Ever feel like you're losing your touch?

Alex-B-Broadway

Some days I can pick up a guitar and run through a few songs and/or solo's without any problems, maybe some Hendrix, Sabbath, The Doors, whatever pops into my head. It's not exactly effortless, but it's not impossibly hard either. Other days I pick up a guitar and feel like a total amateur. ??? Is it just me or does this happen to anyone else?

AlanRatcliffe

I think everyone goes through that. I certainly do. ?

Nitebob

:yup:

PeteM

Yep... and it's not in the fingers, it's in the head.

Jayhell

Ah, but this is still the beginning, young caterpillar. One day those things will be effortless and new more complicated things will become those things you noodle on. The sad thing is, the better you get the feeling doesn't go away. Cherish the days you rock and keep them in mind on the days you don't.

Bob-Dubery

I think the best players (whoever you think they are) all go through this. They can't just pick up a guitar any time and rip their way through anything in their repertoire. I've seen the guy that, for me is the best. In 2007 I saw him with his band. I have every one of this guy's CDs (it's getting to be a sizeable stack by now) . I know his repertoire. He's had a long, productive career, with critical plaudits up the wazoo and almost universal acclaim from his peers. His band have been playing with him for years and they are all top players. And the first verse of the first song they foul up - they kept on going, but if you knew the material you knew they'd missed the chorus and that they'd gone round again once more and got it right the second time, and you could see the guilty little grins on their faces as they realised what had happened.

These guys have a fine system in the touring party. So much for a feeding back microphone, so much for a missed lighting cue, so many dollars for a bum note. OK... it's all in good spirit, and it goes into a kitty and they spend the money on a slap up meal after the last show of the tour. These are musicians and techs with 30, 40 years of live and studio behind them (indeed it may have stretched to 50 on the part of the bass player I saw in action that night). And every tour there's money in the kitty at the end.

It's never easy all the time, even for the best guys in the business.

Two things I've figured out over the years.
1) Those top guys are playing at a different level from the likes of me, and they make mistakes at a different level and they cope with mistakes and off nights better than I would (Tony Cox says that if he makes a mistake he deliberately repeats it so that people will think it wasn't a mistake - which is making mistakes on a very different level). So their idea of an error and mine are pretty different, but they're making them all the same.
2) You notice your mistakes more than anybody else does.

Chabenda

Amen to everything said in these replies! It's the sucking so often that makes those good times all the more memorable, inspirational and satisfying! As EVH said "You have to eat sh*t before you learn to appreciate a steak", or something on those lines!

Beeg

I feel the same way some days. You are not alone Alex.

Psean

Yip. I find this happens fairly regularly.
And Nice post Bob - good to hear these things

evolucian

Alex B Broadway wrote: Some days I can pick up a guitar and run through a few songs and/or solo's without any problems, maybe some Hendrix, Sabbath, The Doors, whatever pops into my head. It's not exactly effortless, but it's not impossibly hard either. Other days I pick up a guitar and feel like a total amateur. ??? Is it just me or does this happen to anyone else?

Hehe, this happens to pretty much everyone. Even Jeff Beck.. some nights he has it, others its a wasted gig. I personally wouldn't mind watching one of those wasted gigs as watching Tal would be my star light for the night then. And come on, its Jeff ?

One can sometimes relate it to biorhythms, though I seem to have lost that book which had that particular thing in. You can map when you peak and when you crash... but in the end, you always peak again. So don't worry bout it, next time you'll pull off some King Crimson/Dixie Dregs without breaking a sweat.

charleshaupt

Times i struggled was when i wasn,t prepared... just keep going..

Alex-B-Broadway

X-rated Bob wrote: It's never easy all the time, even for the best guys in the business.

Two things I've figured out over the years.
1) Those top guys are playing at a different level from the likes of me, and they make mistakes at a different level and they cope with mistakes and off nights better than I would (Tony Cox says that if he makes a mistake he deliberately repeats it so that people will think it wasn't a mistake - which is making mistakes on a very different level). So their idea of an error and mine are pretty different, but they're making them all the same.
2) You notice your mistakes more than anybody else does.

Thanks for the post. The most helpful advice I've gotten as far as live mistakes go was this: If you make a mistake, go on playing and work it into the song somehow. Or if it's that obvious that it was a mistake, go on anyway. Most of the time crowds don't go around pointing out mistakes (unless, of course, you go "oops, sorry about that..." which by now I've learned not to do), thankfully. With my second gig I made a lot of minor mistakes that I managed to cover up with sudden instrumental parts. :?

I'm planning a little bit of a gear cleanup too. I have a better idea of where I want to go gear wise. Some guitars just play perfectly to me while others don't quite feel as "right" as they used to. Maybe now I can just tell the difference between a really solid guitar that I can gig with and the guitars I keep at home for fooling around with that I'll always "get looked at a little later".

Bob-Dubery

Alex B Broadway wrote: Thanks for the post. The most helpful advice I've gotten as far as live mistakes go was this: If you make a mistake, go on playing and work it into the song somehow. Or if it's that obvious that it was a mistake, go on anyway. Most of the time crowds don't go around pointing out mistakes (unless, of course, you go "oops, sorry about that..." which by now I've learned not to do), thankfully.

Exactly. There's been times when I made a blaps in front of an audience and to me it was a glaring, massive mistake and the only reason they noticed it was because I pulled a face.

If they hadn't noticed, I would still have known and I'd still have had to go home and dwell on the enormity of it though. So there's a mental side to this somewhere.

Squonk

@ Alex

I am sure most of us experience this every now and then.

It goes beyond making mistakes while playing live which is almost another topic?

Last night I pulled out and dusted off my electric guitar and tried to get a blues thing going and the thing was happening, I was David Gilmour for an hour!
Possibly I was in a more positive mood and all the planets were lined up, so the whole universe was balanced just right.

But the previous night I played for about 20 minutes, I was practicing strumming (amazing how Fingerstyle kills this) and I felt like an absolute beginner hence my post about being stuck in a rut.

Still stuck in a rut, but have plans to move to the next rut