Be Creative !

by Eric Vandenberg

Introduction

OK, so we had a huge bunch of licks so far. Licks played with all alternate picking, licks based on the stretch
pentatonic, legato stuff...

Now, here is the big question: How to use that stuff?!?

Frankly, one of my biggest problems when I started out, or when I made the step from a beginner to an
intermediate player, getting into soloing a bit more, was that my guitar solos usually were compilations of all the
licks I worked on.

And they sounded like it too. Just me playing as fast as possible (I was lucky if I was in time with the backing),
playing like "Lick A-Lick B-Tapping Lick C".

Or, the other extreme: Slow, uninspired solos which sounded as if I was just playing SOMETHING just to have a
solo. I wasn't able to merge melodic stuff (if I ever came up with a nice melody) and the licks I had been working
on.

Now, that was simply frustrating. It either sounded uninspired, or it wasn't good technically. I had to get out of
that rut, out of those cliches.

Sure, attending the GIT a bit later sure helped me, cuz I learned so much, heard so much music there, and played
pretty much 24/7, which was quite inspiring.

But even before that, I found different ways, solutions and concepts that helped me to get out of the rut and move
a bit more into the direction I was heading to as a soloist.

Of course you know by now that I am mainly a rock-guitarist, but in the studio and as a "hired gun" I played other
styles too, and since I am talking about general approaches here, this article applies to players from every style,
at least in my opinion...

Some ways to avoid ruts, or to get out of them...

Listening

Now this seems to be very very obvious. But let's take a closer look here. One of my finest comparison is to
compare learning how to play, developing as a player to learning how to speak when you are a child.

First, you hear people communicate by speaking, which makes you wanna learn it. You usually start out by
copying what you hear, just trying to make a few sounds that sound like the words you hear around you all day
long. Easy, frequently used words, such as "Daddy" etc.

Now, when you start out and pick up the guitar for the very first time, you try to get a sound of it, you have to get
used to the mechanics, and you try to i.e. play something you heard on one of your CDs, or a melody you're very
familiar with.

If the people around you use certain words a lot, or if there are not a lot of different people coming for a visit,
there's a limit to the vocabulary that "surrounds" you. If you i.e. meet someone who uses a lot of long,
complicated words, or simply words your parents don't use as much, they seem to be strange at first.

If you listen to a certain style of music exclusively, like let's say blues, you tend to know the phrases, chord
progressions and melodies quite well. If you happen to listen to your first fusion- or even free jazz album, it might
sound very strange to you, like new words and phrases you hadn't heard before.

Once you learn the words, you learn how to phrase them differently, you learn how to use them in combination
with timbre, facial and body expressions etc.

Once you get familiar with your first licks, melodies and chords, you play them often, and you learn how to play
them different ways, developing some phrasing... using dynamics, slurs, vibrato etc.
See a tendency here? Well, I could go on, but I think I brought the point across, and I guess you're bored out of
your mind by now, so I better continue...

Listening

Now, LISTENING is very essential. Cuz the way you perceive music, the things you hear in your mind when you
compose or improvise, will be based on whatever you have been listening to.

Meaning that, if you i.e. listened to blues records exclusively (and this is exaggerated, cuz we listen to way more
music than we are aware of... in the radio, on TV... ), you'll most likely feel natural with the phrasing,
progressions and melodies used in that style of music.

It's up to your imagination then to make something out of it. Either by sticking to what you have heard, kinda
copying it, or by taking it a step further, adding other things to create something different.

You don't have to analyze what's going on in the music, you just are shaped by hearing it.

Now, the reason why I talk about this as much is not the good ol' "be open-minded, listen to different styles of
music too" or whatever.

No, what I mean is:

If you listen to a song or just one solo or melody, and you like it, figure out WHY you like it. Take it apart. Or
transcribe and learn it. Let that inspire you. Try to come up with something new, based on that. At first it might
sound like a copy, but try to explore it further to come up with something which is loosely based on that element
you liked... the texture, timbre or basic idea of it.

If you i.e. like the style of Zakk Wylde (I do!!!), and you like the way he sounds, you could analyze his playing and
hear that he is using an aggressive sound, lots of wild bendings, hard pickings and pinch harmonics.

