subject: How To Turn Your Guitar Into A Tool For Musical Expression [print this page] Does your music inspire other people? Do you know how to play guitar in a way the causes other people to feel strong emotions? These are some of the main reasons that many musicians work on musical creativity. However, in order to become truly creative and create emotions in music, you must learn how musical expression works.
The fact is, most people do not know how to be truly creative in their guitar playing. The biggest problem is that they have a core misunderstanding about how musical creativity really works. If you struggle with this, then you probably know that this can become an increasingly frustrating experience over time.
Most people play guitar songs and melodies from great guitar players hoping that they will soak in the same musical expression abilities through time and experience. Although it is cool to play nice guitar riffs, and learn your favorite solos on guitar, doing this alone will not give you musical creativity. The reality is that copying other musicians will bring very few results on its own. There are essentially two things you need to understand in order to become highly creative and express emotions in music:
1. You must know exactly how the musicians you listen to manage to make you feel certain emotions while you listen to their music. This means learning why the musicians you listen to make the specific musical choices they do. Unlike copying their ideas, this will give you a foundation for truly developing your own musical creativity. Additionally, it is important to understand how musicians think when making music so that you can learn to shape your musical ideas into your own unique and expressive musical style. This means that when you make your own music, you will be able to express the same emotions as your favorite musicians but do so WITHOUT copying someone elses ideas note for note. Once you know exactly how music is used to create emotions in a listener, you have the power to turn your music into a clear communication of your ideas and feelings.
2. You must learn why certain musical elements create very predictable emotions for people, and then use this knowledge when playing music for others. The best musical artists will generally make decisions in their music based on the goal of influencing the emotions of the listeners in a specific way (whether the artist, or their audience consciously realize it themselves or not). Without this ability to intentionally express your unique emotions in music, you will be limited to merely playing the musical ideas of others.
If you want to truly master musical creativity, you will need to learn how to use music theory. Unfortunately, most guitar players have one of two misconceptions about what music theory IS. Some people stay away from theory because they believe it contains unbreakable rules that will limit their freedom of musical expression. Other guitar players think that the purpose of music theory is only to learn abstract ideas about all the nuts and bolts that make up music.
The truth is, music theory is neither of these things. Music theory is the idea of connecting ones thoughts, feelings, and emotions together through musical expression. It is the ability to explain WHY we feel emotions in music, and how we can continue to use musical creativity to recreate our emotions.
Change Your Current Understanding Of Music Theory
In order to really understand music theory, you need to first get rid of any of the current misconceptions you have about it (as described above). Once you do this, you can truly unlock your greatest potential with musical expression and creativity. The main thing to understand about music theory is that it is very useful for explaining how music makes us feel various emotions.
Here is an example to illustrate how you can use this idea. As a guitar teacher, I spend a lot of time showing my students how to increase their skills with musical creativity. One of the exercises I use is to have my guitar students write down specific emotions they want to express in their guitar music. Then, I have them write down the specific ways to accomplish these musical expressions using a variety of music theory ideas.
Using exercises such as the one above is great for helping you to understand the connection between raw music theory concepts and their application for specific expressive uses. This helps you to learn to associate musical concepts with the ideas you have in your mind. For a more detailed explanation, watch this video:
Here are the most important skills you will get from learning music theory:
1. Music theory will help you understand exactly why you feel the way you do when you listen to any given piece of music. The best part is that you will then be able to use this knowledge in your own musical expression to make much higher quality music.
2. You will no longer have to waste time trying to find the right notes when making your own music. You will be able to quickly identify the exact musical elements needed to express your emotions in music. This will put your level of musical creativity far ahead of most guitarists and musicians who simply play around on their instrument until something sounds interesting.
3. Having knowledge of how musical expression really works will help you to recall musical ideas from your head onto the guitar much easier. Once you can remember and identify the music that you have written by the musical concepts it involves (not just the notes), you will be able to create melodies off the top of your head a lot more easily.
4. When you understand how to connect emotions in music with the musical ideas that create those feelings, you will be able to make music that puts the listener into a specific emotional state (that you get to choose!)
So What Is The Next Step?
If you would like to increase your musical creativity and master musical expression, start by taking action on the following:
1. See how to use music theory for guitar in the above video.
2. Recognize that even though learning music theory is a critically important tool for learning how to be musically creative, there are many other skills you need to develop to fully express your emotions in music.
3. Understand that music theory skill is not developed by merely taking a certain number of music theory lessons, but rather by your ability to use your current knowledge to accurately bring out your emotions through your music. Use the exercise mentioned earlier in this article to see how well you can use theoretical music concepts to make music that is consistent with the ideas you want to express. If you struggle with this, this either means that your music theory skills are low or (most commonly) you do not understand how to use what you know in music theory in an actual musical context. If you play guitar while integrating together music theory and musical expression, you will notice a HUGE surge in musical creativity!
Remember, it doesnt matter if you know a lot about scales, chords, and other theoretical concepts. The most essential thing when it comes to music theory, is understanding how to consistently integrate your music knowledge with the thoughts and ideas in your mind. Once you can do this, your musical creativity will be overflowing!
