Originally Posted by CFD
I am a big fan of playing by feel and it is probably the most authentic way to play.

However, I found that I was spending too much time stumbling around. It was perfectly fine playing by feel for me, when i was recording an original song. If I screwed up, I simply did it again, punched in or tried something else.

However, I always wanted to be able to play with other musicians and spontaneously kick out a solo to a jam. To do that, I needed to learn some basic "rules" or guides. This was akin to having a flashlight in a dark alley, rather than walking through it and bumping into things (at least, for me it was).

Once I did that, I was able to get musical again and use what I learned as a guide, rather than as a map.

The reason why I think modes are important, is that they are the piece that helped me to move beyond relying on the pentatonic scale. Nothing beats the pentatonic for true blues, but when you are playing to AC DC, Santana, Old time Rock and roll and the like, modes can be invaluable.

I strongly recommend learning them, although I had a very difficult time initially, getting my head around them. Worse still, I found there was no consistency in the youtube world. Modes were taught and spoken about very differently by various teachers, and it just added to my confusion and led me down some paths that were hard to unlearn.

But I am pretty confident in my ability to teach modes in a way that a guitarist would understand. Maybe I should make a video on it someday.




I used to be alot better at guitar. My first bands, i was forced into the lead singer role because usually no one else could, not that i could either at the time, but i was in front holding the guitar so it was me who had to suffer the growing pains lol.

My voice improved by doing, it got stronger and i had more confidence.

So my guitar playing was left untapped, and then when i got into writing, i found i couldnt do everything, todays home recording boom, everybody thinks they are everything. writer, singer, band, engineer, producer, agent, pr person.