Guitar Practice Log – Licks Wanted

Last night I was watching Jon‘s announcement that among all 442 entries for the “Blue Noize” contest, a top 20 had been selected. Needless to say I was relieved to have not been selected, seeing how dissatisfied I was with my entry. Watching some of the selected entries two things struck me. The first is how similar melodically many of the entries I watched are (except for one, but maybe I’m biased, I dunno), maybe it’s a natural occurrence of picking a track in C minor, but maybe it’s something else, like the tempo (for a “slow” contest there are some who were serious speeders) or perhaps more likely the fact that many sound like they’re playing in a “safe” zone within the scale and don’t go much exploring outside. However the second point is where I’m getting at, there seems to be a wealth of blues licks all these folks can tap into that I’m yet to be familiar with.

That reflects itself in the way I improvise. More often than not, I feel like I’m trying to write a novel by picking letters instead of words. In other words my vocabulary is still quite poor. What would be nice would be to both increase my technical abilities and my catalogue of licks, regardless of the style (I would like to start playing heavier rock again at some point in the future). Now I do have some licks I can try to use but blues is such a versatile style that some licks don’t sound right in certain tempos and so it’s a matter not just of having a wide range of choice but being able to pick the right ingredients for that juicy tune (sorry I don’t like the word “perfect”).

I’m expecting a new book I randomly found on Amazon called “Troy Nelson Guitar Aerobics“. It’s a book which offers one lick to play per day to work on certain aspects of your playing thus offering what I was looking for above. The reviews seemed good and it was affordable, so I’ll give it a shot as something to complement my usual playing. I’ve got exercising books but they seem rather hard to tie in with any specific style / tempo and thus make them harder to get motivated to practice them, hopefully this one will be different.