amosthepeasant,

 

        There are a zillion ways to go about refining the musicality of ones playing, in my opinion. Lessons, books, seminars, courses, videos and music schools all have beneficial aspects. I think the end is a good place to start. By that I mean asking oneself, "If I could play any way I wanted to, what and how would it sound and what would I be doing musically?"  That makes a second point in whatever path you want to go musically. You have some idea where you are and this provides some vague idea where you want to be. Here are some musical growth points that I consider significant in the refinement of the musicality of my playing. These are about "musicality" and not technical stuff. 

*  Buying and using my first metronome.

*  Buying and using my first 4 track. I heard what I sounded like, not what I thought I sounded like.

*  Spending the money on my first very accomplished private music teacher.

*  Learning the pentatonic scale.

*  Learning to identify the key of a song by the chords in it.

*  Learning the major scale and chord theory (keep in mind that it is 'chord theory' and 'music theory' not chord science and music science) 

*  Buying my first guitar that was well beyond what my playing skills warranted. This helped differentiate what were my shortcomings from my guitar/amps shortcomings and provided more 'fertile ground' for my own growth.

*  Playing with other musicians. (osmosis happens)

*  Moving to Nashville, TN (osmosis happens)

*  Learning Miles Davis's "All Blues" and playing through the changes by playing mixolydian over each chord. I discovered that there was a lot more out there for me than the pentatonic blues scale. 

*  Buying and completing "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. In fundamental ways art is art. Painting with paint on a canvass or making art out of thin air (music) both have creativity as the point of origin. For me, gaining a more functional understanding of this starting point provided me with better "data points" with which to make my musical decisions.

 

 

        As a final note: music is making art out of thin air. It is an amazing and remarkable thing to be doing. It took hundreds and thousands of years for the human species do develope "playing music" to the point that it has. Don't allow yourself to remain discouraged if you play something and it is not as musical as you would have liked. We all experience discouragement as musicians. Finding some way that works for us individually to not remain discouraged is important.

 

Hope this helps in some way,

CTMGTR