Help! In a rut with my playing.

Question

I feel that I just play the same old stuff over and over again when I solo (or write, play rhythm, etc). How would you help me break out of old habits?

Answer 1

Try new things. Try learning music from a genre you don't normally play, new tunings, guitars or other gear can be great too. I like trying to throw in a weird chord to a normal chord progression. Say you play over a I-iv-IV-V progression a lot like C-Am-F-G. What if we added a V7/iv (E7) before Am? What if made F into Fm? What if we replaced G with F#?

Also, don't stop listening to music. There's always something new. Hope this could help :)

Answer 2

Further to what Chris advised (all good advice), another idea would be to explore different tunings. This forces you to listen to the notes you are playing instead of just playing patterns, it can help you come up with some different ideas.

Answer 3

When it comes to breaking out of ruts, I encourage all of my students to 1) listen to other players critically and 2) learn new vocab. I will help students learn licks, chord voicings, rhythmic ideas, etc from their favorite players/songs and then learn to process that info using the CAGED system so that it can be used in any key or tempo. Learning new vocabulary on your instrument will help you start to have more options when you go to create. The reason I sound the way I do on the guitar is through the same process: hundreds of hours of carefully listening, learning, and workshopping ideas that my favorite players played, singers sang, or writers wrote and working to make it a part of my vocabulary that I can access at any time.