Mari's Blues Studies - Slow Six Blues added Mar 12/23

Hi Mari, really enjoyed this, thought the timing was spot on. I have just begun this course and am on Steady Thumb at present, will watch closely how you are doing. Excellent job! :sunglasses: :smiley:

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Thanks Mal, and have fun with the course, I certainly am!

@Mari63

re: Gospel Blues. An accomplished play through overall, you have a relaxed way of going through the passages. The sliding flat barre on G, B & E occasionally snagged on the frets and missed target or missed time by a fraction. No biggie at all. Are the frets and action high … perhaps making this a tricky move?

re: Steady Thumb Blues. Bravo. That thumb is a whizz. Kudos for the awkward arch formed at fret 2 for the shape that isn’t a barre because it’s even more tricky! If I had a criticism, a finickity one, your curls are maybe getting pushed just a tiny bit too far, almost reaching a semitone and going beyond the little blues tweak. But I’m splitting hairs where none is really needed.

re: Walkin’ Easy Blues. You have that bass line rocking and grooving, oh my. There are some little muted buzzy notes from your E and B strings at times and it might be worth trying to just play repetitive plucks with your two fingers on those two strings counted on the &s of several bars. 1 pluck 2 pluck 3 pluck 4 pluck. Aim to get them ringing for their allotted eighth and ring on until you next pluck them.

re: both the riffs & fills vids. Kudos. Getting to grips with switching between the rockin’ riffin’ part and the bursts of lead guitar is a great move and you’ve entered in style. Tearing up some tasty stuff. Bravo.

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Impressive work @Mari63

@Richard_close2u already summed up a nice feedback above so no need fro me to go too deep

I love your feel
You really prove to be able to flow along with the vibe of the song while in the meantime, you deliver accurate fretting and picking.

Thanks for sharing and love that guitar btw :wink:

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@Richard_close2u you pick up on everything Richard! I found that little slide in Gospel Blues quite difficult to get, and yes there might be an issue with the frets that I hadn’t considered. (Not to try to ignore Issues with my playing of course!) maybe this is a good reason to look harder for my dream guitar lol. And for STB I mentioned somewhere above that I wasn’t being crisp enough with the bends, so those little curls I do need to work on. And I also noticed that there’s some unintentional muting on WEB. There’s something a bit similar in the piece I’m working on now, so I will try your suggestion about repetitive plucks. Thank you very much for your detailed constructive feedback, Richard, and also for your nice positive comments :slightly_smiling_face:

@LievenDV thank you, your comment about the feel makes me very happy. I’m reading The Devil’s Music, A History of the Blues right now, and it’s telling me that’s the biggest thing about the Blues - the feeling. If I can show the feeling, hopefully that means I’m on the way :slightly_smiling_face:

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Slow Six Blues added Mar 12/23

Here’s the 4th piece of 9 in Justin’s Solo Blues Guitar course. I’ve got a friend’s guitar borrowed for a week, an Eastman E10-SS. It’s a slope shoulder, which is a dreadnought, so the sound is great. It’s too big for my shoulder for me to play comfortably for very long though, so it’s not my dream guitar - still looking.

I didn’t want to use my guitar head camera clip on for a video view, since it’s not my guitar, but I did have 2 cameras for the video still. I did 2 partial takes, and 2 full takes. On the playback I realized that I had once again set the video record button to slow-mo, making that video useless. That was the front/centre video, so I’m left with just the closer video, which isn’t framed very well. Oh well, you can still hear the guitar.

Any constructive feedback would be appreciated. Richard noted some muting on the E and B strings for one of the prior ones , so I tried to take that into account on this piece and let the high strings ring out. I think it was more successful than before, but it still needs work. For this one I found the fast chromatic walk down on the turn around the most challenging part, and I’m not getting a very good little curl in the 1 spot. Other than that I think the muck ups are pretty much due to the recording button being red :woman_shrugging:

I thought we could change the title of the first post to add info re new posts, but I can’t figure out how to do that today.

