Weekly update May 7, 2023

Got my Stratocaster out of its case and actually played it some yesterday and again this morning! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to try to set up my "studio", as there needs to be some work done on the wiring of lights in the room, as well as on the desk built for the room. I don't want to unpack, and plug in all that stuff, only to have to take it all down and pack it back up again, so I'll wait until all this work has been completed. I've been waiting for 6 years to have a permanent setup again, what's a few more days or weeks?

I've been practicing lots of scales and arpeggios the past couple of weeks. These exercises are supposed to help me improvise. So far they're not helping. However, I plan to keep doing them. These things can take quite a while to sink in and become easy to play when you need them. I should have started doing this about 50 years ago. It might have sunk in by now.

Big news this week is I bought a new guitar cable. I rarely buy anything so this is a big deal for me. It's a Mogami cable with one right angle plug. I've wanted a cable with a right angle  plug on one end for a long time. The input on my guitar is in a bad place when I'm sitting on a couch. A straight plug sticks out of the side of the guitar on the lower bout and I'm always afraid I'm going to snap it off. It only took me about 6 years to get around to solving this problem.

Joachim: Glad you found "Autumn Leaves" inspiring. It's a lot of fun participating in those collaborations. Is "Let's Give Them Something to Talk About" the Bonnie Raitt song?

Phil, congrat's on the new cable! For scales and stuff - in my opinion - you should just memorize the pattern it forms over the fretboard and then move right into using it to improvise over a backing track. Go from learning them to learning to use them so to speak. Since you already know the pentatonic scale all over the neck everything else is just a matter of adding a couple notes.

I guess I should elaborate on what I meant when I said I was practicing scales and arpeggios. It sounded like I was saying I'm just practicing scales and arpeggios without any context. Actually, I've been doing this on a particular song and playing the scale that pertains to each chord starting on that chord's root. In Jazz soloing you attempt to play the "changes" (the chord changes). So, Gmaj7 gets a G major scale; the next chord is Eb7 and gets Eb mixolydian; Am7 > D7 might get just a D mixolydian over both chords; etc., etc. Then I practice the arpeggios of each chord thru the song. And finally I combine them - arpeggio up and scale down, scale up and arpeggio down. It can get pretty complicated and confusing.

I'm really focused on this right now. Even though I'm spending an inordinate amount of time on a single song I'm beginning to spot the patterns faster and I'm making fewer and fewer mistakes each time thru the song. The next song won't take as long. The ultimate goal is to be able to make music out of these arpeggios and scales using approach notes, enclosures, varying the melodic rhythm, and applying Jazz "language" so it sounds like Jazz.

Jack hit the nail on the head. You have to know these patterns all over the neck and practice applying them to actual songs. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is thru repetition and more repetition. I know I've said that a thousand times, but saying it and doing it are 2 different things.