Over-reliance on techniques

[JD01]

Was thinking about something this morning when I was playing my guitar.

When I write and record songs I over-rely on palm muted chords when I record. I do it all the fucking time and I'm really picky about them being perfectly in time when I record. (palm muting sounds shit to me when the timing is wayward)

Thing is, when I'm just playing for the sake of it, I almost never palm mute and don't really know why I end up doing it on pretty much all of my songs.
Must be something to do with it being easy to make it sound good in a recording when there's hard panned double-tracked palm muted guitars.

I think what I'm saying is, that I over rely on it 'cos its easy, when its not necessarily what I want to be doing.
I think I'm going to set myself a personal challenge to not use any palm muting at all in songs for a while and see what that gets me.

Do any of you find that you over-rely on shit 'cos its what you know and what you can do when its not necessarily what you want to do?

I think I'm having a philosophical tuesday after being ill for fuck knows how long.

[Greg_L]

I don't think I over-rely on anything. I just do what I can do and stay with what I can do well. I'd rather do very good in a narrow scope than mediocre over a wider scope.

[JD01]

I don't think I over-rely on anything. I just do what I can do and stay with what I can do well. I'd rather do very good in a narrow scope than mediocre over a wider scope.

If what you're good at is what you want to be doing then that's great.

Been thinking on it more for the last hour or so... I think its 'cos of the sound.
I have a clear idea in my head what sound I'm after with the palm muting so I've chased the tone down and got something that I know I can work with.

The the looser more open chords and picking that I often play I don't have a clear idea of what sound I'm after and can't imagine how I want it to sound in a mix... so I just don't do it.

[Lt. Bob]

The the looser more open chords and picking that I often play I don't have a clear idea of what sound I'm after and can't imagine how I want it to sound in a mix... so I just don't do it.

which is why you should do it.
One: you'll learn and grow and
two: You'll record stuff that'll be a surprise and the best creativity is the stuff you don't see coming.

IMO I feel everyone gets too persnickety about their own recordings.
Nothing any of us do is really for anything other than fun .... none of us are gonna get discovered .... there's no hoards of fans waiting for our next release ready to spend millions on us .... it's just for jollies.
So let loose ..... do whatever.

That's why my recording process is so different than ya'lls ..... a few takes .....something's acceptable ..... good enough for me.
Perfection is that last thing I'm after.

I just wanna have fu-un .... oh Steve just wants to have fu-un!

[Greg_L]

That's why my recording process is so different than ya'lls ..... a few takes .....something's acceptable ..... good enough for me.

Lol please. I write, track, mix, and finish a whole song in one afternoon.

[Lt. Bob]

That's why my recording process is so different than ya'lls ..... a few takes .....something's acceptable ..... good enough for me.

Lol please. I write, track, mix, and finish a whole song in one afternoon.

yeah but you're good.

[WhiskeyJack]

Thats Deep JD. Maybe take it a bit easy on the cold medications.

Not to compound your palm muting quandary but when i started recording i found that palm muting was never just a palm mute anymore. Where you mute on the strings, how hard you mute on the strings, the angle of your pick, all down stroke mute or chuggy up and down mutes. All produced different sounds and textures. Sometimes variance of what you know and are comfortable with can surprise and inspire you.

As for myself, years and years ago, this kid in our local punk scene (who is unironically a music teacher at this current date) told me i over use a certain note pattern in all of my solos that really show cased how little i knew about music theory. now this was when he was maybe 16 or 17 and i was in my mid 20's. I won't say it hurt my feelings but it definitely made me feel something lol. On the one hand it made me want to be a better player but on the other i really didn't give a fuck because i was comfortable playing what i knew well enough to always have people want us playing shows.

I never asked his band to open for us ever again after that. I hadn't learned how to take the high road back then.

I guess the moral of the story is if you have a comfort zone that works for you, stay in it. It may be your defining thing that people associate with you as being an artist? trying new things is also never a bad thing either so just try it on and see what you can do. Safe to say that may be why some artists or bands have very different sounding albums come out and drives fans mental sometimes.

[JD01]

Thats Deep JD. Maybe take it a bit easy on the cold medications.

LOL - I was just playing earlier and thinking to myself "why don't I ever record shit like this?"

