What I learned by playing guitar this year: Feeling vs. Thinking

It's been 3 weeks since my gig at Big Daddy's but it feels like it was several months ago. Life has been moving at a much slower pace since then. Looking back, I feel very fortunate I was able to get the opportunity to play live at a bar after just 2 years of playing a guitar. I feel very grateful I had the chance to be creative and compose some of the guitar solo's myself. I feel like I've checked off a life goal yet there's still so much more to learn.

Part of the reason life is moving at a much slower pace now is I have much more time on my hands now that I'm not playing in a band. The entire band project took three months and I remember the frenzy of having to manage 50-60 hrs a week of work, 15-20 hrs of guitar playing a week, 5-10 hours a week of YPIN work, and the wild social life. I was getting an average five hours of sleep a night for over three months. I remember days when I'd come home from work at 10pm, play guitar till 4AM, then be back at work by 8AM.

The most important thing I learned from this experience was Feeling vs. Thinking.

Fast rewind to May 2009. I was in the EMP "Staying Alive" program where in six weeks, ten people with varying musical abilities got together in a band and created a ten song set for a performance at EMP to family & friends. We called the band Genre Whore. Although my competency level was way below where I am at today, it was a great experience. I got to play with and learn from some amazing musicians. At our last band practice, I asked our lead guitarist Tim (a phenomenal guitarist!) if he had any advice for me to help me take my guitar playing to the next level. He said "I think you sound good. But you count a lot. As you play more, you'll learn to start feeling the music and knowing what goes where by feeling it rather than counting it".

At the time, the concept seemed alien to me. I always knew to count the beat in my head to know what to play where (and even then I would be off the beat!). Also, I've got an engineering background. The only way my brain knew to make decisions was by thinking. Little did I know what impact that advice was going to make to my guitar playing.


When I started playing with Speedbird 49 in August for our gig in November, my guitar playing was still pretty close to where I was at during the EMP project. I couldn't do the complex guitar solo's I aspired to do but I was assigned the lead guitarist role, primarily because I was the only one available. One of our first songs was "Turn The Page" and I was really excited as it is one of my all time favourite songs. The first weekend, I spent over 20 hours working on just that solo. I got to a point where I had something mediocre for the next practice.

About a month went by and we were making slow progress with our songs. I was trying to learn every solo note for note from the tabs. However, our band practice on August 23rd was an inflection point for my guitar playing. I was really getting into the music that day for some reason. And right about the point when I was to do a solo, something weird happened. I was deep into the music, I stopped thinking for a few moments and my fingers played a solo faster than anything I've ever played and different from anything I've ever practiced. It sounded and felt pretty good. I had no idea where it came from. It was the first time I ever improv'd a solo. And as we played more songs, I kept trying to do that. I'd close my eyes, feel the beat, and just let go. And somehow my subconscious mind would take over and play something that sounded alright.

I started having a lot of fun with my new learned style of playing. Over the next month, I improv'd several of my solo's and in the process I discovered new licks. It opened frontiers, boundaries, and horizons. However, it was inconsistent. Sometimes it would sound good, other times it would sound horrible. I had a general idea of how I wanted the solos to sound so they wouldn't be completely different each time I played. But that's when I decided to figure exactly how I wanted the solo's to sound so I could practice them the same way each time. I left some solo's as is and played original and used my creativity with other solo's. The majority of the last month before the show was spent fine-tuning the solo's. Some took major re-work even a week before the show.

None of that would have been possible if I was still "thinking" and counting. It took hours of listening to the music, trying to feel the emotions that the original artists were trying to project, and then in my head trying to feel a solo that would go with it and trying it out. I took lessons with Chris Griffin, who runs Spotlight Studio and put this entire project together and setup the gig at Big Daddy's. I really resonated with his style of playing and teaching and he expanded my knowledge of scales and taught me how play my licks faster. We actually spent most of our time just talking about theory. And I started using the knowledge I gained from those lessons to make my solo's more complex and interesting.

