Guitar Tutorial - '' The improv Toolbox'' Extra Lesson : Developing your own ideas , Recording your practice sessions.

Hello Steemit friends !

Today I am signing in for a little lesson , Im putting it as an ''extra lesson'' because today I wont talk about music theory , but just a practice concept and a way I think you can improve a lot faster and more effectively .

Any teacher will tell you that a good way to improve your musical language is to transcribe solos , solos from musicians you admire and try to adapt their ideas to your playing ( I agree ) . When I was in music college I transcribed lots of solos from musicians i liked like Jim Hall , Chet Baker , Miles Davis , Mike Stern , Scott Henderson and and being a rock/blues guy at heart I did try to emulate Eric Johnson for a long time before figuring out it's impossible to sound like him hahaha.
Michael Landau is also one of my guitar heroes and big influence on my playing. Robben Ford? of course ! .. list goes on an on .

Anyways , I believe once you get the grasp of a particular concept or idea it is important to morph it into your own playing , do your own version and develop your own ideas over time. When you start mixing all of this into a big pot of ideas eventually over time your own voice will start appearing . Your tone , ideas and playing will reflect your influences but you will not sound like a copycat .

So , how do we work this out??

Today I'd like to share this little idea that might help you .

When I'm improvising or working a chord progression out I like to record myself , I just set an audio or video recorder in front of me , nothing fancy.

Then I start doing a series of ''takes'' , varying from 1 - 3 minutes . Try something until I lose control over the idea , then hit record again and do another take and so on . You can do 5 , 10 , 15 , 20 ... as many as you want but be sure to STOP when you get burnt out . ( That point where anything you play doesn't work... just stop , go have a glass of water , take a little walk , relax for a while before coming back )

After you' ve done the takes , forget about them for a couple hours, or maybe a day , then come back to the recordings and start analyzing what you played .

I might ask me this questions when I listen back:

• Are the melodies strong?
• Is the tempo rushed , lagging or on time?
• Is the phrasing interesting?
• Am I following the chord changes?
• Does this rock/jazz/blues/metal/whatever type of vibe work over this?
• Is the tone ''correct'' for the situation?

You can keep asking questions and be very analytical over your playing only AFTER you have recorded it , the effect you get as a listener is very different of when you are actually playing.

I have had many situations in where i thought what i was playing was great and after listening back I got disappointed and viceversa. So recording yourself is really important for this type of work.

Keep a blog of your progress! I have recordings of practice sessions , ideas, compositions going back to 2011 , whenever I look for inspiration i go there and see if I can develop an idea i left forgotten and keep polishing it .

An example? Sure ! :)

Yesterday I was working on quite a tough progression . So i did my ''series of takes'' , here I am sharing a couple , there are mistakes ;) , don't be afraid to make them .. after all you are practicing !
( sometimes mistakes can turn into interesting ideas , so just go for it )

This is the backing track I used:

I hope this little concept inspires your practicing :)
What do you think of this idea?

Thanks for reading !

Signing off

Pechiche Mena