Advice on "what" to learn....

[Alpione]

Hey all..

I consider myself a halfway decent intermediate player ... physically. That is, I can imitate and learn others' song pretty easily and sing while doing it. "Mentally," however, I'm still looking for some traction. My music theory has improved greatly over the past couple of years and things like building chords, scales, etc are now not a problem.

However, I'd like to expand my abilities by adding more fills between chords, creating interesting intros and generally spicing up my playing outside of just mimicking others. I'm also looking to start writing my own stuff and create something more imaginative than just chord progressions.

So "what" should I learn? I've started working with the CAGED system, which seems like a good bridge between chords and scales all over the neck. I think, however, that I may have the same problem with the scales I've already learned - "ok, I can play this scale in several positions. Now what?"

Any suggestions? Any places online where they run through writing music for songs or throwing personal embellishments on existing songs?

Thanks!

Adam

[gitardude]

You might check out the lessons at www.littlebrother.com. I'm working on the Learning Seminar and Blues in C. They go well together. In the former he basically teaches applications of CAGED to making music.

[Hightop]

Look here....this might help.

http://flatpick.ning.com/

[hawgadi]

You might check out the lessons at www.littlebrother.com (http://www.littlebrother.com). I'm working on the Learning Seminar and Blues in C. They go well together. In the former he basically teaches applications of CAGED to making music.

Is Little Brother's site down? I get an invalid page. Thanks!

[hawgadi]

Ah--a quick search found the issue: http://www.littlebrotherblues.com/

[Bern]

Are you playing primarily fingerstyle ?

[mmmaak]

If innovative playing is what you're after, Rick Ruskin's DVDs will be an indispensable resource for you for many years to come:

http://www.liondogmusic.com/Products.htm#Instructional%20Books%20and%20Videos

[Alpione]

Sorry - should have specified that I'm mainly a flatpicking/strummer. Thanks for the input, folks!

Adam

[ljguitar]

...Any suggestions? Any places online where they run through writing music for songs or throwing personal embellishments on existing songs?
Hi Adam...
You touch on a good subject, and I'd recommend you find people who play the way you want to, then study their arranging habits as well as their playing techniques for putting tasty fills in the right places.

It's sometimes as important to know where to build space without fills as it is to put great little fills in, so having active/living examples is pretty important.

I think you will find such among some of the jazz community, as well as players like Mike Dowling and Pat Donohue - they even have some DVDs they produced together for the sake of teaching that may be useful.

Tuck Andress, Muriel Anderson, Laurence Juber, Phil Keaggy and Tommy Emmanuel come to mind when thinking about tasty and very musical fill work and not just filling space with lots of notes...David Wilcox is another who can be very rhythmic without padding the mix.

Hope this helps...

[tbeltrans]

Adam:

There is a lot of excellent advice in this thread. I want to add one more consideration to what has already been said...

There is a book that is well worth considering, called Serious Guitar. Here is the link:

http://www.seriousguitar.com/

A couple of us over on the carbon fiber guitar forum are getting into this:

http://carbonguitar.com/smf/index.php?topic=1252.0

What it takes you through is applicable to whatever music you wish to play. I would consider it as an adjunct to the various things that people have recommended here (rather than an either/or decision), which are all excellent, especially Rick Ruskin's DVDs for fingerstyle. This book is not about a specific musical style, but instead about how music fits together, and is applied to the guitar fretboard

Tony