A hopefully not too silly question...

RogerioFerraz

Just for the fun of it, I would like to ask forum members a hopefully not too silly question: what is usually the first thing you play when you grab a guitar? Let´s say someone hands you a guitar you've never played before or you're trying a guitar on a shop - is there a pattern you follow? The reason I ask this is because I realized that until very recently all I did was basically play the same old stupid pentatonic scales up and down the guitar neck - lol. It was only after I started taking Jim's lessons that I started to go for a more song-oriented approach in my playing. So, now, what I try to in such a situation is a play a SONG. Just curious to hear you guys take on this!
Rog

BlueCajun

Same here. I've been in the same rut for quite a while. If someone hands me a new guitar, I'll typically play an A or G barre chord, followed by a C or D barre, and then probably an A minor pentatonic SRV type lick. And I've literally been doing this for years. One thing that's helped is to branch out and try something totally new. The first of Jim's lessons that I tried was Sweet Dreams. And it absolutely got me thinking outside of the minor pentatonic box, so to speak. Plus it got me physically holding the guitar neck differently. I hadn't realized how lazy my hands had gotten from years of thumb-over blues riffs. So finding something not only in a different style of music but requiring different (even if only slightly) technique went a long way. In fact, some of the Sweet Dreams licks left my hands fatigued for little while until the right muscles got stronger.