Now experiment with that and try to emulate the sound you hear when you listen to Zakk. The texture is wild,
aggressive playing... I took some of that texture, it sure is a part of my style these days. I occasionally play
something that to me has the "Zakk Wylde"-texture, and most of the time, people are not like "Dude, that's a riff
by Zakk" or "Hey, you're ripping off Wylde!", because I am not copying a certain lick or his style, I try to emulate
his approach, his attitude, the general idea, the texture...

Does this make sense? I sure hope it does. It's kinda tough to explain.

The second thing is:

Listen to other instruments

The guitar is such an expressive instrument, with so many options... you can create bunches of different sounds,
either by the gear you use, or by the way you play. Jon Finn just gave us a great example... the "Damper Pedal
Guitar".

Playing with dynamics, picking hard or soft could be compared to playing a piano, where you can alter the volume
of a note by hitting the key rather hard or rather softly.

Or if you play chords by picking each string at the same time with your fingers. (Fret a chord with your left hand,
and instead of strumming it, pick all the fretted strings with one finger per string ). It's the "piano texture".

You can play huge intervals, cause you have adjacent strings. You don't have to move the hand along the neck at
all to do a 2 octave jump (i.e. by playing the e's at the 12th fret on the low and then on the high E-String).
Therefore, you can play lines with huge interval leaps, which reminds me of a saxophone

You can play doublestops, bend them, fade them in with a volume knob, like Steve Morse does in "The Bash".
That, to me, sounds a lot like a pedal steel.

You can slap the strings, knock on the body of the guitar etc. Like Preston Reed does, in a rather percussive
context. The drum-texture.

And of course, with stuff like vibrato, bendings, slides and wide intervals (plus goodies such as a Wah-pedal), you
can imitate a voice...

And using these "textures" can open up new doors for you on your guitar. You can take one simple melody and
play it in bunches of different ways, using those kinda approaches.
Feel like you're caught in a rut, like your phrasing and note choice is just full of your own cliches?

Well, go and listen to a good singer. Listen to the intervals singers use (often way more than a minor or major
third etc). Listen to how they use vibrato, i.e. singing a note, then holding it, then slowly applying an increasing
vibrato.

Try to emulate those sounds on your guitar. Take one single vocal melody, plug in your guitar, maybe turn on
your gain, and try to copy all the nuances of that voice.

Now, take one of your own melodies or exercises? Are ya bored of it? Well, then try to play it with a "vocal-
timbre"... or try to play it piano-style?

Do you see? (Man, that phrase totally reminds me of "Red Dragon"... just saw the movie, and the dude keeps
showing this reporter some horrible photos and keeps saying "Do you see"... sorry... back to our regular program)
There is a plethora of phrasing-details, nuances and textures to be discovered....

And listening to a lot of music really will help you to increase your vocabulary. Try focusing on certain instruments
for a while...

Jam

Wow... jamming. Good idea, huh?

Well, I don't mean jamming as in "Find yourself a drummer and a bassist and play all your old standard licks while
jamming on "Hey Joe".

Nope. What I mean by jamming is "Put your licks and exercises into an actual musical context".

I know what I am talking about. I used to sit and work on all those cool shred-licks for hours. Then, when it came
to actual jamming with some friends, I went back to the same old standard blues licks.

I didn't apply those exercises, those new licks to my playing. And this is what I mean when I say "jamming".

Shortly after I started practicing a whole lot, I developed a certain

procedure: whenever I was "done" with sitting there, practicing some licks with a metronome, I put on a song I
liked and jammed over it, trying to incorporate those exercises, those licks I was working on, into my soloing.
Sometimes, that's tough. What you wanna try is: Try to have it sound like a natural thing. You wanna avoid
having it sound like:
"Solo-Solo-COOL LICK-Solo"

Another comparison to make clear what I mean: Imagine you're trying to increase your vocabulary. Like, you
wanna include some big words which will help you to get your point across. Now, you wanna use those new words
just as naturally as you use your basic vocabulary.

Imagine you talk to someone and you go like: "Ok, I went to this bar, and there was a really good band playing...
the crowd flipped out and it was...uhhhhmmm... PAN-DE-MONIUM" ... Know what I mean? The "big word" (I
know, it's a silly example) stands out, sounds kinda insecure. So what you wanna do is use your new, cool licks
just as naturally as you use your basic blues-licks.

