Brent Hutto
Tele-Afflicted
I think I just had a Pinnochio moment playing my Telecaster this morning.
My usual guitar playing is pretty sedate and never ventures all that far from just playing a tune one note at a time, sticking to the melody. If I'm feeling ambitious I'll figure out the changes so I can work in the occasional bass note or double-stop (usually just another note from the triad of the harmony chord). And I'll morph tunes by playing in the minor instead of major or maybe even flatting the 7th to get a Mixolydian sound for some variety the fourth time through the melody. But it's really just melodies with minimal ornamentation playing on a clean amp with some delay and tremolo to give it depth.
Today I was trying to come up with some variations on the nursery rhyme tune London Bridge. I was playing in G (and other modes of G the G-major scale) and rearranging bits of each phrase at random. Noodling around really. Then I used my "freeze" pedal effect to stick an F#b5b7 chord as a drone underneath. After a few minutes of that something wonderful happened.
It was what a normal guitar player would call "soloing". I mean I was really feeling it. I'd do a phrase of the actual tune, then maybe just repeat three notes of it several times moving down a third each time, a few times it was a little riff that had nothing to do with London Bridge but it sounded so sweet over the half-diminished drone chord. Then I found myself way up the neck (maybe 17th, 18th frets on the top two strings) and I think I even did a little double-stop half-step bend at one point.
The final touch was all of a sudden, in a moment of inspiration, I stomped on my Timmy pedal and started digging in a little. Not sure it rose to the level of "distortion" but it got a nice grind going while I was doing the sort of emotional peak of the solo. Then I slowed it down, bypassed the Timmy, came back around to London Bridge on the bottom strings, finished with a few repetitions of a D-to-E-to-D-to-E riff (the first two notes of the tune) and ended up on a sweet little arpeggio of some extended chord or another.
Wow, that's literally the first time in all my messing about on acoustic or electric guitar that I've really gotten into it like. It was like being a Real Guitar Player for 5 minutes. I'll have to try that again one of these days.
My usual guitar playing is pretty sedate and never ventures all that far from just playing a tune one note at a time, sticking to the melody. If I'm feeling ambitious I'll figure out the changes so I can work in the occasional bass note or double-stop (usually just another note from the triad of the harmony chord). And I'll morph tunes by playing in the minor instead of major or maybe even flatting the 7th to get a Mixolydian sound for some variety the fourth time through the melody. But it's really just melodies with minimal ornamentation playing on a clean amp with some delay and tremolo to give it depth.
Today I was trying to come up with some variations on the nursery rhyme tune London Bridge. I was playing in G (and other modes of G the G-major scale) and rearranging bits of each phrase at random. Noodling around really. Then I used my "freeze" pedal effect to stick an F#b5b7 chord as a drone underneath. After a few minutes of that something wonderful happened.
It was what a normal guitar player would call "soloing". I mean I was really feeling it. I'd do a phrase of the actual tune, then maybe just repeat three notes of it several times moving down a third each time, a few times it was a little riff that had nothing to do with London Bridge but it sounded so sweet over the half-diminished drone chord. Then I found myself way up the neck (maybe 17th, 18th frets on the top two strings) and I think I even did a little double-stop half-step bend at one point.
The final touch was all of a sudden, in a moment of inspiration, I stomped on my Timmy pedal and started digging in a little. Not sure it rose to the level of "distortion" but it got a nice grind going while I was doing the sort of emotional peak of the solo. Then I slowed it down, bypassed the Timmy, came back around to London Bridge on the bottom strings, finished with a few repetitions of a D-to-E-to-D-to-E riff (the first two notes of the tune) and ended up on a sweet little arpeggio of some extended chord or another.
Wow, that's literally the first time in all my messing about on acoustic or electric guitar that I've really gotten into it like. It was like being a Real Guitar Player for 5 minutes. I'll have to try that again one of these days.
