how it feels to improvise fingerstyle guitar

 i'm going to write about what it feels like to improvise fingerstyle guitar pieces. I've been thinking a lot about this. I hardly know any songs. any songs like at all, after playing guitar for a long time. What I get from the instrument is less the end product and more the sort of stimulation creation is. I still like making pretty stuff and impressing my friends, but the reason in an empty room i am usually prompted to pick up the guitar is it clears my head, the same way running did

 i'm old enough that my knees are too bad to run like i used to lol

 but yeah I realize i think about this a lot more than other people, just in conversation with other musicians, and I want to talk about it, because i feel like it's interesting. I am by no means the best or the only improviser and i'm sure there are a variety of approaches.

ok so i can launch into a sort of improvised song right away

but i usually resort to a very comfortable phrasing, something familiar

before that even actually i tune

and that tuning builds a sort of mood based ambiance for me, lets me sit in a moment, get in the right headspace

 that's one of the things about improvising that i really like. there's no room for illusion in there

the seconds between notes is really not a lot of time and i find myself shortening my thoughts into what almost feel like bursts of shorthand, like a twin language for your instrument and conscious thought. especially fingerstyle i wouldn't even have time to say the notes out loud

this actually reminds me of a machine learning model a little bit, a bridge between two states that's nebulous and huge and impossible to control directly, you have to manicure it

 it's interesting because you cultivate mindstates. If I'm bored i play boring things, if I'm on edge i play faster, more volatile jumps in intervals, stuff like that is obvious, but i'll mold myself to moments. like "oh I'm playing a lot of harmony i need dissonance" is the sort of top level thought i have

 and then that translates into a sort of state i can't tabulate or easily express before becoming physical impulse and noise

i feel like that state is something so human and affirming to feel in yourself, to know that by default this is how we are, ok that's a little woo woo but i mean it

at some points i lose conscious experience lol

like i'll come to like unable to remember if i liked what i just played

it never happens when i record though

that blinking red button puts me in weird headstates. I've always felt i play best for myself

which sucks lol

it's fun to be impressive

but it's lowkey tortured artist core so whatever

 but yeah like being aware of that mindstate, the one recording sets me in, is something i've been trying to overcome

and it leads me to think a lot about process because I can't control that feeling but i can control the environment etc

therapy core lol

I'm realizing i've departed from the original point, it's so hard to describe improvising

learn an instrument maybe idk, or find someone who wrote something else idk idk sorry

 

stop sending me hate mail over going electric!

 

marissa anderson is really cool

she does american primitive on guitar

if you are not in the know that's just like

instrumental bluesy-folksy-fingerpick-y sorta classical guitar stuff

it inspires a lot of my playing

actually you can see me play here, although i think most people who read this know

https://bsky.app/profile/guitar-hater.bsky.social

sorry to clout shark

but yeah

she does that, and it's traditonally acoustic guitar

but she does electric and acoustic, so do some other artists

but her in particular i like

because she has made me play electric guitar for a day

after not touching one for months, like 6 months i think

I really zeroed in on acoustic for a second

and also got a really beautiful brand new taylor 212ce

well i chipped it up a little already with metal fingerpicks but you know

it's my favorite guitar

that's not interesting though

what I want to talk about is marissa anderson's tone

it's so pure

it's almost like a synth, just raw sine wave

but with the acoustics of the finger on the string

and just that purity is interesting especially since

i've been trying to seperate the guitar and some vocals

so i can process my god awful singing

and I think there's something interesting in the idea

of like a shoegaze fingerstyle

anyways

the raw sine nature of her tone, it's so unvarnished

like so fucking raw it feels like the way you can hear the wood of those old acoustics in really old blues recordings where it's all high end

but it's a different sort of material so the rawness is very different, the low end is so interesting

and the sustain is wonderful, as well as the ability to apply compression

but just the way you don't have to strike as hard to play as loud

it lets my playing become looser, and i appreciate that

i guess this was half about switching to electric from acoustic, that's right folks I'm going electric, well switch is a very permanent word, i'm just interested in electric again

everyone is up in arms!!

turn me up in the headphones

I'd love to have access to a recording studio in a way

that was like it was in my house.

