you ever get this feelin...

holy balls! im gone for a week ( obsessive guitar playing disorder;) OGPD lol) and look at the new people! and i thought i was new! wow!

anyways, this is what's on my mind. Do you ever get this feeling, or have you gotten this feeling, ever, that what your playing on your guitar at the moment SUCKS (even if it sounds great). It happens to me every few weeks, usually when im exhausted. If you know what i mean, like a guitar-depression that can last as little as a few minutes to a few weeks. i had a 1 weeker one time, i felt that if i ignored it it'd go away, and i was right...but this seems to come up from time to time with me, not as often as it used to because my sound is getting better all the time, but 'sometimes' it comes up. what about you guys?

definitely, I find its a reaccurring thing, I find if I play at least 5 minutes or more duriing those times it can help. But usually I feel like I'm wilting.

I sometimes think like that, but I guess that's what we call when we are 'off'

Ever hear of a book called the artists way? It a great book to work through it gives a guitar player alot of tools to use when blocked, or depressed. Also in times like that I go into my studio and lay tracks over a drum machine and allow myself to play poorly or well,..without thinking just doing it allowing myself to just go through the motions. For an hour or so, this keeps the chops up, I also call it fishing...fishing for the sake of fishing.

i had that feeling not long ago
i saw a guitar player playing on a squier start just like mine and i was shocked for a time. you know hearing and seeing is much different. his swift hands stunned me and he complained about aging!
its OK that you are depressed sometimes its only natural as long as you get out of it :D

My first year in college I was playing electric guitar about 1 hour and a half a day and was really improving. By the end of that year I got tired, I think. It seemed like I didn't have any creativity left in me.

I then decided to stop the electric guitar for a while and concentrate on acoustic. I learn some classical piece, fingerpicking. I lost a lot of electric skilld but gain new ones on acoustic. Only after 6 months did I took my electric back and was inspired all over again. I started mixing acoustic/electric to created much better songs.

I now have a synthesizer and when I'm tired of guitar I play a little of that and come back later. It helps a lot.

Maybe it's because I suck so much at keyboard that when I go back to the guitar I SEEM to play well :)

What's especially frustrating/awe-inspiring for me, is when I see a post from a 12 or 15 year old who's talking about the latest Vai song he mastered. I'm 22, and when I see that, I say to myself "you have a long, long way to go."

Creativity for me is like a well that I draw upon daily, and if I do so too much, too often without replenishing the supply...it starts to dry up. I bike, read, write, and spin around in nuerotic circles on bad days-drink too much coffee and complain of my anxiety. Driving somewhere just for the sense of motion helps me.

Hm...so im not the only one. Thats good. And Nechako, i agree alot with what you said in your post above this one, that makes alot of sense to me.

I've been spending a lot of time mucking around with my old Alpha Romeo because I've been a little flat lately. I went through a crazed spell for a couple of weeks where I jsut kept gaining, and now it feels like I'm treading water. What I have made sure to do is to keep practising technique to make sure that when the bug hits me again (it's starting to come back now, maybe because the car is almost in tip top shape again) my hands will be ready.

When my playing/inspiration hits the wall, there are a few things that I use as a kick-in-the-ass-by-a-giant-boot. Finding something new and fresh, prefferably major sounding, different from what I'd been playing lately; any form of meditation(I believe that almost anything can be performed in a meditative manner, like walking, swimming, house-cleaning,...); a guitar freak concert, anything from classical to metal; playing other instruments breaks the guitar-induced habbits; drawing inspiration from other arts, even martial; playing WITH the guitar, like a baby I am, with everything I might think of (actually, I do that for fun all the time).
Oh, yeah, getting high sometimes seems to help me too, not that I advertise it.

I like what Bardsley brought up. Mucking about with old cars has been a passion of mine for years, I like small sports cars like crx's, and my favorites the old 76 honda civic, I've had seven of them-the last one blue up. I put good ole tunes on and work on them, usually a total loss of money but the enjoyment I get out of it is the pay off. For some reason The Guess Who's greatest hits is a favorite for this activity.

With me it's like a wave. You ride it till it's done and then paddle out and wait for one. Jerry Garcia said he only wrote 12 days a year. Once a month he'd get tied into his musical self and everything was good.

Don't worry about down times. They're just material to use in the inspirational times.

All the best!!!!!! :cool: