Besides learning what folks are playing on instruments, I love playing along with people’s voices. It’s a great aspect of playing that some may overlook.
In general, it’s great to imagine the guitar as many different instruments. In other words, I try to imitate/incorporate things a drummer, dancer, bassist, rapper, dj, painter, t a player, horn player, piano and, of course, singer! Anything really. Once you say it, it’s obvious. But how many out their have take the opportunity to explore the possibilities? Here’s some that I can think of:
Drums
For every drum beat, you can try to pick different parts, like the hit hat, the snare… In jazz, drummers comp with their snare, so you can learn what they are doing. Or you can listen to the ride symbol of a really swinging drummer. Then match up your notes with the ride symbol. Not everyone plays with the same time feel as the drummers ride cymbal, but it’s cool to hear what happens. Another thing that I try to do is get the crossstick or snare hit sound that comes on the 2 and 4 in a lot of music. It’s tons harder than you would think, at least for me. Especially if you are playing something like soul without a drummer and you try to get a crossstick sound on your guitar!
What else? In afro-latin/salsa stuff, you can take the different parts like the clave, the cascara, the tumbao. If you play that stuff, you get some funky sounding salsa, or just plain old funk.
Dancing
I never really thought about trying to play like a dancer. This would more like an imaginary sound. “What what that girl dancing sound like?” Or what would an elephant sound like dancing?
Bass
Well, ya you can play basslines on guitar. One time this really struck home. In contrapunctual music, I didn’t consider the bass melody. Once you start thinking that the two part harmony is really like playing two people, you can create different timbres, dynamics, phrasings for the two parts. Getting the guitar to sound like a bass usually is an imperfect science. For me, it’s more like juggling a few different balls, they aren’t all in the air at once, it just seems like.
In reggae, playing in unision with the bass is called stick guitar (I guess). But try playing the bass line to ‘Stir it up’, at the same time you are playing the guitar part. If you on the beach and there isn’t a bass player around, you gotta try it. Trying to get your guitar to sound like at fender jazz bass is something to shoot for, especially when you are playing the guitar part too!
Rapper
It seems like some asks for a hiphop fairly regularly. How do you do an instrumental version of an ODB song? You can play the hooks but without the words, things change. I haven’t really figured this out, but I think you can try to get a spoken word sound out of your guitar?!
DJ
Well, mostly I try to get the scratching sound on my guitar. DJs do some really cool stuff with remixing and switching between beats. If you do this stuff on guitar, that’s definitely sweet.
Painter
This is like the dancer above. Instead of attempting to imitate specific sounds, you create sounds relating to pictures, colors and painters.
Congas
I think Herb Ellis or another guitarist who played with Oscar Peterson would do this when there was no drummer.. You can sort of make your guitar sound like the different parts of a conga. It’s cool to know the basic beats of a conga. On the 4 and 4+, the open tone is played, so you realize that playing something like an open tone on the guitar can make some cool grooves. In DC, folks play gogo with congas and the other day I heard a guitar player covering the conga part on the guitar. I was looking around for the congas until I figured it out it was the guitarist.
Horn
This goes without saying. First, try to incorporate what great horns have played. What does some of the melodies played by John Coltrane sound like? I love playing along to Miles Davis’ tracks. Trying to get the sound of a muted trumpet or the altimissimo of a saxophone. In classical music, many guitarist play near the bridge to get a orchestral horn sound in certain pieces.
Piano
I don’t really try to imitate the sound of piano too much. One common thing is to play all the notes of the chord at the same time. Other parts of the piano are really cool if you can play them on guitar. If you play salsa, getting that piano on guitar (which came from piano trying to play tres) can help a lot. There’s the octaves and the way the piano plays on the beat. Plus all the different harmonies that you wouldn’t think of on guitar. Or you never could play on guitar.
Singer
Pick any song you love that has singing. You’d be suprised how playing along with a singer changes the way you view playing guitar. James Brown? Michael Jackson? Robert Plant? Etcetera… All those blues players get all those vocal sounds on guitar. I think that stuff is beautiful. How many gazillion ways are there to play a note? Best wishes – hope this gave you some ideas!