Foreign Accents
One
day while suffering a horrible case of melodic writer's block I realized
the problem I was facing. While trying to create new and interesting lines
and sequences, I noticed that I was simply rewriting all the licks I ever
played or was taught. The strongest trait all these licks had in common?
They all had the strongest accent on beat one. Playing with a metronome
for years had subconsciously trained me to focus everything on the down
beat of beat one- and as a result made some ideas very predictable and stagnant.
The solution? Rather than throwing out all the ideas I've played over the
years- I decided to mutate them just a smidge. In the example below, I have
a simple alternate picking lick. As the lick continues, beat one is displaced
to every note in the lick. The sequence order doesn't change; it simply
starts and ends in different areas. Something as easy as shifting the accent
to a different beat changes the whole flow of the lick. - J