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Sounding good Mari, no critical feedback here but you are making great progress through the course. Well done. Man I must get round recording the first two but I have extreme Solo Blues RBS for some reason !! On the framing I don’t think there is anything wrong as your picking hand is visible and that’s where the important action is. :+1:

:sunglasses:

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Thanks Toby, I’m looking forward to the next piece! Maybe the timing will work out perfect and Justin’s revamped Solo Blues Course will come out right when I finish this one :slight_smile:

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Your playing sounded clean, consistent, even, Mari. If there was the odd flub I certainly never noticed. And the tone of the Eastman and your recording was wonderful.

From a personal totally subjective feel/taste perspective, it felt a little rushed to me. I’ve not listened to Justin play this one, so I expect the tempo is what it is supposed to be.

I don’t think you have the ability to edit the title. The new platform settings allow you to edit the first post in the Topic in perpetuity, but seems not the title. @Richard_close2u could you look into this?

I edited your title and also included a link in the topic to the reply where you added the recording in the topic, for those (like me) who like to scan the entire topic from where the new recording was added.

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That sounds fantastic Mari!

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Hi Mari,
Cooool :sunglasses: :clap: :clap: :clap:,this was a very nice one and i really loved it…And terrifying because i haven’t started this one yet and it seems really much more difficult than the first one`s :grimacing: :sweat_smile:
Absolutely amazing :star_struck:
Greetings…

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That sounded wonderful, Mari. You’re making great progress with the solo blues course. You did very well on the chromatic walk down on the turnaround. Look forward to the next piece. Great stuff.

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Really nice job Mari, I’m not on that part of the course yet so can’t offer any critique, but can certainly say I enjoyed it!! Lovely tone from that Eastman too :+1:

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@DavidP @twistor59 @roger_holland @Socio @Notter thank you all very much for listening and commenting, very much appreciated :slightly_smiling_face:

David, I’m glad you commented on the tempo. I also prefer it slower. Justin suggests in the video to learn it to the speed he sets, 90 bpm, then to play whatever you’re comfortable with. I actually like it slowed down to ~ 80 bpm, and your comment reminds me that I should play what I think sounds good! I just checked my tempo now and it’s 92/93 bpm, so a bit faster than even Justin suggests, but a lot faster than my preference. Next time.

David and Mark, that Eastman is a nice guitar. I wasn’t familiar with that name at all, but now Eastman is on my list of possibilities for my ‘dream guitar’. I’m thinking that if I don’t find my dream guitar locally when I’m off for a couple weeks in April I might go to Toronto when I have vacation time in September and find my dream guitar there. My favorite guitar store sells Eastmans, I checked :slightly_smiling_face:

Phil, thanks for listening :slightly_smiling_face:

Rogier, I’m waiting for your Blues Log … :wink:

James, thanks for being kind on the chromatic run lol. Re course progress, Justin wants us to expand on the course learning and incorporate the learning into other playing, so I have to say I’m nowhere really with that. The Gospel Slides from the 3rd piece are one thing I think I could work on to add elsewhere. My plan though is to learn them all first, and have an assortment of intros / turnarounds / endings I can mix and match, and also be able to mix and match the various actual pieces. Eventual goals are much broader, but I’m happy just headed in this direction for now :slightly_smiling_face:

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Mari that was great, when you started I was blown away how confident you played the intro and this descending line, this is top notch to me! Sure perhaps there were some minor notes that didn’t come out clean but it really was barely noticeable and you really played it great! Loved the tone too, such a thick and rich sound off this guitar, definitely give some other smaller mode

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@adi_mrok thank you Adrian, that is very nice to hear! I actually kind of had the piece learned at the beginning of March and just didn’t get around to recording it, but that extra week-plus of continuing to play it a few times every day made a big difference for how well I can play it. That gives me something to think about in the future when I think I’ve learned a song! :slight_smile:

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Wow, Mari, you’re really rock’n the blues. It sounds to my ears like you are getting into playing it the way you’re feeling it. I’m really liking your blues postings, and looking forward to more. Oh, yeah!!

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I don’t get on the forum that much any more and I may have already commented, or not, I’m unsure with 89 comments and amalgamated threads.

That said, well done Mari! Smooth, bluesy and very cool. I like what you are doing here a lot. Very easy listening.

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Crisp and clean :star2:

Your making fantastic progress Mari :smiley:

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That was terrific Mari, beautifully played. Your picking and fretting looked and sounded so confident. Well done. You’re cruising through these blues studies.
Lovely guitar tone too. You can’t beat a dreadnaught for tone.

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