It’s All About the Feeling!
Do you remember what first motivated you to play guitar? It was undoubtedly a feeling. Maybe a particular song or artist moved you, or maybe you loved the way the guitar looked and sounded. Later, when you started playing, you may have envisioned yourself conveying your own feelings through your music.
But playing the guitar is hard, especially in the beginning stages. The process of learning how, when, and where to place your fingers is a challenge for your brain and a workout for your fingers. It’s easy for the musicality and emotion to get lost in all that effort. If we’re not careful, we can develop the unconscious belief that everything we ever play will be held together by struggle.
Great performances are not always musically complicated, though. If you analyze your favorite songs, you will probably discover that most, if not all of them are quite simple. What makes them great is not just the way the melodies, chords and lyrics are constructed and assembled, but also the way the songs are performed.
That’s good news! It means that once you’ve memorized three or four chords and can change them smoothly, you have the potential to perform with the same quality that you love in the music you listen to. The way to fulfill that potential is to regularly bring your awareness to musicality in your playing and then to enhance it by using specific tools.
The Tools
When seeking musicality, remember to use techniques such as vibrato, dynamics, staccato or legato. You can also experiment rhythmically in various ways, such as placing a note slightly on one side or the other of the beat.
Next, consider the flow of the phrases or musical thoughts in the song. Observe sections that feel like a question, answer, or climax and find ways to express them as such in your playing.
When you’re ready to charge your playing with pure expression, put down your guitar, close your eyes and sing the guitar part of the song you’re working on. This exercise isn’t about creating a vocal performance, it’s about externalizing the sounds in your head. Sing it like you mean it, even though you won’t have words. Just use whatever comes to you as a representation of the sound you hear. You might find yourself singing nonsense lyrics such as daaa-da, la-di-dum, dum-chck, or chck-a chck-a, for example. (I recommend doing this when you’re alone, for obvious reasons!) Then, pick up your guitar and play what you sang.
Everything You Play!
Playing with feeling doesn’t need to be limited to song playing. Practice musicality and expression every time you pick up your guitar. Make your finger exercises, scales, and arpeggios beautiful. And don’t forget to be musical when you practice sight reading. Before long, you’ll find that you’re playing all of your songs naturally from the heart, without a thought of tips or tools.
