Serhat's Learning Log

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APRIL 2023 UPDATE

I have a new intention to post once a month from now on including a retrospective of the past month and status/goals for the current.

March Retrospective

I have a target to either play with other people or perform in some shape or form at least once a month. That did not happen in March. Although I signed up for a Jam, I committed to too many songs and did not feel comfortable. In retrospect, I regret not going as I would probably mess up in some but would be fine overall.

Although I did not have specific goals for March, I practised every day and believe I made progress in:

  • Right-hand picking technique
  • Familiarity with 5 pentatonic shapes and minor scale root notes
  • Vocal pitch (an area I have great challenges in)
  • Bass guitar shapes and patterns
  • Made progress into Grade 2 (re-visiting previously completed grade)

So it was a good month overall despite a lack of direction.

April Status and Goals

Context: I’ve been practising bass guitar for about 10 weeks.

Performance/Collab

April started great already. I played 3 songs on the bass at a Jam and although I messed up a bit, it went OK overall. I did not commit to and play anything on the guitar not to take on too much like I did the last time and chickened out.

I have Justin Open Mic this month, which I’m looking forward to.

Then I’ll sign up for another Jam and I’ll try to play some guitar this time.

Playing and singing at the same time

The current song I’m working on has a tricky bit that I can’t play and sing yet. I’m hoping to be able to do that by the end of the month although it feels like a stretch goal at the moment, looking very tricky that one.

Technique

  • 85 bpm quadruples in all 5 pentatonic shapes (current: 80, stretch goal: 90)
  • 100 bpm quadruples on the right hand while picking 2 notes on each string (current: 90-95, stretch goal: 105)
  • Play triplets (123-234-345 pattern) with 16th notes on pattern 1 with a slow tempo. Feels impossible currently but we’ll see. The challenge with this is not the technique in the fingers but getting my brain to grasp how to do it.

Improvisation

  • Learn at least one chorus from Rock School Grade 6 ‘Blue Espresso’
  • Create one chorus of a blues solo by using some licks I already know and some licks from this new one. Focus on the IV chord in particular. When I try to improvise, I’ve no idea what to play when it is the IV chord.

Songs

  • I have a playlist of blues songs I can play along. I want to revisit them frequently over the month and make sure I can play rhythm for any of them without prompt. The ability to play solos remains a challenge.
  • Stretch goal: Learn to play one more blues song.

General Learning

Finish Grade 2 - I was following Justin’s course on the classic site before. Now I’m doing the new course and started from the beginning. I’m mid-way through Grade 2, and hoping to complete it this month.

Fretboard Knowledge - I found that bass players learn their fretboard very early! I can play a minor, major or dominant scale or arpeggio from any root note on the bass already. I can’t do that on the guitar despite I’ve been playing for 3 years! So the goal is to apply some of that knowledge to guitar and be able to play my scales and arpeggios from a given root note in an instant. I won’t do all of that in a month but aiming to start and see how it goes.

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Great update, Serhat. Congrats on the progress and look forward to more as you press on.

In the last paragraph, you refer to ‘keyboard knowledge’. From a guitar or bass perspective, the correct term would be ‘fretboard knowledge’.

And I may be wrong here, but anything you learn on the bass should trasfer to the guitar and be identical, played on the thickest 4 strings of the guitar. I believe the bass is also tuned E A D G, so directly transferable knowledge.

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You are absolutely, right! Updated.

It does indeed! Challenge is adding B and E strings, slightly more difficult than the bass due to B string being only a 3rd higher than G.

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MAY 2023 UPDATE

April Retrospective

April was a fantastic month. I feel I improved a ton!

Technique goals - I had specific goals about being able to play certain things at certain BPMs (above). I haven’t achieved any of these as I almost did not practice technique at all.
Songs - My goal was to revisit the blues songs I knew and add one more song as a stretch goal. I did not do any of these.
General Learning - I was going to finish Justin’s grade 2. I did not have a look at the course at all this month

:disappointed_relieved:

You will ask - Well, Serhat, if you haven’t achieved any of your goals, why do you say it was a fantastic month?

Because I did several other things:

  • I participated in whopping 3 events! I have a soft goal of doing one performance or jam each month. In April, I played 3 songs on the bass at a jam, played the Justin open mic, and played 3 songs on the guitar at another jam.

