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Post by grampalerxst on Jun 7, 2020 4:50:36 GMT -6
Still grinding on the intro of Electric Gypsy. I should be ready to up the tempo a notch at the end of this month. I'd had to slow back down recently to smooth over a few rough spots. Through this my fretting hand position has been evolving and those sorts of changes take me a while.
Most of my guitar week was focused on BLYCU 4. It was a challenge for me and I still have some trouble navigating the pickup into the double stop on the downbeat of the I chord. Makes me stretch fingers apart in a way I'm not used to. I had my thumb over the neck which was doubtless part of the problem. I'm trying to expand what I can do with thumb-over so I stuck with it instead of switching to thumb-behind.
Also started working on a couple phrases from Blues by the Bar. The intent with using it in parallel with the Challenge is to help with the influx of new ideas, and if things work out maybe throw one of those phrases into a BLYCU+ chorus one day.
This is not an original thought by any stretch, but having a new melodic thing to work on each week seems to improve my morale. I suppose it's because the initial slope of the learning curve is pretty steep so there's a more consistent sense of improvement (even though it's just learning to execute a few notes somewhat smoothly). Seems to inject a little energy into everything.
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Post by joachim on Jun 7, 2020 5:16:18 GMT -6
Grampa, I like the idea of having a separate melodic idea each week. I have a tendency to grind scales and exercises too much.
Right now most of time is spend on exercises on the CAGED system, as well as mixing minor and major scales. Barely enough time for playing music, or so it seems - so I am glad we're doing the licks as a group activity.
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Post by bluesbruce on Jun 7, 2020 6:31:07 GMT -6
Seemed like my playing time was down this week, had one day (Monday) where I didn't pick up the guitar at all... grrrr! Been working on Lick 4, which by itself was not too difficult, but was trying to put together a 12-bar chorus, which has definitely been a good practice. Hopefully get something recorded and posted in the other thread today, even if it's just the lick itself. I'm glad every one else seems to be enjoying the BLYCU challenge - it's been a great activity for me as well!
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Post by bluesbruce on Jun 7, 2020 6:56:17 GMT -6
Making up excuses for not practicing (shot from the back deck of our lake house)...
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Post by jack1982 on Jun 7, 2020 7:06:31 GMT -6
I got my lick #4 piece done early so I went to work on a monthly challenge at the Active Melody site. It's a beautiful ballad-style backing track and you come up with a solo for it. I've actually been making satisfactory progress on that, got a whole 53 seconds worth of solo written The second half of that is just semi-fleshed out ideas and still needs work. Hopefully by the end of the month I'll have something nice. The progression is C major, A minor, Bb major, F major, and a quick stop on G major before going back to the beginning. I've mostly been using C pentatonic major and adding some notes from C mixolydian to correspond to some chord tones. Not sure, maybe I should use the C major scale? But the progression does have that Bb in it, and mixolydian just has a nice character to it that the plain ol' major scale lacks. Been slacking off on that slow blues piece I was working on, so I'll have to get back into that some more this week. And get started on lick #5.
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Post by Phil on Jun 7, 2020 7:59:23 GMT -6
Spent quite a bit of time this week working on walking bass lines with syncopated chord "stabs" on 12-bar Jazz Blues progressions. I'm doing this in Bb to practice it using a 6th root on the the tonic and in F with root on 5th string 8th fret. I figure that learning from a 5th string root and then a 6th root covers most of the possible approaches. It was actually pretty confusing at first changing between the 2 positions, but I'm slowly getting it.
Still trying to get the Charlie Parker sax solo for a swing Blues in "F" up to speed. I've been playing parts of it in different positions on the neck searching for the most comfortable one. I found a few videos of guitar players playing it and nobody is playing it in the same positions that I find most comfortable. It's been an interesting exercise adapting a sax solo to the guitar.
