Building Your Arsenal: Assimilating Articulation Techniques

Hello everybody. Today's lesson is about building your own unique style as a guitar player, but it can be applied to any instrument.

You might be wondering, "What is an articulation technique?" You already know and use articulation techniques every day. Sliding, string bending and legato are some prime examples. This article isn't about how to perform those techniques; there is a wealth of information out there for that already. This article is about how to assimilate them -- that is to say, how to make them part of your own unique style.

Have you ever been jamming for an extended period of time and noticed you came up with some cool new lick out of the blue? You may have attributed this to being "in the zone," that trance-like state where you are completely focused on the music and the music just flows out of you. Unfortunately, it's not easy to find this mysterious place at will. It just kind of... happens, for most people. Let's examine this phenomenon.

Try to recall the last time you were jamming with your friends and got "into the zone." It is my personal belief that "the zone" is a sort of meditative state you inadvertently reached by concentrating on one thing for an extended period of time -- in this case, playing music. Students of Zen meditation will purposely seek this state by concentrating on counting their breaths while trying to keep their thoughts from wandering. While this state of mind is desirable, we are musicians, not monks. How do we recall this state of mind at will?

You can't. At least, not right away. Creativity takes practice, like most things. So, how do we practice tapping in to our inner creative genius at will?

After you improvise for awhile, you will eventually run out of different ideas. How long this takes will depend on how big your musical vocabulary is. Some people can improvise over a chord progression for five minutes and run out of things to say, other people can improvise over a chord progression for hours on end before hitting a brick wall. Either way, if you play long enough you will hit that wall... but what does this have to do with creating your own style?

The answer is simple; once you've hit the "wall", it means you have exhausted all of the licks and ideas your conscious mind recalls and uses regularly. In simpler terms, it means that you have run out of licks you already know how to play. If you continue to play once you've hit the wall, you are forcing yourself to come up with new ideas by adjusting or combining old ideas into new ones - a form of creative thinking known by some as synthetic creativity. Ideally you will have entered "the zone" through single-minded concentration by the time you hit that wall. If this is the case, you could come up with some new ideas outright. This is known by some as intuitive creativity and can only be reached by entering into a state of deep concentration or meditation.

Since busting through that wall is your objective in today's lesson, we will make it a little easier to get there. We will do this by limiting your improvising to a single technique, i.e. sliding. Load up a chord progression or jam track you are comfortable playing over. Start improvising using only the one technique you've chosen, whether it be sliding or string skipping or sweep arpeggios.

Use JUST that one idea the entire time and make sure you make yourself improvise for an extended period of time. This will not work if you don't get out of your comfort zone. I'd recommend going for an hour straight if you can, but even fifteen to thirty minutes will be challenging for most players. The longer you work with just that one idea, the deeper you will go and the more ideas you will come up with.

The end result of this practice method is that you will own the technique after doing this a few times. When I say you will, "own the technique," I mean that you will be comfortable using the technique in a variety of musical situations, but more importantly, that you will soon be able to speak with that technique. What I mean by, "speak," is that you will no longer be limited to using the words and phrases (i.e. licks) that you taught yourself by learning music written by other people. Instead, you will be able to come up with your own phrases depending on what it is you want to convey with your playing.

Thanks for reading, I hope this helps you on your journey. Check back soon as this will be part of an ongoing series.

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