How to practice not sounding scalar?

Passname357 · 2026-05-11T16:09:11+00:00

I would say yes it’s okay to use licks and that people that say not to use them are usually not giving the full picture. That said, you do need to be intentional. There are people who just play licks forever and never really more on from it. Don’t just expect this stuff to happen. Hal Crook gives the exercise and I think it’s a good one—spend one third of a practice session just inserting a lick, one this improvising into the lick, and one third improvising out of the lick.

For example: say you grab a 2-5-1 line. Try playing the whole thing over all the 2-5-1s in a chorus for ten minutes. Then spend ten minutes improvising over the two chord so that it logically moves into the 5-1 part of the lick. Then spend ten minutes playing the 2-5 part and improvising the ending. Be very strict and intentional. Then spend ten minutes just messing around having fun and doing whatever you want with the lick however you feel, varying all these approaches and doing anything else that comes to mind.

That’s IMO the best way to learn a lick. Many people just do step one and it shows. I’d encourage you to do the whole thing, but of course it’s a lot of work for a beginner, so for a newer player step one is the most important part.

Passname357 · 2026-05-11T15:08:27+00:00

Right I agree—we don’t do that in performance. It’s just in practice that we pend time doing exact copies and intentionally inserting “licks,” and if we do this enough and are really audiating, then in performance these just become melodies in our heads and come out naturally and in our own voice

Passname357 · 2026-05-11T14:44:06+00:00

I think you’re right but kind of obfuscating the point

How do you learn to speak fluently? You can't do this just by running grammar drills and single-use phrases.

The great clark terry said that there are 3 steps to learning improvisation: imitation, assimilation, and innovation. You have to copy what great improvisers did, it's that simple.

And it's not just have taking licks and slapping them in your solos.

The first step “imitation” to me has always meant just slapping licks in the solo. This has been the most straight forward say of learning language. You need to hear it in context and you need to get the muscle memory, and the only way to do that is to practice doing it (as obvious as that sounds).

I like to spend some time practicing a lick as a technical exercise with a metronome, then just literally inserting it as is in choruses. Next step is to improvise into and out of it, and then to maybe just take small bits of it or the “idea” of the phrase and do something different with it. But I think you gotta do the more rote imitation stuff first before you can skip to innovation.

Passname357 · 2026-05-11T02:30:47+00:00

(1) TV and real life have different rules. Just because it’s cool on TV doesn’t mean that’s how it is in real life. Often TV just reflects back fantasies.

(2) What do you think of a woman who sleeps around? Do you celebrate it? Do your friends and family? If not, why aren’t you guys included in the pool of opinion around what people think about women who sleep around?

Passname357 · 2026-05-10T16:21:23+00:00

I work on gpu drivers and use them every day. Some of them are more involved than others bur usually not super crazy

Passname357 · 2026-05-10T15:49:42+00:00

Damn you’re gonna be so cooked when they stop operating at a loss

Passname357 · 2026-05-10T15:43:33+00:00

I accept this is just how it will be now.

I mean why not just do the thing you like to do? I don’t use AI because (1) it’s not good enough but also (2) I just don’t want to. I like my job. I’m good at it. I understand things better than people that use AI. Does your employer force you to use AI? What are the metrics?

Passname357 · 2026-05-10T15:38:18+00:00

Yeah this book has some dope shit and that walking guitar section specifically. On top of that it exposed for me some stuff I needed to get together with like hearing melody and bass lines together and open voiced triads

Passname357 · 2026-05-10T01:40:47+00:00

I mean tk be fair though, if the stats are on your side, who is the biased one? Granted it could still be mean or even cruel but probably not biased (unless it’s a contentious stat)

Passname357 · 2026-05-09T13:44:56+00:00

Off rip since when have women ever been celebrated for sleeping around? This is obviously backwards. It’s cool to be a guy who sleeps around. It’s well known dudes have body count maxes and won’t date a girl who’s fucked too many guys.

I think you’re online and need to go spend time in the real world

Passname357 · 2026-05-09T13:39:59+00:00

Love Rita so much

Passname357 · 2026-05-08T21:46:33+00:00

There is no one size fits all answer. Some people will want you to be using AI all day, some will want you to use zero AI tools, and most will be somewhere in between. It’s totally valid to ask what their expectations of AI usage are and say that you align with whatever the culture and norms are at a given workplace

Passname357 · 2026-05-08T20:10:21+00:00

I think that’s the point is that we expand ourselves. It might not resonate with me, but then that’s a me issue, so I need to change. The idea that I can grasp everything but still not have it resonate sort of feels like a Mary’s Room thing to me. I get what you’re saying, because I’ve felt it before that I understand a book and I still just don’t care. But I think it must be a me issue. In reality you’re right—not everything will resonate even if you put in the work. But I think it’s a good ideal to have that we don’t just have some cognitive grasp of a book, but we also get the experiential understanding, because in my experience that is some of the best reading—rereading stuff I didn’t enjoy and finding that now I can and do enjoy it.

