Is midi my guitar playing salvation?

barefoot

barefoot

barefootsound.com
I am a mediocre guitar player.

My rhythm playing is pretty good, though I could never come up with anything original, and my soloing always sucked - totally uninspired. But I could manage to pull off note for note solos I learned from tablature. I've always had ideas and I would try to come up with my own things, but I could never get around the limitations of my own fingers. It kind of felt like I was in a box limited by the imagination of my hands - if that makes any sense?

Anyhow, I have rarely picked up my guitar in recent years, concentrating instead on writing electronica - which I find comes very easily to me. Once again on the train ride to work this morning I came up with something. I found a pretty good guitar-like synth patch, so I decided to see if I could midi sequence a guitar solo. Eureka! Unconstrained by my fingers and my limited fretboard vision, I came up with something kind of like how I always imagined I wanted to play.

Here's the "guitar solo" I came up with:
(right click then Save Target As)

So what do you think of the solo? (Not the rest of the production, because I just did it on the train with headphones). Does it have potential? Do you think this is a viable way for me to approach my guitar playing - compose my stuff before hand in a different medium? I'm not 100% sure I'll even be able to play this! Or should I just stick to my computer and forget the guitar?

Thanks,

barefoot

http://barefootsound.com
 
So you're saying that you want to replace your guitar with a keyboard patch that neither sounds nor plays anything like a guitar? If something like that came out of my guitar I'd...I'd...I'd get a keyboard :)

I think you should maybe just give up on the guitar solo idea altogether. If electronica is what you do, then do electronica! It's like vegetarian food that tries to look and taste like meat...what's the point? :)

Slackmaster 2000
 
Sorry, I guess I didn't explain what I meant very well.

I want to play this using a real guitar. But I can never seem to work out decent solos on the guitar. I always wind up running through the same tired "patterns". So, here I just programmed a solo I had in my head with the though in mind that it would be played on the guitar.

So, first of all, I'm asking whether you can imagine that this would sound good played on the guitar? And, taking into consideration my guitar playing "block", is it even feasible to approach composition this way? - since I'm not certain I have the technical capabilities to play all the stuff I can program.

barefoot

http://barefootsound.com
 
I think it would kick ass on a guitar. use some feedback to go into some of those licks.
 
Actually that's a very good idea. I used to work with a song writer who would come to me with a song idea with the most clever chord and melody structures. She would come up with this stuff in her head and then teach herself the chords where I would (at the time) noodle around on the guitar trying to find a tune in my noodlings. I think her and your approach (which seems to me to be about the same thing) is the better idea. Ya know what I mean?
 
Ahh...well personally I don't think that would be very cool sounding on guitar but I come from a more bluesy background. It's all very subjective.

At first I was kind of appalled at your idea, but now I understand it. I think that any method you use to express your creativity is valid, and this is actually a very interesting way of doing things.

I've composed a few piano pieces in fruity loops, yet I can't play a lick of piano. I was happy with how they turned out...sure I wish I could really just work right on a piano, but that's just not going to happen. I still got satisfaction of the whole process of creation....and really it's the creation that gets me off more than technicalities.

Now your situation is a little different than mine because you're actually going to play the piece on guitar...I think that's really going to work out well because your end product will still be a "guitar solo." There really isn't much of a difference between experiementing around with a piano roll editor and experimenting around with your guitar directly.

Also, a long term benefit might be that your guitar playing will improve and you'll become more versatile...you're forcing yourself out of the box you've played yourself into (we all play ourselves into a box eventually and have to find some way out).

Slackmaster 2000
 
....However!

I think every one of my recorded guitar solos has been written and recorded on the spot, with no more than one or two takes. I just get into the groove and let it come out, and the result is sometimes pretty emotional and somewhat strong (I'm definately not a great player though). If I don't play that solo again until I've forgotten it, I often won't be able to figure it out again, because it only existed in my mind for that moment. Like my current emotional state and experience with the guitar itself combined to create this moment that only happens once.

If you compose everything ahead of time you'll risk losing that, although it might not be important to you...I think you mentioned you don't feel real comfortable soloing anyhow.

I read somewhere about Roger Waters recently, and that some of his famous guitar solos like that in Comfortably Numb were done on the first take...and that subsequent solos just didn't have what that first take had. Everything came together in that moment and what came out was perfect for the song.

Being able to improvise on the fly allows you to tap that part of your brain that isn't avaliable to you when you're sitting down trying to write. I used to think it so important that all I can really do is improv (not well perhaps)....when it comes to playing something I've already written I can barely do it.

