I'm in a rut with my playing

[mathias]

i was in a rut a few weeks ago. listened to a shit ton of classical music, especially from different countries. classical Indian music in particular is fucking crazy, and got me out of playing similar sounding things. same with a few russian composers. basically, i think foreign music helps break you out of your normal playing style. idk maybe it's just me

There's this process where you try to draw with the image turned upside down, so that your visual processing doesn't turn it into a visual "symbol" and you just see lines, shapes, shade, etc. I wonder if listening to different music helps break your brain out of hearing chord progressions, verse-chorus-verse, discrete instruments (I tend to do this to analyze a song), etc. and lets you hear more of the tone, timing/rhythms, harmonies between instruments, and overall sound that you might not otherwise hear.

[theavondon]

Listen to some melvins.

No shit.

[CBGB]

Captain Beefheart has all the answers: http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2007/06/practice-in-front-of-bush-captain.html

[madmax1012]

i was in a rut a few weeks ago. listened to a shit ton of classical music, especially from different countries. classical Indian music in particular is fucking crazy, and got me out of playing similar sounding things. same with a few russian composers. basically, i think foreign music helps break you out of your normal playing style. idk maybe it's just me

There's this process where you try to draw with the image turned upside down, so that your visual processing doesn't turn it into a visual "symbol" and you just see lines, shapes, shade, etc. I wonder if listening to different music helps break your brain out of hearing chord progressions, verse-chorus-verse, discrete instruments (I tend to do this to analyze a song), etc. and lets you hear more of the tone, timing/rhythms, harmonies between instruments, and overall sound that you might not otherwise hear.

i think so. i mean, listening to Sitar music nonstop broke me out of the pentatonic scale. speaking of, listen to Sitar music fucking amazing instrument


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KXk_8_8oLY[/youtube]

[eti]

Play an instrument you don't normally play.

Hook up your effects in reverse order, or in ways you'd never normally try.

[magiclawnchair]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4nAGtdkU88[/youtube]

[Wes Mantooth]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, I think I'm getting there.

My friend turned me on to a band called Gay Beast and I quite dig them

[mathias]

I found this on another guitar forum (cough cough) and thought it was appropriate for this thread:

If you drive to work, take a different route. Or better yet walk. If you like your peanut butter creamy, buy chunky. if you write on guitar, try plunking some notes on the piano. call up someone you've lost touch with. get up and hour earlier. grow a moustache. listen to chinese traditional music. cross the tracks. go buy a short you don't like and then wear it. change your level of personal hygeine. perform random acts of kindness to complete strangers. experiment with paper clips. buy a goldfish. play games with salt. seek and destroy your routines. establish new ones and then destroy them too.

[tuffteef]

sooooooo some more of my studio chronicles
i have secretly been studying latin rhythms
and we had this tight latin percussion come into the studios and lay down some hot return and call stuff
SEXY
and they dropped this bad boy
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TXFmZHnMYs[/youtube]
and a smokin version of a guaguanco
fun day

[Wes Mantooth]

All this new music is awesome, I feel like my writing is becoming more diverse but I need to improve my chops and learn some theory.

Any good literature I should check out?

[sweetbabyphil]

Maybe check out some online vids? It helps me out a lot more than reading up on stuff. Youtube is always a good source and I'd recommend TruFireTV http://truefire.com/tftv/index.html You get a month free when you sign up and there's a lot of good stuff on there. Plus, I just keep signing up with new e-mails cause I ain't paying for shit.

[snipelfritz]

sooooooo some more of my studio chronicles
i have secretly been studying latin rhythms
and we had this tight latin percussion come into the studios and lay down some hot return and call stuff
SEXY
and they dropped this bad boy
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TXFmZHnMYs[/youtube]
and a smokin version of a guaguanco
fun day

Me gusta. Me gusta mucho. I <3 Latin percussion. I also dig on Afrobeat. Listen to this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zWRjgathjA[/youtube]
He sounds so calm at the beginning then WHAM! you have a groovy musical onslaught annihilating your facial cavities. This was the first of Fela Kuti I ever heard, and needless to say I was fucking breathless, absolutely blown away.

[madmax1012]

reached a plateau recently. not really sure where to start next. idk what happened, but it kinda came out of nowhere