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Post by wannaplayblues on Jun 7, 2020 9:25:42 GMT -6
Ok, so here it is - the piece I said last week was being worked on. I still feel it's got a bit of a Peter Greene feel to it. It's a slow blues, but classed as "gospel blues"?!? Basically I am ECSTATIC with the result. I think this is my best recording THUS FAR. I put as much feeling, dynamics and vibrato in as I could (and as skill allows). Tone wise, my amp was set to emulate a VOX AC30, with a large hall reverb and slight compression (which aids the top-end notes). I think it fit perfectly with the backing track and the mix was spot-on (luck really). I also panned my guitar 10% to the right - this had an AMAZING result of making it sound more like I'm in the room with the other players and slightly off-centre to the mic, a HUGE difference to the final feel of the recording. I may do this more often. It's a nice simple trick. Another note - this is the first time I recorded with Reaper. Seems they now support Linux "experimentally" - but it worked flawlessly for me. They may be getting money from me very soon if it holds up this well as I continue to learn/use it. Enjoy! I'm really proud of this one... Note: Sorry about the lame backdrop I have - I'm between rooms as we redecorate etc. However, wife has just allowed me to order a backdrop from Amazon so I hope my next video will have better production values for you all
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Post by bluesbruce on Jun 7, 2020 9:55:22 GMT -6
Sounding great, WPB! Nicely done.
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Post by Phil on Jun 7, 2020 10:39:27 GMT -6
You "Active Melody" guys might find this interesting. I was watching a live stream the other day by David Hamburger (Fretboard Confidential). Guess who showed up in the chat? None other than Active Melody's Brian. It always interesting to see who these top level YouTubers are watching.
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Post by jack1982 on Jun 7, 2020 11:18:05 GMT -6
Man that was sweet WPB! Beautiful tone, beautiful touch, lots of feeling. Loved it!
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Post by blackcountrymick on Jun 7, 2020 16:47:17 GMT -6
WPB, wow, awesome job, some really nice stuff coming out of Brian's camp these days!!! The bars going higher!!
Started work on another JTC study, lots of note "flurries" in this one, too fast for me at the moment but I will aim to do at least a WIP vid by next weekend - hopefully.
I have some lick 4 audio to post that I did last night but no video. Sound only for this week then.
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Post by bluesbruce on Jun 8, 2020 4:49:38 GMT -6
Cool stuff, T-bone!
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Post by grampalerxst on Jun 8, 2020 6:11:14 GMT -6
Ok, so here it is - the piece I said last week was being worked on. I still feel it's got a bit of a Peter Greene feel to it. It's a slow blues, but classed as "gospel blues"?!? Basically I am ECSTATIC with the result. I think this is my best recording THUS FAR. I put as much feeling, dynamics and vibrato in as I could (and as skill allows). WPB, that was awesome. It definitely has the sound I associate with "Gospel Blues", which is I think the strain R&B grew out of, as well as guys like BB King. I'm probably the only guy in our group that doesn't listen to much Peter Green, ha! I enjoy the style a lot so I guess I should remedy that.
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Post by grampalerxst on Jun 8, 2020 6:13:37 GMT -6
... but for now I'm working on this: ... Tbone, I wasn't able to get to the link this morning, I'll try later. Good to see you are still at it.
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Post by jack1982 on Jun 8, 2020 6:19:30 GMT -6
T-bone, that's some great stuff man! Really cool song and very well played!
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Post by Marc on Jun 8, 2020 6:32:56 GMT -6
Nice work fella's!!!
This week flew by for me. I feel like I was just posing about last week a day ago.
I pulled out the Les Paul this week with normal 10's. I realized how hard it is to bend with a wound G. I was focusing on bending too. Trying to come up with some things I can do to try to make sure my bends are on pitch. I've found playing a lick with slides then with bends and alternating back and forth is my primary tool. Would love to hear what y'all do to get your pitches on the money.
I spent some time in triad theory land over the last few days. Every time I do that I walk away with a moment of a light bulb going off. Other than that I've been working on trying to get my bends right. Other than that not really working on anything at the moment.
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Post by grampalerxst on Jun 8, 2020 7:13:49 GMT -6
I've found playing a lick with slides then with bends and alternating back and forth is my primary tool. Would love to hear what y'all do to get your pitches on the money. Mine aren't on the money in general, but they are hugely better than they were 1-2 years ago. There's two ways I've approached them.
First is the traditional "reminding" yourself of the target tone, like bending the G-string up a whole step from fret X and comparing to the unbent B-string on fret X-2, or playing the target note on the string you're bending before and after the bend. Eventually I could sorta hear when I got near the right spot, but getting there precisely, especially under fire, was somewhat hit/miss. Things really didn't take off until I started combining this with the second approach, however.
