"What To Do When You're Completely Out Of Ideas"

It's REALLY important in order to create your own style. So, I hope you've found some time to break out your favorite records and try toplay a little "copy-cat." If you have, you'll probably notice a couple of things:

1) Just by "copying" other people's style you improve yours and

2) You get a flood of new ideas, riffs, licks, etc.

So, today I want you know about something a little weird. Well, at least I've never really heard anyone talk about it much. That is, have you thought about trying to imitate other INSTRUMENTS on your guitar?

Now, you're probably thinking, "What the..." Let me explain.

In the early 1700's there was a tendency to write music for the voice that imitatedinstruments. So, for example, if you listen to Bach's Christmas Oratorio, you'll hear thathe wrote much of the solo vocal music to imitate instruments like the violin or flute.

There would be just a few words in any particular solo. But there would behundreds of notes.And many of these notes are sung a single syllables of a single word.Later (much later) there were composers who did the opposite. Think about it.

Where did the Blues come from? If you ask the average person that question, they'll probably say, "Memphis"(my home) or "St. Louis" or "New Orleans."But that's only partially correct. Those are cities where famous Blues and Jazzmusicians come from. But...Blues actually came from spirituals.

And these Blues guitarists were doing the opposite of what Bach had done.They would make their guitar sound like the human voice, not vice-versa.That's where the saying, "He can really make that guitar SING!" came from. (At least that's my guess.)

But there are other ways to experiment with this idea, too.Why don't you grab your favorite classical record and try to imitate the oboe solofrom a Beethoven symphony? Or try to figure out a particular violin passage from a concerto. Or try to play the melody to a piano concerto. The point is, you want to think outside the box.WAY... outside.

I remember playing in a heavy metal band, years ago... I walked in to a practice session once, and announced that I had some new materialthat I wanted to show everybody. Then I said, "Yeah, this is so cool. I just swiped this right from the sound trackto the Dracula movie." (Which by the way had NO guitar in it, whatsoever.)

There was dead silence. Everyone was just staring at me. Then the drummer said, "Dan, you're a freak man. A real freak." Of course, to me that meant, "Man, you're doing stuff we've never even thought of." Which to me was a big compliment.

So, there you have secret #2 from me... Go learn new material by imitating other instruments (including voice) in othergenres of music.

In part 3, I'm going to reveal some more *SECRETS* so, hold on to your hat...


Cheers,


Dan Denley