Originally Posted by: maggiorThat's great that you have an audience to play for. You should be encouraged that they keep asking you to play.

When you are doing these performances, are you playing over a backing track or a drum machine?

If not, I strongly suggest you do. I discovered last week that my Zoom G5 pedal has a selection of drum beats built in. By themselves, the drum beats sound really boring and may not match the song exactly. But a magic tranformation occurs as I play over it - as long as the time signature matches (4/4 rhythem or 3/4 rhythm), it sound incredible. And if you move from song to song, it sounds like you've put together a medly. Throw in a looper (the G5 has one built in) and you're like a one man band. Lay down a chord progression and you can jam until the cows come home!

I find the drum beats help my improvision too because you can really feel the timing and rhythm and it makes it easier to get creative with your phrasing.

You feel like you have a tireless drummer backing you who doesn't lose patience because you are playing the same damn thing over and over and over again :-).

Your amp may have built in drum sounds. If so, check it out.

1: Yeah, I'm happy that they keep asking me to play something. Being able to provide some sort of entertainment for others is one of the half-dozen reasons I didn't give up the first time I hit a plateau :)

2: I usually don't use backing tracks or drum tracks, as my timing with hitting chord notes is horrible (especially since my ears aren't quite at the point where I can clearly hear which chord is playing. I can usually hear it if it's outright written which chords are playing, but I can't hear a C and then know that it's a C (hope that makes sense...). I've managed to find a few backing tracks for soloing over, where the video says which chords are playing (I usually try to find some on YouTube). As for the songs I play, I only have Backing Tracks for a few GNR songs, and I haven't tried playing with them yet.

3: I honestly don't think my amp has a built-in drum-machine. It would be handy if it could give me a Bass and Drum track to play along to, but I haven't found such a functionality yet. If it does have it, I'm guessing it's some obscure part of Fender Fuse that I haven't explored yet :)

I'm actually looking forward to not just playing for them, but out right performing for them. In my opinion, the main difference is is that when you perform, you have a fixed set-list to follow (with room for a few changes depending on the crowd's reaction), and when you play, you just play some songs you know without any specific, pre-determined order to them.

I have actually considered getting some sort of multi-effect processor. I've seen a few positive comments about them. And since I'm still in the process of finding my tone and style, I figure one of those multi-effects will let me explore and experiment without having to go to a store and sit for hours, browsing their catalog of pedals. My amp already lets me add effects in front of the amp or in an effect-loop, through Fender Fuse, but it doesn't let me choose quickly which effects I want active and which I don't want. That, and I would prefer to have both a Fuzz, Dist, OD and Wah, but Fuse only let's me have one of those, not all (it would be handy, since some of my songs sound better with certain effects, while others sound better with other effects).