I loved this! Jake, your comment about limiting yourself when you’re practicing is spot on. When I was getting my degree in composition I ran into a piece that my instructor had assigned to me - he wanted me to compose a piece in the style of blah blah blah and I hit a roadblock. I just froze like I didn’t know what to do and his advice at the time seems so antithetical. He told me exactly what you said to do. He said limit yourself. And I love the way you said. You said “put yourself in a box“. That is what I tell my students all the time. I currently have two adult students and they are learning how to play solos. They know the caged system they know the pentatonic scale and they know the minor scales and they know their major scales. They were stumbling as they were trying to solo because they were trying to think too much about all the options that were available to them. So I put them in a box. I said the G form pentatonic scale - you only get to use the A, D and G string in that shape. Then I started the track that we were soloing to, and I wish you could see the look on their face when all of a sudden they were playing licks and melodic phrases that were gorgeous to listen to. If nobody gets any other advice out of this lesson, Jake’s statement “put yourself in a box“ is worth the price of admission. Well done guys. There’s a reason you two are my heroes.
Mr G
New lesson on harmony and double stops
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