Feel so much better today - I genuninely thought I was dying of Corona yesterday.

[Lt. Bob]

hmmmm ..... interesting subject..
I think it has a lot to do with ones' intentions with their music.

If you're recording with the intention of other people hearing it then you're gonna be a lot more perfectionist.
And if you're being a perfectionist you're gonna stick with the things you do best because they're the easiest to do close to perfectly.
Since we're often a little nervous/self-conscious about what others think every tiny error gets magnified in our minds and so we try to eliminate them which leads to playing the same things we've perfected.

If you record just for yourself then prolly you're gonna be more reckless ..... more relaxed about trying something you're not as comfortable with.

Me ..... for me it has always been about the doing of it ....... the act of playing .... the moment in time as it happens.
What am I going to do next?
I often have little idea until I do it.
That's why I love live playing ...... it's all about the doing of it .... actually coming up with something right then and there ... no mulligans, no 2nd take ..... either it's good or it's not and either way it goes in the air and is gone forever.

So I approach recording much the same way.
I enjoy mixing the most and since I have no automation, there's a lot of slider grabbing going on so when you get a good mix it's almost a performance of a sort.
And every mix is a bit different.

So I think there's a lot of things that go into how safe you play it when recording.

[Greg_L]

Lol please. I write, track, mix, and finish a whole song in one afternoon.

yeah but you're good.

Lol no. I just do it.

[Armistice]

I've never even thought about whether I palm mute or not.

I don't play with as much gain as you guys so I probably don't do it much, but I'm sure I do it some times.

I think challenging yourself to do something different is good - might open up whole new areas of creativity for you. Or it might not. No loss in trying.

I probably have an over-reliance on the chord A/C# - it pops up in so much of what I do - it's sort of unusual in the context I use it in but I use it so much it's become usual.

That and adding a 9th to a straight root position A. I blame Steely Dan for that one - they used to call it the mu major chord. I do it automatically and then have to tell myself not to as a straight A sounds better, most times.

[rayc]

Everything I do is in the oh well, that'll do range.
My biggest failing is adding to many guitar parts.
When Greg plays rhythm guitar on one of my songs it's just L + R & maybe a separate lead - effective and done quickly. If I wrangled a singer then it may be done in a week.
If I'm playing the rhythm parts it's option A, option B, option bring them all in at different times etc.
BUT it's also fun to experiment.

[JD01]

That major mu chord is tricky to play. But I've come up with a cool voicing of it.
Root A at 5th fret of the E
C# at 4th fret of the A
Mute the D
B on the 4th fret of the G
E on the 5th fret of the B.
Mute the top E.

[JD01]

Lol. I just spotted the obvious voicing.

[JD01]

If you record just for yourself then prolly you're gonna be more reckless

Weird - I do just record for myself... but I'm also a bit of a perfectionist. I think its just 'cos I want to learn how to record well.

Over time I've come to think that the most important thing when recording is a good performance and recording a lot has made my playing so much tighter. I used to hate re-tracking stuff 'cos I found it time consuming - I find it the easiest way of sorting something out now.

[Armistice]

Lol. I just spotted the obvious voicing.

I was talking about two different chords in that post.

The A/C# is just a root position A with C# on the A string, 4th fret, instead of the A.

The mu major is an added ninth via the 4th fret on the G string, a B, again using a root position A chord.

[JD01]

Lol. I just spotted the obvious voicing.

I was talking about two different chords in that post.

The A/C# is just a root position A with C# on the A string, 4th fret, instead of the A.

The mu major is an added ninth via the 4th fret on the G string, a B, again using a root position A chord.

Yeah, that was what I realised was the obvious voicing... I had ended up trying to think of something off the 5th fret of the E string.

[Armistice]

I was talking about two different chords in that post.

The A/C# is just a root position A with C# on the A string, 4th fret, instead of the A.

The mu major is an added ninth via the 4th fret on the G string, a B, again using a root position A chord.

Yeah, that was what I realised was the obvious voicing... I had ended up trying to think of something off the 5th fret of the E string.

Try A - Bm - C - A/C# - D as a sequence...

[WhiskeyJack]

nerds

[Lt. Bob]

why wouldn't you just play root position A with an open B string ..... a voicing I use constantly and very often instead of play a IV chord in a progression