Beginner Blues Solo

@roby2 Why do you have to worry about tempo? If you know the notes play them to what sounds good. I do.

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Itā€™s quite hard to count while doing this kind of playing, so you need to bake the arrangement into your mind, and then play it.

What works great for this is Guitar Pro. Justin has a guitar pro file for this lesson IIRC. Listen to it in the lesson, listen to it in guitar pro, then slow it right down in guitar pro and play along with it. Once you get it under your fingers, speed it up incrementally.

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I thought it was important to count because justin does it all the time.

I think Justin counts to teach the timing of the arrangement. I think most people would not count while playing once familiar with an arrangement, except for specific situations (e.g. count-in, stops/breaks)

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So what is the best thing i could do to overcome this?

Also one more question. With the blues solo justin provided, as there is no backing track provided are we meant to learn the tabs but play with our own timing? Like the backing tracks i saw on youtube dont match the same tempo as justins tab.

Hello, if you scroll up to the very first comment of this thread, youā€™ll find a
matching backing track created by @Richard_close2u .
I use it for practicing the blues solo, and in my opinion, it fits perfectly :star_struck:. Thanks a lot to Richard at this point :hugs:.

Iā€™ve never counted along the solo. Iā€™ve listened to it quite often, so meanwhile I feel how to play it (at least I think so :sweat_smile:). And thatā€™s also what Justin says, blues is no pure technical thing. Itā€™s a feeling. And to get it right, he suggests that we listen to blues songs a lot.
I hope this helps :blush:.

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Hey @roby2 ,

For me counting is a tool to help learn the rhythm of the thing Iā€™m trying to play. Sometimes counting is not necessary, e.g. when I learned the riff to Sunshine of Your Love, the riff was so familiar to me (and itā€™s pretty slow), so I could just get the rhythm right by ā€œfeelā€.

However, sometimes when learning a more complex lead line or lick, that might have triplets or in any case, a more complex or faster rhythm, just listening to it is not enough (for me, at least) to just play it by feel. In that case, counting it out while playing (super-slow!) helps me get it under my fingers (or ā€œbaked inā€ as @jkahn says). Once it is baked in, I can speed it up (gradually) and play it without counting.

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Hello Robbie @roby2

While I agree with Nicole @NicoleKKB that playing the blues is about feel, the overall timing of it needs to be right.

Each phrase in this solo starts on beat 1, (apart from the intro) so itā€™s important to know when the first beat of each bar is and keep in time with it.
You can do that by counting, tapping your foot, swaying, nodding your head, metronome, drum beatā€¦.whatever your preferred method is.
The ending of each phrase is the next important and that varies through the solo.
The timing of the notes within a phrase is less important and flexing the timing of them can give the solo your own individual feel.

Nail beat 1 and enjoy playing the solo! :guitar:

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Hello everyone. Thank you so much for the answers. I will definitely apply all this in my next practice session. Also, this has to be the best online guitar community :slight_smile:
Again, tysm.

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