  • For the first jam where I played the bass, I figured out the bass lines of the 3 songs entirely by ear. Then at the jam, I could play these without messing up too much. I even had to transpose one song on the spot and that did not go too badly.

  • On the Justin jam, I switched the song I prepared at the last minute.

  • For the other jam, I learned 6 songs although only 3 of them were played. I learned one of these the night before, and 5 of them on the morning of the jam. Nothing fancy like guitar solos but I could learn the chord progressions and rhythms fine.

So this all increased my confidence in my overall goal of becoming a mediocre guitarist and a good musician - not necessarily playing songs at a very high skill level, but being able to adapt to and function in different situations.

:man_dancing:

In terms of practising skills:

  • I know a few blues licks but they are either too basic (the ones from Justin’s very first blues lick lesson) that I’m not skilful enough to compose a continuous melody line from them, or too complex that I can’t properly use them. Instead, I learned 3 other licks that are good sounding and rhythmically simple so I can execute them at a good level. I practised improvising using these 3 licks and modifying them a bit on a few consecutive days to solidify them.
  • I spent some time figuring out triad chord shapes on strings 2, 3, and 4 and thought about how to connect these. For e.g., if I’m playing a I-chord triad and the next one is a-IV, which notes can I use to connect these so I can do a bit more than strumming I for the whole bar and jumping to IV at an instant? This is not simple at all and there’s a whole world to discover and get familiar here.
  • I practised being able to play a blues shuffle:
    • In any key
    • With at least two turn-around options
    • At an instant without preparation.
      Not quite there yet but I made progress.

:sweat:

May Status and Goals

I won’t have very specific, number-based goals for May. High-level goals are:

  • Playing at least one performance or jam as usual
  • Very, very luckily, I got myself invited to play guitar at a pub gig in July. Learning as many songs for this one as I can
  • On blues rhythms, keep practising shuffles and get more comfortable.
  • On blues improvisation, learn and incorporate more licks.
  • Make more progress on connecting chords with melody lines.

:nerd_face:

Thank you so much if you read this far. That’s all for now. I’ll report back.

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What great month you had. Congratulations.

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JUNE 2023 UPDATE

May was another fantastic month. I was so busy (with other things as well, but mostly music!) I could not post the update:

I hit my target to do at least 1 jam or performance by:

  • Playing at the The Justin Open Mic
  • Accidentally running into an open mic and playing there (we were having coffee at a vintage dress/coffee shop. Out of nowhere they set up a stage. Turns out it was an open mic day there. Asked to play and did a couple of songs. Performance was terrible, poor playing, awful singing, forgotten lyrics and all but the experience was great :))
  • Going to a jam
  • Playing at a rehearsal for the upcoming July gig I mentioned above

I’ve been practising a bit more technique and fretboard knowledge this month.

My challenges remain:

  1. Learning to play the blues. I’m really frustrated about the lack of a resource that works for me. Everyone teaches it, but Justin has very limited material and every other single resource basically goes “Here is how you play the 12 bar blues, here are some cool licks to get you started with improvisation, now here is an awesome lick that connects the minor and major scales together”. It must be working for many out there but with the very limited time I have, I need something a lot more structured and progressing in a lot simpler steps. Did not come across something like that yet.

  2. Sounding good: My ability to learn and play songs improved a lot. I’ve been learning songs in the morning and playing them in the afternoon at jams or rehearsals, which I’m really, really happy with. But I do not like the sound of what I’m playing at all. I’m lacking so much in technique and I’m painfully hearing that in my playing and that frustrates me. Need a lot more practice.

Short update this month as I’ve been just busy with practising technique wherever I do not like the sound of what I’m playing, and learning new songs.

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Are you aware of these two modules:

These are in Grade 4 and 6, respectively (although I’m not sure why the Blues Rhythm module is Grade 6. I think it used to be placed alongside the Essential Blues Lead module in Grade 4.)

In any case, it seems to me like they are within your reach, based on the videos you’ve posted.

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Thanks for the reminder @jjw, yes, I’m aware and went through these modules.