Interesting stuff here!

Slackmaster 2000
 
Slack, JR, Track Rat,

Thanks for the feedback!

It really do think this helps to get me out of my box - the one I've always been in with the guitar at least. When I wrote this I didn't think at all about how it would be played - not positions, fingering, or anything. I just thought about the sounds I would want to come out of my guitar. It was quite liberating. Now, of course, the challenge will be to actually PLAY it!

Improvisation is no big concern because I've never been comfortable doing that anyway. I've always been more into building things up piece by piece. Still, this "solo" was relatively improvisational by my standards. I literally threw the notes down in the sequencer in less than 5 minutes. Another 5 minutes of minor tweaking here and there and I was done.

And, I'll steer clear of trying to compare my guitar skills in any with David Gilmore (I think you meant to say him, not Roger Waters). That could be very discouraging! :)

barefoot
 
Very interesting and cool...Sounds pretty good to me..

I`m not sure it could ever gonna be a direct replacement for guitar. There`s just too many nuances that cannot be reproduced on a keyboard instrument consistently across the range of the pitch of a guitar. The many variations in velocity from fingering the notes and the tension of the strings constantly changing as the fingers move up and down the length of the string appear to be beyond the scope of capability of a keyboard instrument. The closest I`ve ever seen was with the Roland GS's, Casio, and Photon converters on guitars. Tracking the the pitches, amplitudes, velocities, and other nuances was always beyond capability of the controllers on the devices, at the speeds some of the events that were played into them by most guitar players.

However technique...., can lend to some impressive imagery that can superimpose itself over the mental picture of a guitar that is embossed in our minds. There were instances that you captured some of that in your solo. However what I heard was a voice all its own. A new voice that was kinda cool. If used enough, familiarity would overcome the imagery that expects a guitar to sound like what we imagine, "Blinded by Science" if you will... I am reflecting on memories of Chick Corea and Jan Hammer`s earlier mastering of the peculiarities of the voice of a minimoog, that could stand on its own with a guitar, yet it was not trying to . Go with it dude, if it feels good.... :)
 
that was pretty cool!!! i say, anytime you can get something down, DO IT!!!! by any means necessary!! (im learning this the hard way):rolleyes: what ever work's for YOU!!


peace

rick<<<<<<<<<<<<<<master of the obvious:D
 
Hey,any tool used to break down the barrier between the mind and your hands is a good thing.Actually this sounds like a good idea....this is a clever way of finding and creating guitar lines that would normally not be triggered if you were trying to find them on the guitar,being that you have the mental block thing going on.Now you just need to translate these parts to your guitar playing.

Cool idea and approach......this could break you out of the box with your guitar playing.
 
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I think using the piano as a composition tool is something more guitarists should try, it helps us break out of old habits.

I've included an excerpt from an interview with a guitarist I admire quite a bit, his name is Johnny A and he hails from Boston.

In the interview he talks about stumbling onto this piano composition thing by accident.

..."So, I had all this time on my hands and I pulled out this music book someone gave me years ago, The Complete Beatles, a two-volume set. The first song was "Till There Was You." I was trying to take the chord clusters and figuring out fingerings to go with the melodies. Unbeknownst to me, because I really didn't know what I was doing, I was reading the piano charts. I really started to like what I was hearing. I thought I could fuse my style with this chordal-melody thing that was happening. "
 
hey barefoot, I think it can definitely be cool.. might I suggest a wammy pedal of some type.. preferably the Boss PS-5 pitch shifter pedal.. you can do amazing things with it.. It can make achieving that solo sound a lot easier.. I'm not talking about the exact synth sound, but the solo notes, including ultra high ones.. you can be in one spot on the guitar and just by moving the pedal, it will be as if your moving up the neck.. I use it on almost every solo I do! :D People have asked me many times if the solo sound was a guitar or a synth.. It's easy to blurr the line sometimes..

Also, I sometimes run my synth through a guitar processor, and I can really make it sound like a guitar.. I have this halloween song on my page, the first solo is guitar, and the outro solos are a synth through a guitar processor.. People did not know the outro solo was a synth until I told them..

Any tool that can be used to help the process is a good idea..


cool stuff and ideas..
 
Hey Barefoot,

...sounds cool to me man. I agree w/ the above posts: Anything that can get whats in your head/heart to tape is a good thing. Great thinkin man.

g
 
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