The second is using a software app to slow down audio while preserving the pitch and playing along with examples and trying to imitate everything about the articulation. If you do that with bends one of the things you'll discover, especially in blues context, is that the idea of bends occurring in precise increments of 1/4-tone, 1/2-tone, full tone, 1.5 tone, etc., is somewhat of a coarse approximation for the sake of notational convenience. Through a lot of repetition and really listening to what I'm trying to imitate I sort of learned what sounds "right". Working with 1/2- and 1/4-step bends were the toughest and most beneficial. They force you to hear the blueness, which is really a continuum, not an interval; and it applies to notes other than the third.
And a chunk of it is just developing finger strength and more importantly, confidence in the strength. Imitating drastically slowed-down bends of "real" players helped a lot with that. I used to just push the string up to what I thought it should be in a single "large" motion, really a flinch because I was dreading whatever vomitous sour note I would land on. Moving much, much slower seemed to help with developing more control to continue if there was some distance to go and to stop the motion wherever it needed stopping. I guess you could call that having control of the motion throughout the bend, rather than bend-and-hope.
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Post by Phil on Jun 8, 2020 9:02:23 GMT -6
Wow, you guys really mean business these days, aren't you? I just listended to some of your output posted here - Kudos! Makes me feel kind of guilty for not to having posted anything for so long... As for myself, I actually manage to play more often again, and I returned to my favorite task of transcribing songs. So I'm currently working on Freddie King's "Heads Up!" from his LP "Let's Hide Away and Dance Away with Freddy King". It's not that hard to figure out what's been played here, but to play it (or to come up with this stuff in the first place) is a complete different story. In that respect it reminds me of Lonnie Mack's "Memphis", which I transcribed aeons ago and for which Jack even supplied me with a BT. I've been putting it on the backburner ever since because the second solo is terribly fast to play and reall needs some serious woodsheddin' time on my part... well, I'll certainlyget back to it, but for now I'm working on this:
My face gives it away - it's really hard for me to play along at this stage ast I really struggle here not to get thrown off in the transitions between the chorusses, e.g. I messed up the pick up to the solo her and such. Well' I'll try to stay in the saddle and bring it home... practice, practice, practice.
Greetings, T.
Nice playing, T. I'm happy to see someone else play with their fingers.
I do believe that Freddy King recorded more Blues instrumentals than any other Blues guitarist in history. Maybe it was his record company pushing him in that direction in an effort to appeal to the more main stream Rock-n-Roll listener.
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Post by wannaplayblues on Jun 8, 2020 9:11:44 GMT -6
Thanks for all the poisitive comments everyone - glad you all enjoyed it! I pulled out the Les Paul this week with normal 10's. I realized how hard it is to bend with a wound G. I was focusing on bending too... Would love to hear what y'all do to get your pitches on the money. I only play with 10s. As your hand develops the strength, it just becomes comfortable to bend. I don't think much about it these days - but I vaguely remember it being tough when I started on 10s. With regard to method - I've always done it the good 'ol fashioned way, play the note 2 frets up, then bend to it using your ear - and do it in time to a metronome at a slow speed (60bpm-ish perhaps). Beat 1 is play the note 2 frets up, beat 2 is a rest, beat 3 is bend the note, beat 4 is rest. Rinse-and-repeat. One final note - ensure you kill the note before releasing the bend. Your picking-palm can be helpful here.
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Post by Phil on Jun 8, 2020 9:12:00 GMT -6
Nice work fella's!!! This week flew by for me. I feel like I was just posing about last week a day ago. I pulled out the Les Paul this week with normal 10's. I realized how hard it is to bend with a wound G. I was focusing on bending too. Trying to come up with some things I can do to try to make sure my bends are on pitch. I've found playing a lick with slides then with bends and alternating back and forth is my primary tool. Would love to hear what y'all do to get your pitches on the money. I spent some time in triad theory land over the last few days. Every time I do that I walk away with a moment of a light bulb going off. Other than that I've been working on trying to get my bends right. Other than that not really working on anything at the moment. At best you'll get a 1/2 step out of a wound string no matter how far you bend it and even that is difficult and hardly worth the effort. I'm sure somebody will prove me wrong, but that's been my experience. That's probably the main reason people went to an unwound G string.
I think your idea of alternating slides and bends is the way to go to get the target pitch into your head.
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