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Originally Posted by Chris C
Great description! I think that most of us have had a dose of "Jimmy Crack Corn Syndrome at some time or another... Nothing wrong with the melody really, except that you can just hear you old auntie saying "That's a nice tune dear.. " or imagine it turning up on some easy listening compilation. 
I believe that there is a known set of steps that you need to go through which involves shooting a man in Memphis, having your Baby do you wrong, walking the lonesome railroad tracks, drinking a lot of bad moonshine whisky, and so on. But it's a slow process.
My guess is that a quicker way is to take the same notes and play around with the timing and the attack and punch you give various sections. I'd reckon that somebody like Kirk could take the same tune and make it sound very different just by changing the playing style.
Effects can also help put you in the right mood to swing it, rock it or whatever. I once recorded a classically trained friend playing a very precise and quite intricate version of "Danny Boy" and then we spent a happy half hour putting it through various effects channels in the mixer. Amazing how different it could end up sounding.
A good exercise might be to take one simple tune and see how many different ways you can play it. Take something as easy and ingrained as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (or whatever simple song you know well) and improvise with it - rock it up, do a reggae version, a Country version, etc. Blow it up into classical version (Mozart used the Twinkle Twinkle melody), just muck around until you get a feel for what it is that makes something sound bluesy or countryish or whatever. I think it's probably in the swing and rhythm more than the notes themselves, but then I'm no expert. I might just try it though and see if I can make something sound completely different just by the way it's played.
What do others here think makes the difference???
Cheers,
Chris |
Bingo! Exactly what I'm talking about
: my licks come out sounding like something my dear old auntie (my dear old
dead auntie) would think are..."nice, not like that god-awful rock 'n' roll nonsense all these hooligans play today." And I really don't feel like taking the Eric Clapton "I-had-to-get-myself-hooked-on-heroin-to-really-learn-the-blues" route to learning either. I have no illusions of becoming the next SRV or Buddy Guy, I'd just like to learn how to improvise a few relatively easy riffs and short solos -- nothing killer that's going to knock everyone's socks off necessarily.
Your advice about timing and giving punch to notes is precisely what I've been giving more attention to just lately -- rather than trying to pick a bunch of no-flavor notes as fast as I can. I've been trying to incorporate bends, pull-ons and -offs,
slides, vibrato, etc. more into my improvisions. Although I really don't have much access to any effects mixers or such (I own a starter Epiphone LP Jr. and a 15-watt Marshall practice amp) -- not even a wah pedal as of yet -- I will take the advice you offered and see if that won't help to add some pepper to my sorry solos.
Hey! Who knows...maybe if all this bums me out enough, I'll
really get the blues and I'll wind up playing like Muddy Waters and Leadbelly in no time flat!...wutcha think?