I can't take any more white boys noodling around on their guitars.
My writing process, such as it is, consists of a lot of noodling, procrastinating, dawdling, and avoiding.
I play a little acoustic bass and a little guitar. In our house there are instruments everywhere, and I love picking them up and just noodling around. I pick up my husband's tin whistle sometimes. He's really proficient, but it's about the second most annoying instrument - after the banjo - if you don't know how to play it.
Sometimes just allowing yourself to noodle without any structure will enable you to stumble upon great new ideas, culminating in creating your own distinct voice on the instrument.
Writing music uses a whole different process that involves a lot of noodling and just seeing what comes.
I've done about every kind of fishing you can imagine, but I've never noodled. And the reason I've never noodled is because I don't want to get bit by a water moccasin. I'm just too afraid of snakes.
Boy George always told me to stop noodling; he wanted me to belt like Ethel Merman.
As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too.
Most people learn to improvise on their own, listening to records, endless hours of noodling on their instrument in the bedroom with all their spare time. That's traditionally how people learn.
I do spend time trying to find good melodies, and I try to remember them when I do discover them. But also it's mostly intuitive; I noodle around with the line until it sounds and feels right.
If you practice in a focused, concentrated manner and make efficient use of your time, you will progress a lot faster than if you were to use the same time noodling without any specific goals or direction.
