a huge fan of Frank Zappas playing, is certainly not that it's technically brilliant, but that for one, he obviously knew all the theory there is to know, and his "compositions" showed that. But when he played guitar all that went out the window and he played totally by ear and in the moment.
That is what i aspire to most, and while perfectly constructed songs and solos that are clinically precise ect, like say John Petrucci is the closest example i can think of, is also cool and i wouldn't mind being able to do that too, it can become predictable. I ultimately don't want to be predictable. And i have a long way to go with that.

[Cliff]

"I strongly encourage anyone to practice over changes where one can't stay in the same key" Your advice has not fallen on deaf ears - I totally intend to do this. I thought the Friedman vids were interesting because they seemed like a half-way house: no key change, but he's still playing over the chords rather than just playing scales, and the difference is very noticeable.

Personally, I find theory very useful. I definitely have less than average musical talent. Most people I know can tap out a rhythm or carry a tune better than I can. For me, theory is a useful tool to help me along. If I know a chord or two in a song, I can more easily figure out the rest of the chords.

As for playing with authority, I agree again. For me, though, I've spent the last 18 months or more trying to improve my technique. I've arrived at a place where I think it's significantly better, and I'm confident now it can be improved quite a bit further. However, I used to play with a lot more confidence: confidently, but badly . I've lost much of this confidence along the way (my wife, for example, thinks my playing is worse than it used to be). I guess at some point - like you say about Zappa, Trem - you have to forget the theory and the technique and just go for it. I don't feel like I'm there yet.

[Endrik]

When it comes to theory then it's like with everything, it's better to know more than to know less.

But the music itself is all about the individual exploration. Knowing or not knowing theory is just knowing or not knowing the terms. If someone is stuck in the box then the problem is not if he/she knows or doesn't know theory. Those who do not know theory still have found out many regularities, they just don't know how to call them. And if someone who knows a lot about theory but is stuck in the box then the problem is in his/her imagination not knowledge. Due all the developments in modern classical music and jazz, theory pretty much describes everything, all the dissonances and non-tonal possibilities. It's not a rule book and as far as I know no serious music school has teachers who tell that you have to follow certain "rules" when it comes to theory.

Forgetting theory and all that while playing is due intuition, when your musical hearing has developed enough then you hear the notes in your head, you know the next interval subconsciously. This is very important when one wants to be good at improvising.

But to make the intuition and imagination work really well one has to play a lot and discover as much as possible. All that expands one's intuition.

One of the biggest mistakes I see in modern electric guitar playing is that it sticks to scalar approach and leaves out everything else. When one is only about the scales then he/she is used to very small interval differences and the intuition just doesn't led to something more interesting. But when one adapts more harmonic approach the he/she automatically starts to hear much more possiblities.

[kuerbo]

First question: Where's Clint Eastwood?
Jokes apart, sounds pretty nice. Very sad to me, though i don't know if that was your intention or not.
I would let the bass notes sounding longer so it fills the bakckground some more.
Drums are a little too high in the mix IMHO.
Maybe some delay, especially between 3:00 and 3:30 will put a more dramatic twist to freshen things a bit?
Just my .02.
Congratulations.
Rodrigo.

[bratfink]

Love the backing riff Cliff, good work.

[Cliff]

Thanks guys - I appreciate the support!
Kuerbo - agreed about the drums being too high in the mix. There's delay on the guitar, but I'm always wary of dialling in too much, but I'll give it a go. In my mind, I'm not sure if it's supposed to be sad, or just reflecting something sweet and delicate, if you know what I mean.