Improvising 101 (12 bar shuffle in G)

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daryl
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Sun Jul 03, 2011 12:55 pm

dekotaj wrote:
I have never tried this before so take it easy on me.I'm way behind the curve here.In fact I'm so far behind it I thought I was playing in G major.But when I ask Daryl to look at this before putting it up.He let me know that its was in G minor.Talk about not having a clue!!What the heck it was a lot of fun to set down and mess around with it.And just maybe if you folks can slow your teaching curve down to match my learning curve.I just might start to understand this guitar playing a lot better than I do now??????







Come on folks join me.Help me learn this stuff.SHOW me your stuff.

Kevin
Great start Kevin. I liked how you kept coming back to your "theme" (the 2 high strings 6th and 3rd frets). To make it a little bluesier try this: add the 6th fret on the 3rd string and try to end a lot of your phrases on the 5th fret of the 4th string (the root note).

You're right the jam track IS in G major. The chords are basically G C and D (although Neil fancies them up a bit). The root IS the G note. And there are many different scales you can play against something in G major. But the I IV V (blues) progression screams for using the scale called the "G MINOR pentatonic" even though the chords are in the key of G MAJOR. Don't worry about being confused. I am too!

Let's see another attempt from you....


willem
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Sun Jul 03, 2011 1:16 pm

daryl wrote:
dekotaj wrote:
I have never tried this before so take it easy on me.I'm way behind the curve here.In fact I'm so far behind it I thought I was playing in G major.But when I ask Daryl to look at this before putting it up.He let me know that its was in G minor.Talk about not having a clue!!What the heck it was a lot of fun to set down and mess around with it.And just maybe if you folks can slow your teaching curve down to match my learning curve.I just might start to understand this guitar playing a lot better than I do now??????







Come on folks join me.Help me learn this stuff.SHOW me your stuff.

Kevin
Great start Kevin. I liked how you kept coming back to your "theme" (the 2 high strings 6th and 3rd frets). To make it a little bluesier try this: add the 6th fret on the 3rd string and try to end a lot of your phrases on the 5th fret of the 4th string (the root note).

You're right the jam track IS in G major. The chords are basically G C and D (although Neil fancies them up a bit). The root IS the G note. And there are many different scales you can play against something in G major. But the I IV V (blues) progression screams for using the scale called the "G MINOR pentatonic" even though the chords are in the key of G MAJOR. Don't worry about being confused. I am too!

Let's see another attempt from you....
Hi Kevin, that was nice but you can get more bleus feel to it when you use notes out the G minor scale so it will clash with major acompaniment or the use from a real bleus scale,,i do some research also to try a jam here and that is what i know on this moment..

a real bleus scale for G could be G-Bb-C-Db-D-F-G=ROOT the steps in a bleus scale are 1.5 -1 - 0.5 - 0.5 - 1.5 - 1,, i hope to add something positive here but i am learning too


lueders
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Wed Jul 13, 2011 11:35 pm

Daryl, and others...

It isn't great but here is another installment of the blues jam in G.
Some things are working, and others are not so much.

I'm not happy with how the (up the neck, 10-12 fret) phrasing ends.
I'm gonna keep fine tuning that.
(And, Daryl you made the comment you weren't happy with your vibrato...
well, you'll like your vibrato after you see/hear this. lol!)

See what ya think...Thanks in advance.



tovo
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Wed Jul 13, 2011 11:52 pm

Hey Cori. I think it's a pretty damn good effort mate. My impressions for what they are worth given you are ahead of me in this area are that you could incorporate some multiple slides (same slide repeated 3-4 times) and that the up the neck section around frets 10-12 don't fit quite as well with the rest of the improv. As I said, take my suggestions as impressions rather than coming from any good knowledge base on blues.


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daryl
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Thu Jul 14, 2011 6:34 am

A couple of thoughts/comments....

- I really liked the phrase between 0:33 and 0:38 (after the chromatic walk-down on the 2nd string). It had the blue note in it that really worked well.
- You're vibrato on the 2nd string around the 8th fret was clear and distinct (way better than mine).

However (and I'm not trying to be unkind), I thought the overall improvisation was too canned. It seemed to me that you worked out a 12 bar thing that worked OK and just repeated it over and over. Perhaps I'm wrong here but that was my impression. I think it's OK to repeat key phrases within an improv like your chromatic walk-down as a turn-around but there should be more variations here: rhythmic patterns, dynamics (accented notes, softer notes, empty space, etc.), inverted phrases, modified phrases, etc. This doesn't mean to imply that I can do any of these things, but that this is something that we should be striving for (I think).


tombo1230
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Fri Aug 19, 2011 7:18 pm

To be honest I have only just started to learn soloing but I thought you made a real decent stab at it. Obviously there was a little bit of repetedness in places, but with practice you will get there. Good effort! You are on your way. :)

Tom N.


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daryl
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Fri Aug 19, 2011 7:47 pm

Hey Tom, Might you give it a try? We'd love more participants.


tombo1230
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Sat Aug 27, 2011 2:39 am

daryl wrote:
Hey Tom, Might you give it a try? We'd love more participants.
Hi Daryl, I'm only at the beginners stage on lead, but will make a post when I think I can contribute something, but the question you pose will give me a bit of incentive to work on it. Thanks! I am a little out of my comfort zone on this, but that is a good thing.

Tom N.


dekotaj
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Mon Oct 03, 2011 1:26 pm

I was not going to put this up when I did it.But found it today.When cleaning up some of my songs on my computer.




Kevin


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daryl
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Mon Oct 03, 2011 3:00 pm

Huge improvement over your 1st attempt Kevin. Great.

If you're interested in trying again, I would suggest trying to initially land your "phrases" on a chord tone. For example, if your phrase is going to end while the C chord is playing try to end on a C note (5th fret 3rd string) or a G note (5th fret 4th string or 3rd fret 1st string). And to add a little "spice" to the improv try to slip in a hammer-on or pull-off here and there.


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