but i also find myself disliking albums that have a "studio sound"

clean, eq'd well, everything under control, or tastefully askew

to me it feels like it's floating in a void,

there's less room noise, hiss, character in general,

and the studio itself is a sort of very "serious" environment

which I think discourages a lot of fun and exciting things but

also if I think about it maybe some people are too fun,

and maybe need to be reigned in,

you know what i mean

but yeah I think of elliott smith in particular. I find that I was drawn to his music initially because he drew character out his lo fi aesthetic in a way that feels impossible with a studio and larger budget, i still like his later albums but they are in a different league from roman candle, the s/t, and either/or to me

studio's goals are to standardize sound in the same way music theory does

and in the same way "music theory" evokes the "western cannon"

and implies an aesthetic viewpoint so does the use and construction of a studio

not that you can't make a good album in a studio

I think this is one variable among many in the making of an album

but soundproofing, eq setups, even the way knobs and controls divide and segment sound

these all have aesthetic viewpoints, i won't lay out all three

but take soundproofing. room noise is a choice

sometimes intentionally pursued but the idea that recordings should only reverberate in certain ways

and that some of those ways are more "the default"

than others

i think that illustrates it

and honestly it just strips shit of soul

of the quirks that make up your room and life

other stuff too, more intangible

but I've been thinking of stuff that is "too studio sounding" to me as floating in a void

there are ways to bridge that void and add soul

but by default the studio puts you in an aesthetic vacuum

where you're making emotional choices

with cold calculations if that makes sense

and it just completely unmoors it from your humanity

a la, the void

anyways stan elliott smith

are video games art?

 

drill music.....

I really fw new york drill recently

something about the way the improvised vocals

interface with the hastily constructed beats

and the way those beats stagger

although haste implies there's not some sort of intentionality

like is jazz hasty when it's improvised etc

but yeah these producers they throw shit together in like two seconds

like ok yeah here you go

I saw a guy on youtube

he was playing piano on like 4x tempo and slowing it down

so he could "speedrun a beat"

which kinda corny but still lol

but yeah I view the instrumentals as improvised in a lot of ways

they're very of a moment at the very least

and the lyricists often just go line by line saying the first thing that comes into their head

"punching in"

i learned about it from the new york times lol,

that it was a sort of informalized industry standard

for contemporary rap vocals

because you can really hear the difference

there's more emotion, stuff is raw, you get rough edges

but those rough edges let you see that like the lyricist is about shit

like when you rehearse saying I shot a guy and I have no remorse

you can probably get pretty good

but when that's the first thing on your mind and you yell it

it's harder to be like "that person is not sincere about having no remorse"

but that's less what I'm interested in

people, especially critics zero in on the lyrics of drill

which is a very college educated literary way to extract value and meaning from the medium

and honestly i'm tired of trying to construct these very concrete understanding of why drill is valuable or why drill is "actually music", I have seen such a small number of written pieces about drill and adjacent music that i actually enjoy that i was nervous about taking on this one at all

but,

what I want to talk about is this call and response quality between the vocalist

and the beat

there's not a strict or formal call and response, but I'm trying to illustrate

the way that these emotion first improvisational constructs interacting

creates cascading rhythmic complexities that draw me to the medium

the lyricist is a sort of secondary beat, being hastily constructed on top of the initial work, almost as fast as some of these beats are made themselves

a sort of singular long leading call followed by a longer response

this thought has been especially present as i have been listening to a lot of "new york drill" which is just a very sort of irregular rhythm. there's often a very slow, steady beat. a super deep kick. sub bass going all over the place on top of that, and then syncopated hi hats that snap and roll like gunfire. There's so much to keep track of here if you're just saying the first thing on your head that you're resorting to your subconscious, you have to be, the way an improviser does. These rappers, vocalists, etc, they come on the beat and you can hear stutters with hi hat rolls that carry into measures where the rolls fall out, it gives it all this very staggering sensation ultimately moored in this very gritty and dark kick

rooting it in that kick i think illustrates a sort of pulsing and extremely violent but often quiet rhythm of life in the drug game described. you have all the day to day shit and then an outburst of sudden and deep violence, the sub kick. not that I'm some expert in this shit, but matching the lyrical content to the beat creates an emotional resonance that i really enjoy

so yeah, that just happened, I'm gonna recommend some songs:

22gz - suburban, pt. 2

pop smoke - flexin'

CHII WVTZ - Go Crazy

pop smoke - MPR

kay flock - is ya ready

hello,

     hello. this is going to be a music blog. well. it's a word document on my computer. it may one day, etc, isn't this charming. I'm not going to not edit these but I'm going to use it as a way to experiment with an informal kind of "online" voice that's not packaged as literary you know what i mean, for example I wanted to say "ykwim" and that is what i would say if i was talking to a friend but i didn't because i wanted to put on airs or maybe just make the language accessible for a broad commercial audience. the point is. i'm going to experiment with writing as well as try to articulate shit about music because i love to articulate shit about music. welcome. welcome to your new family. me. and my music blog. I will be posting about music on here