Justin’s blues lead course follows a similar structure: Here are 5 licks from pattern 1 and 5 from pattern 2. Which was great to learn, but I still feel something fundamental is missing. How do I take the licks from pattern 1 and improvise a nice-sounding solo? I understand that if I practice for hours and hours every day, eventually, I will discover some good ways of combining them. After all, that’s what great blues players did when they were young: They transcribed licks from their favourite artists and mucked around until they made it their own.

However, I also believe that that can be taught.

I’m attending an in-real-life bass course from an excellent bass teacher, who has also developed an excellent method of teaching over time. What he does is, he shows a few different ways of playing over chords, and then a few different ways of transitioning from playing over one chord to the other. Then, he gives us a week to practice playing over the chords and the transition. In about 3 months, I learned to play over several different chords and I also learned to transition from some chords to some others and although very amateurishly, started to find my own ways of transitioning as I started to get the logic behind it. These bass lessons in fact are tremendously helping with my guitar playing as although bass and guitar players do not play the same thing, the logic is transferrable. I composed the solo for Stand by Me that I played in the last Open Mic using the logical connections I learned from this course.

I am yet to come across a blues course or a teacher who teaches the blues with similar logic. I do not think it is critical, I believe I will eventually get there. I just think that finding a course that clicks with me could make it much faster.

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While I’m here, an early update for June:

On Sunday, I went to a jam session. I’d signed up to play 9 songs, and 6 of them were selected. I practised all of them as well as the time allowed (meaning I learned 2 on the morning of the session :face_with_hand_over_mouth:), I made sure to spend good time preparing and printing out chord charts that I could easily follow.

I was ready and it was going to be a great session, I thought.

It is jam day. I feel ready. I timely leave home and start waiting for the bus. I wait for 20 minutes. It does not arrive. I check City Mapper. For some reason, there are 22 more minutes to the next one which is normally every 12 minutes. I panic. I walk 10 minutes to another stop that has more frequent busses and eventually arrive at the jam about 25 minutes late.

It is all good. They did preparations and other songs in the meantime and my name is just being called out for the next song. I quickly get out my guitar and my chord sheets and get on the stage. I start pulling out the chord sheet for the first song, which should be just at the very top since I neatly put them in order.

But something is off. The song at the very top of the plastic folder is something I played previously, but not on this jam’s list. I must have put it in mistake, I think. I remove all the papers and start sorting through them to find the correct one. But it is the same with the next song and the one after that. They are all songs that I learned to play at some point, but not today’s songs. Then it clicks. I picked up the wrong folder. Panic ensues.

I desperately search for someone else who could have the chord sheet to that song. Luckily the keys player does but does not have a spare copy and there’s not enough space next to him that I could use his. He suggests I take a photo, which I think is the most genius idea I’ve ever heard and do. I play the song trying to read tiny chord names from the phone screen, but I keep losing where I am and butcher half of the song.

I end up playing the rest of the songs without the chord charts I prepared. I did them as I could remember them. It did not go as badly as I thought although I messed up quite a few times.

One of the songs was Thrill is Gone. I know the chords, and I never play solos in this Jam and everyone knows that, so I feel confident. Then just as we start, the other guitar player -who is one of the organisers and is an amazing guitar player- comes up and tells me “I’ll just play the chords, it is yours”. “What do you mean? It was me who signed up for the rhythm” “Oh man, I do not know this song, you’ll have to do something”. And he goes back and the song starts. S.

Thankfully, I knew how to play the intro and the chord shapes he chose to play were different than mine so it was fine during the verses. When it came to playing the solo, I had to improvise. I aimlessly went up and down on the first pentatonic shape trying to use my ears a bit to make it sound at least a bit melodic.

Not sure how good it was but this was the first time I improvised a solo in public so it happened at a time the least I expected it and a good year earlier than I thought it was going to be.

It was a great experience overall. After the jam, we went to watch an open mic with a house band supporting the acts and I ended up listening to the most talented musicians (minus concerts) that I’ve ever seen live and now feeling more inspired than ever to keep practising.

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Quite a story about the jam, Serhat. Does sound like you are making good progress.

As for the blues, I have a sense of where you are coming from. To borrow Justin’s metaphor you learn a few words but telling a story is another ball game. To continue the metaphor, one of the recommendations for people learning to write is to read alot. I don’t know how much blues music you listen to, but may be beneficial to listen to a lot.

Another recommended approach is to learn solos. