OVER the last months with parts one and two of this series, I hopefully seeded some fun ideas to get you making music but I’d like to come back to basics with some instrumental specifics in this article.
If you are a typical musician, whenever you take up your instrument at home, you will start by playing things that make you feel good.
It is undoubtedly a sure way to warm up, but could you bring a more focussed approach to what you are noodling with?
For example, instead of playing a few scales and riffs, and seeing where it goes from there, why not begin with a task created in the moment?
Give yourself a time signature and a key, and lock into that for your riffs and runs.
The result is both a musical and a technical test, but let’s further extend it by giving you a chord progression to work with. Something simple like a 2-5-1 progression spread over four bars, for example chords Dm7, G7 and Cmaj7 to C.
If you are a keyboardist the left hand can play the chords and it’s not hard, but it’s more difficult for a saxophonist or guitarist who might prefer to have the chords on a backing track or loop.
Perhaps you can play or arpeggiate the chord at the beginning of each bar and then solo around it, still making it sound musical, or why not just try to hear it in your head? It’s getting more challenging isn’t it?
For a variation on the above exercise, especially If you are a bluesy sort of player, instead of jamming with those same old riffs in E, (using chords E, A and B7), why not change key every 12 bars and really surprise yourself. Move it up a tone for the second 12 bars then down a major third for the next 12, for example.
That will get the brain working.
Let’s extend the exercise by playing your riffs an octave higher than you are used to, and on different strings.
You might argue that it is becoming less a musical exercise and more a technical one, but the gain is that it immediately tests you, and it is the sort of challenge that can happen in a live performance.
Go back to that time, still set in your mind, when a guitar string breaks mid song and you need to complete that song with just five strings, having to transpose your parts to a now slightly out of tune different string.
Don’t laugh as it happens more often than not to all professional guitar players who bend their strings!
Michael has a recording studio in Peachester. If you would like to find out more contact him on
0419 026 895 or E: mwhitick@bigpond.net.au