Originally Posted by
Tom Wright
When learning, whether a passage in a tune or a technique alone, you of course pay attention to the aspects you are working on. This could be technical or timing/phrasing. The eventual goal is to able to forget details of making sounds and pay attention to making music. In a band, this means listening to the others, feeling the way the song is going, etc. It means playing to help deliver the feeling, not the notes alone.
A jazz example is the convention of starting your solo by using the last few notes your other band member just played. This gives a new idea you can use to comment on and launch your solo. But you need to be really solid in your playing, your available riffs, and the tune itself to do this.
No one is mindless when playing, but the best are “thinking” about what everyone is doing, including the audience. More accurately, those players are not thinking, but paying attention to the feel, the groove, the audience’s reactions, and so on.
Back to practicing—as you get better at a technique or a tune you ate able to forget some things that are reliable, and pay attention to further refinements. After being reliable in knowing which note comes next you work the speed upwards (if needed). Then you try for a generally pleasing tone, which means paying attention to picking and left hand accuracy. Then you start noticing timing issues, maybe, checking with a metronome to be sure you don’t drag the hard spots or rush the easy ones. Then you practice singing while playing. Personally, I came last to actually practicing improvising, playing multiple choruses of a tune with all new ideas if possible. I needed a solid base of technique and a decent vocabulary of melody bits and riffs, along with a good collection of chord shapes for a specific tune.
Although it is easier on a 10-string or guitar to play the melody, chords, and bass lines, any solo version you can render means you know the whole song, which is essential, in my book, for delivering the song.
So what should be in your mind is simply the thing you ate working to achieve. If practicing, that thing is technical. If performing, that thing is the feel.
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