Neapolitan

What I considered noodling (with guitar playing) is doing technical things with no direction for an extended period of time. It's aimlessly going up and down the diatonic/pentatonic scales or bending strings over and over (till it makes you sick), stretching out solos etc -- doing those things but not making sense out it. IMO Noodling isn't how good or bad one plays on a technical level, it's about having no direction just meandering about the place like a long wiggly pasta noodle on a plate. Eric Clapton & Trey Anastasio noodles, Steve Hackett don't.

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Frownland

Trey Anastasio could open a ****ing ramen restaurant.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

Neapolitan

lol

Trey's Oodles of Noodling Restaurant

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Isbjørn

Orthrelm could stop the hunger in China with all their noodle.

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WWWP

I refer to noodling strictly as an onstage, between songs/during sound check generalized fcking around on an instrument. Basically just needless noise that may be interpreted as unprofessional in the context of a performance.

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Sequoioideae

Noodling is how I come up with most of my ideas. Putting fingers in places on the board I wouldn't usually. You get some pretty unusual melodies if you veer of course from a standard affair, it's primarily why I don't like using DAWs, I need to **** about on instruments with my giant spider hands.

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God Is My Solar System

Guybrush

To me, noodling isn't just improvising (that would make the term redundant), but it's a kind of aimless improv that may be probing some creative directions but doesn't really go into one or develop any of them. If it did go anywhere, you'd just call it improv or a solo or a melody or something.

A good example of what I think of as noodling can be found in King Crimson's Moonchild. Most of that song is just vague nibbles of random playing not really developing much structure or doing anything interesting. It seems like a giant waste of vinyl to me and I wish they'd filled it with something more interesting, but many disagree.

Another example which I could find on youtube can be heard at the beginning of this Return to Forever recording of La Fiesta. Before La Fiesta gets moving, we get about 7:15 minutes of noodles that, while they probe certain melodic ideas and so on, don't really develop any of them until the opening theme of La Fiesta finally comes together.



Generally, I don't think musician should put recordings of themselves noodling (by my definition) on records. The track above f.ex would be better if it just started with La Fiesta, same as Moonchild would be better with the noodles cut out.

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Dylstew

Aren't plenty of written songs partially improves too? I mean, I can come up with a bunch of melodies in my head at any moment. Ofcourse some will just be ones I've heard and forgotten about, but to prevent that you can just edit them and mix them with others.

Even though I can't play for ****, I sometimes also do this (but more out of boredom than actually making something). It makes for some interesting melodies.
Speaking of which, do people ever use off key notes or really bad tunings on purpose?

Janszoon

This pretty much sums it up.

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Time & Place

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Guybrush

What does this even mean? Are you saying experimental can't be composed with intention in mind?

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