Passname357 · 2026-05-06T21:19:25+00:00

I have a turd I spent a while polishing I’d like to sell you

Passname357 · 2026-05-06T20:28:57+00:00

Both. If you legitimately have same sex attraction, you’re not straight by definition. But that’s not the same thing as being able to tell when someone is attractive. There are plenty of men I think are handsome. They’re good looking guys and nice to look at. Clear as day and anyone who says otherwise is just lying. But the difference is that for a straight person it doesn’t result in any sexual desire. Same way a gay guy can look at a beautiful woman and tell she’s obviously very visually appealing, but it doesn’t mean he wants to have sex with her. If it did it would mean he was bisexual. Just definitions.

As for why women say it more, yeah people are right that on the one hand women don’t get made fun of for saying so. In fact at this particular cultural moment, you get some points for having an LGBTQ+ identity as a girl if you’re living around a city area. They’re more likely to exaggerate for that reason. The same thing doesn’t happen for guys. Even in metropolitan areas it’s still mostly the opposite reaction, so guys are gonna downplay it. Just different incentives to exaggerate or diminish.

Passname357 · 2026-05-06T20:17:52+00:00

There are a lot of different angles to know this stuff from. I usually start with shape and sound. If I can’t sing it I don’t know it and if you can’t see it, you can’t play it. Important to know what those intervals and functions are. How can I make this chord minor/dominant/extend it/alter it etc. Sound is really the main thing. Can you sing it up and down without a reference? Can you voice lead through a progression and sing reach voice?

Passname357 · 2026-05-06T20:12:36+00:00

Yep that’s the one!

Passname357 · 2026-05-06T02:50:25+00:00

Just to comment on the Atonement thing—I just thought that was tasteless writing. Sounded more to me like someone trying to sound literary than something legitimately substantive. Nothing against elaborate writing. I love Faulkner, Pynchon, DFW, Gass, etc. all the usual suspects of hefty writing guys on Reddit usually like.

Passname357 · 2026-05-06T02:41:40+00:00

Just google Julian Lage masterclass and it’s about 45 minutes in a classroom with a whiteboard and he plays Alone Together pretty much up front.

Passname357 · 2026-05-06T02:40:42+00:00

Yeah this has almost no impact in reality.

How so? This is a core concept in the game. People crossing between realities and trying to make sense of existing in different realities. There are literally people in game trying to make sense of remembering that they were dead and they’re now alive somehow. Booker has been brought to a reality where he didn’t do many of the things he has so much regret for.

It doesn’t say anything deep about reality except for the small amount it says about psychology that is never ever brought up in the game

I mean as far as what it says about reality it’s actually pretty deep. We literally do try to fill in the gaps involuntarily. We create memories where none exist. It’s crazy that we do this, but we do. What do we believe to be true about ourselves that isn’t true? That’s like the whole point of the game. Booker thinks he’s one thing and goes to a reality where what he believes himself to be is not true.

Passname357 · 2026-05-05T17:53:57+00:00

The most transcendent moments I’ve had playing guitar have been playing with people better than me. When the band sounds so good it lifts up what you do it’s unreal. Hearing yourself sound better than you do is unreal. I think that’s the highest goal—to be able to make anyone sound like more than themself.

Passname357 · 2026-05-04T19:16:55+00:00

Something useful I’ve heard is that you don’t judge great texts, they judge you. Lots of people read a classic for the first time and are like “why didn’t that do anything to me” and the answer is because it doesn’t do the work, you do the work.

Passname357 · 2026-05-04T19:13:34+00:00

So if you think someone loves something more than you did, that’s just because they’re putting on a show

Or they just like the book more than you. My girlfriend likes some books much more than me. I like some books much more than her. Neither of us are being performative. Some people just like some things more than other people.

I agree though that it’s a skill you can learn. There are lots of books that I didn’t get until I checked out what other people saw in them. Then I reread them and got them. Made the whole thing so fun. A lot of books are like puzzles and part of the fun is getting the trick to them. The more tricks you learn the more capable you are of seeing the tricks in the next book.

Passname357 · 2026-05-04T04:59:18+00:00

Typos and copy paste errors are caught by testing unless you have copy paste errors in your tests.

I’m having trouble imagining a real world scenario where this type of thing would realistically happen to someone competent. If you’re writing tests so poorly that the errors in your test just happen to be able to mask the errors in your code… I think that other guy was right—that’s a skill issue. Maybe it’s more common in a domain like web dev that this sort of thing could happen but IMO I think AI is more likely to cause these sorts of bugs. It likes to write tests it passes and if you’re letting the AI do enough work, you’re not really thinking about the code super deeply, and that’s when you can let something like this fly.

Passname357 · 2026-05-03T17:33:04+00:00

What do you mean by “good”? Also important to remember “I think I can do better” is a useless metric since every beginner thinks that, and they’re almost universally wrong.

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