+1 here.
I've been playing a long time but I've always thought my talent was limited. I'm a slow study. I see these young people who have the real talent coming out of schools with real study behind them that can play rings around me...or maybe not in all cases... I'm not sure.... but they sure have chops and seem comfortable playing more complicated music.
For me whatever passes for talent and "fools the masses" comes from many years of obsession and perseverance. I just love to play music more than anything.
Until the last 20 years or so, my music theory was forgotten. During my guitar lesson days, I was taught to read music. What I really wanted to do was play current pop music, not Greensleeves and Camptown Races. I continued with the lessons for about a year and a half and stopped. About that time, I found some guys
through the local music dealer who were starting a band. The called me, we practiced, found a keyboardist, and some weekend work. That continued
through high school. We bought records and learned the chords to play them. Someone would transcribe the words and we put the chords under the change points.
That continued on for a couple of decades. As bands dissolved, I'd get a call from another band who wanted me to play, and here we'd go again. I was learning the notes to play the leads, but I never had that "feel" of how they were related or where to go next in a freeform solo to branch out. I was always experimenting with new stuff but afraid to move "out of the box" for fear of hitting the wrong note in front of a crowd. So, I found my self playing the same things over and over. I had learned some box patterns, but I usually sounded like people on a recording.
One day I was in Barnes and Nobles looking at the books on sale. I found a book, much like a coffee table book, that had nice slick pages and lots of color diagrams. I started looking at music theory ... note relationships, scales, root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, etc. I got immersed in reading it and took it to the counter and bought it. I read that book over and over and began to absorb what they were talking about.
I learned about scales, modal relationships, and the theory of chord construction. Eventually, that sunk in and I was suddenly able the look at some of the chords I had figured out from records and determine what they were called and why. I realized that the turn around chord in the Allman Brothers music (and the chord Hendrix played in the beginning of Foxy Lady) was an E7#9. That and the scale and modal relationships expanded my playing more than anything I'd learned in my life.
These days, I'm able to play free form and play things out of my head that sound like the jazz guitar players of my earlier days. I was never able to figure out what those guys were doing. Now, I have some insight.
Learn the scales, learn what modes are, and map the scales to the guitar neck. Do one with root on the top string and the next string and you have all the rest if you can find a starting note. Memorize the octave relationships and use them for transposition points to the same scale at a different position.
), but I still play whenever I get the urge and have a couple jam partners to mess around with when the mood strikes, but it's been a while since I've done anything serious. Now I'm just waiting for the opportunity to find a good band to play with - but alas, I'll have to wait a bit longer since I'm really trying relocate to a new state before 2012.