That is something I always admired about my favorite players and influences... when Eddie Van Halen played a
tapping lick, it made sense and sounded just as natural and "confident" as the preceding and following licks.

I wasn't able to do it that way. I was playing a solo, and when I wanted to play my new cool lick, it always kinda
stood apart from the rest. So, I recommend to jam a lot and use those licks and exercises in context with your
improvisation.

Back then, I just put on a record by some bands I liked, like Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Allman Bros, Sabbath or
whomever.

These days, I either take a backing track (I do have some jamtracks by Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and others, and I
also do have "no lead guitar" tracks by the Eric Vandenberg Band as well), or I program some basic track on my
hardware sequencer (Yamaha QY 300)... just some basic drum pattern, a bass-line, maybe some piano-chords.

Approaching a solo / Constructing a solo

Now, this is a HUGE topic, so for now, lemme just tell you about two basic approaches to construct a solo...

1.) The "block"-approach

Now, think of your solo as a song by itself. Listen to a regular pop song. There is a structure there, i.e. Intro-
Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Break-Chorus

Now, for the listener, that is important, cause if a part reoccurs, he / she is familiar with it. He / she understands
the structure. Know what I mean?

Why don't we approach a solo like that? Take one melody or one lick or short phrase as an "A-part". Play that, and
next, play something different, at about the same length as the A-part. This is your B-part. Then, return to the A-
Part, play it again, maybe slightly differently (change the phrasing, or move it up or down an octave). Then, play
another B-part, maybe playing something completely different than the first time.

Just to give you an example for this approach, I made up a simple 8 bar-solo. Check it out:

Click here to hear the MIDI file

Bars 1 and 2 contain the "A-Part". The next 2 bars are our "B-Part". Then, in bars 5 & 6, the A-Part re-occurs, just
an octave higher. Finally, in bars 7&8, we have ANOTHER B-Part, but it's not an repetition of the first one. So it's
kinda like: "2 bars: Theme / 2 bars: free part / 2 bars: Variation on Theme / 2 bars: another free part".

How about that? With some practicing, you can even improvise that way. Sure, you can construct a solo that way,
but when you improvise, you can approach your solo that way, too. I think it's kinda cool for the listener when
there's a re-occurring part, something to grab on to.
OK, feel free to experiment with that.

Approach #2: This is what I call the "jazz approach", just a name I made up for it. Why? Cuz... one day I heard
some saxophone player in a jazz club. He was really jamming with his band, and then he did something really
awesome IMHO: He started to play the melody of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Then, he repeated it again, with
slight variation, slurring it a bit, incorporating some chromatic passing notes etc.

And every time he repeated it, he built on it, with variations, adding parts. Eventually, he had turned the melody
into something completely different, although the original melody still was "shining through".

So what did I do? Right, I went home, grabbed my guitar and did something similar. I started with a single, easy
melody and jammed on that, changing it, adding to it etc.

Then I one day listened to Steve Vai's "Passion & Warfare" album (which to this day is one of my favorite albums).
And one of my favorite tunes of his is "For The Love Of God".

And here, he did the same! He played the melody in a very simple way at first, just playing the strict notes. Then,
when repeating it, he changed his phrasing, kept adding stuff, used stuff like whammy bar-dips or octave
displacement etc.

So... how about that approach? Try it!

Record a simple chord progression or take a simple jam track (and this is something for ALL of you, whether you
like jazz, rock or whatever !!!). Then, start by making up a simple melody, and repeat it, changing it again and
again.

Try changing certain aspects of the melody. I.e., try to change the vibrato. Play the melody the first time without
applying any vibrato. The next time, add some vibrato, maybe a slight one. Then, add an extreme one.

Or, play the melody straight the first time, then play it quite staccato the next time. Use chromatic passing notes
to approach the actual notes of the melody. Or replace one or two notes with their equivalent an octave higher or
lower.

I guess you get the idea.

There sure are many, many approaches to a solo, and those were just two. So, try to remember the stuff in this
article, and make up your own approaches... experiment, jam a lot, be CREATIVE !