While polishing my solos during the last two weeks before the show, I started worrying about whether I could hit each note of my solo on the beat that I wanted to. I wondered if I could hit a high note each time the drums crash. How do good guitarists do it? I started analyzing Kirk Hammett's solo's and he is on the beat every time no matter how fast he is going. I analyzed Tim's (lead guitarist from EMP) solo's and he hit the beat every time as well. I went to Jason Parker's , our instructor at EMP and an extraordinary musician, jazz performance at the UW jazz walk and observed how each musician in his quartet was on the beat, even during long solos.

It's very powerful when each note in a solo is on the beat, but I decided to make peace with the fact I won't be able to do that. When I counted and tapped my foot to hit notes on the beat, or in other words, when I was in 'thinking mode', my solo's lost their emotions or what I wanted to project through those solo's. When I played my solo's in 'feeling mode', I wander off to this other world where I can't hear, see, or feel anything except me and my guitar and what I am trying to communicate through my guitar. That's how I wanted to play live, at the expense of being off-beat.

Finally, the long-awaited big day was here. November 19th 2009 at Big Daddy's in Woodinville. My adrenaline was higher than anything I've ever experienced in my life. My heart was racing, my anxiety level was high, my blood was pumping faster than ever. I left work at 2:30pm because I couldn't concentrate. Chris recommended I make a cheat sheet with all the songs and chords and where I was planning to start my solo's. The idea was to put it on the floor on stage in case I forget, because even till the second last practice I'd start playing the wrong scale in a couple of songs. Instead, I decided to keep the following sheet of paper:

There's no feeling like being on the stage and performing. And once the show is over, you get one of the most fulfilling feelings in the world. You practice for hundreds of hours just for that one hour of playing live and just for those few minutes of fulfillment after the show, but it's worth it.

I made several mistakes throughout the show. Not hitting every note I wanted to. Not being on the beat every time. Screwing up one of the breaks that I never missed in any of the practices. My fingers were shaking till the seventh song even as I played some really fast licks in my solos.

Friends, co-workers, and former band members, who graciously took the time to come see me play had great things to say, which made me feel better. Rich did a fantastic job recording the show with his camera. I started watching the videos with a less musically-critical mind and I was surprised I was able to hit the beat over 95% of the time even though I wasn't counting or tapping my foot. I was just feeling the beat. Before every solo, I would stop playing for a couple of bars, feel the drum beat, close my eyes, wander off to that world with just me and my guitar, and somehow still be on the beat most of the time.

People were surprised I was able to get to my level of playing in just 2 years of playing and without any prior musical training or experience. Former band members and experienced musicians who've been playing for many years began to tell me I'm naturally musical. I've started taking singing lessons and my teacher says the same thing. Sometimes, I wish I had picked music up way earlier in my life. I love rock music and I love the sound of the guitar. However, what comforts me is that I attribute less of that to innate abilities, and more of it to having learned how to FEEL music. I think that was the real game changer. I close my eyes and my mind visualizes sound waves, harmonics, notes, pitch, rhythm, many components of music I don't even understand. I've never even owned a metronome. It was FEELING the beat that really improved my timing.

The "What's Next?" question began looming, and I had decided towards the end of the Speedbird 49 project that I was going to take a break from playing guitar for a bit. Part of it was because I was worried about getting burnt out trying to manage it with work, YPIN and my social life. I had sprained my fingers and several nerves on my hand trying to play fast without warming up. The callouses on my fingers were so deep I was worried some day my fingers will just start bleeding. Nevertheless, I still pick up my guitar everyday. But now that the pressure of practicing for a gig is gone, I'm free to explore, to create new beats, to play new chord progressions, to compose new solos.

Another part of me wanted to figure how to manage the two personas. Corporate life rules one persona. Music rules the other persona. Corporate life pays the bills and gives me challenging work. Music allows me to explore my creativity. I've come to the conclusion that both personas will continue to exist. It's a matter of finding the right balance, in the hope that the sum of the two personas is greater than the parts.