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#1
03-10-2013, 08:54 AM
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Me and my guitar need help
Hello dear community. My name is Timothy and im 18 yo high school student from Czech Republic. Ive been playing guitar for about 6 months and I loved it. Perhaps because I luckily have access to internet (as not everyone does) and so I can hear people like Tommy Emmanuel or Chester Atkins or Jerry Reed playing and can see how passionate they are about it and that really is very inspiring for me. Also I like to work hard in terms of playing guitar (I slack at school) because seeing my hands being able to play something they werent able to yesterday is just so much satisfying. So after about 3-4 months when my open chords and all those various barre chord shapes all over the neck stopped buzzing I started craving much more than just play songs with 5 chords most with right hand going up n down. I started off with some kind of pentatonic scale shown to me by friend of mine and so I got a bit more used to moving my left hand over the fretboard and to updown-picking individual strings. After I got that shape into my muscle memory I found out I can move it wherever I want and it will still sound correct. So I felt tiny bit creative. Left this thingie because I didnt see anything else to develop on this and ended up currently learning a beautiful Tommy Emmanuels song called Angelina and I finally got the Chesters Windy and warm. So songs are the great motivation for me to keep practising. Now getting to the problem (I am very sorry for my long post and I hope it doesnt bother u much getting to know my journey) a question stood up in my head. If I learn a song I can play a new song which I can show to someone and I get my fingers technique a bit better. But what does it take to get to the point where I can for example join my buddy playing basic blues shuffle and shoot some nice melodies into it? How does one figure out what notes will fit / where do I put my fingers now? while looking at the fretboard and listening to the rythm? Now to make it clear I do not expect some magic sentence that is gonna change the way I approach guitar or the way I see it. Im more of looking for some kind words of guidance.
Best regards Timothy 
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#2
03-10-2013, 12:44 PM
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Hi Timothy! I'm glad to hear your guitar adventure is going well. I like Jerry Reed's playing, too--he doesn't get mentioned often enough here.
If I understand your question correctly, here is my answer: One way to practice melodic improvisation is to find online a blues shuffle jam track (or "backing track" they are sometimes called) on youtube or a free mp3 and play it, and practice alone. Some notes will work at certain times; others will not sound as good, and the blues scale provides the most likely notes. Another way: you can look at "blues licks" how-to videos and memorize a few good ones, then begin stringing them together. As you do both (or either), you'll begin to develop a memorized "library" of your own soloing licks. What I've found is that I shouldn't expect myself to go very fast at this. Memorizing one new lick every 10 days is about as much as my brain can manage, so it can take a few months to put together one good solo and years to be able to improvise well and with a lot of variety. You may learn much faster than I, of course.
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I think Ill do this for a while. Thanks for the backtrack idea. Haha