No,
it's ok, I haven't had a stroke. This month I thought I'd share a
handy little tip which is brilliantly simple for getting you out of a
rut, particularly if you're hitting that plateau (which we all hit at
some point or another) where you just find yourself playing the
same thing every time you solo.
Let's
say you're primarily a blues rock pentatonic based player. Alot of
people's first instinct is to go and learn some exotic sounding
scales, and while this is never exactly bad for you, the simple fact
is there really isn't much call for the Phrygian Dominant over the
rock & roll 12 bars most of us bang out at the local open mic
night. So while learning exotic scales can be fun, it can also be
very tricky to integrate them into your “everyday” pentatonic
playing (I'll be doing some more posts on this over the next few
months, so stay tuned).
Maybe
some new techniques? Tapping is often something that I get asked
about, and again, it's a fun, cool-sounding technique, looks flash,
but the same problem applies – just how are you going to take that
jaw droppng tapped septuplet Steve Vai lick you've been working on
for the last two months and apply it to “Route 66”? Again, I'll
come back to ways to integrate different techniques too over the next
few months, but the simple fact is it's going to sound weird
in that context. Like taking a cheese sandwich and adding
blackcurrent jam – neither is bad in it's own right, but they don't
exactly gel together.
So
it can be diffiicult to know where to go to get off this plateau.
Typically though, as musicians we strive for the most difficult,
demanding solution to a problem and completely ignore the one that
has been right under our noses the whole time.
Retrograde.
From
Wikipedia:
“A
musical line which is the reverse of a previously or simultaneously
stated line is said to be its retrograde or cancrizans ("walking
backward", medieval Latin, from cancer,
crab). An exact retrograde includes both the pitches and rhythms in
reverse. An even more exact retrograde reverses the physical contour
of the notes themselves, though this is possible only in electronic
music.
Some composers choose to subject just the pitches of a musical line
to retrograde, or just the rhythms. In twelve-tone
music,
reversal of the pitch
classesalone—regardless
of the melodic
contour created
by their registral
placement—is
regarded as a retrograde. “
So basically, taking something you
already know and playing it backwards (yeah, title making more sense
now?)
This has been used as a compositional
aid for composers working in classical music for centuries, and will
have been used many times by songwriters in the pop/rock field, but
somehow we never seem to use it when improvising. Here's an example –
a stock E minor pentatonic blues/ rock lick we've all used a billion
times:
We all know that, we all know how to
make it fit – so what happens when we flip it around?
Ooh.
Now try practicing it in context – 2
bars on/ 2 bars off is perfect for this.
NB - for those unfamiliar with this
exercise, it's incredibly useful and because I nicked the idea from a
drum teacher friend of mine, incredibly simple too:
1 – tap foot to beat, using
metronome or drum machine if available
2 – play 2 bars of appropriate
chord backing – so for this lick, 2 bars of chugging E5 power
chord, or funking things up with an E7#9.. your choice
3 – this is the clever bit:
without breaking rhythm, keep tapping your foot and improvise for 2
bars. In this instance you're aiming to develop ideas based off our
new backwards blues lick, but you can adapt this exercise to
anything.
All of a sudden – brand new lick.
Except that you already intuitively understand it, as it's the same
scale, and has the same rhythmic properties, so it will very quickly
start working it's way into your vocabulary. Try it with every lick
you can, you will be amazed by the results, and all of a sudden
you'll feel yourself improving again.
Till next time, happy jamming and nuf
evah!
