I think I've come to the conclusion that I never really learned how to play guitar properly, if at all.
Which is pretty much fine since what I want to play most is punk rock. Those folks were famous for not knowing how to play their instruments.
The whole thing falls apart where I don't have a bassist, or more importantly, a drummer, to play along with.
In fact, I should probably go through the exercise of playing and/or recording some covers, even though I lost interest in covers several years ago.
It would be good to try to figure out and learn the parts on songs I like.
Why am I only thinking of this now?
I'm actually thinking about now making a simple drum track that's just like bmm tck, bmm bmm tck, and then every 8 measures there's a big ridiculous snare fill tck tck tck tck tck tck tck tck
Currently my tracks are caught in the "uncanny valley" of using a 4 bar drum loop endlessly for the whole song with no fills. Like, it's good-ish, but so repetitive and lifeless.
The other end of the spectrum, programming a drum loop with various different fills for the whole track seems exhausting.
I bring up the guitar thing because I'm starting to realize that even the most basic songs by bands I like, say Belle and Sebastian and Death Cab For Cutie, are usually driven by non-trivial guitar parts.
Maybe this is a breakthrough?