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