Putting it together (I guess.)

[pinkphiloyd]

I don't know how to say, exactly, what it is I'm trying to say. But I'm seeking...fluidity and cool, I guess. I've been playing for about 18 years. I'm a solid player, but nowhere near as good as I should be for having played that amount of time. I haven't had as much time as I'd have liked to invest, for one thing. Anyway. I'm an average rhythm player, and like anyone else, I can jam the hell out of a pentatonic scale, but I'm still at the point where it sounds like exactly that. Like I'm just playing a bunch of random pentatonic licks. Because, you know, I am. It doesn't GO anywhere. Can anyone point me towards some online lessons or ideas that might help me break out of that rut? And secondly, I've always loved smooth acoustic stuff where guys seem to bob and weave and move smoothly between major and minor stuff. Two of my favorite examples of this are "Steamroller" (I love James Taylor, but the lyrics to this one make me cringe. The guitar work, though, is immaculate.) and "Cry, Moan and Wail", from my hero Marc Ford. Any good resources there, other than just listening and stealing licks?

[Hgb5000]

I am in the same boat as you. One thing that I need to do much more of is trying to sing or hum my guitar parts and then play what I have sung. When I do that I usually get something better than when I am just goofing around with notes.

[dewey decibel]

Well for that Marc Ford track you're going to need another guitar player. But besides that I would say try to learn how to play off of the chord shapes more. What I mean is let's say you have E7, try and figure all the notes around that E7 shape that sound good to you and make lines from them. Do that for each chord and then you have to figure out how to put them all together.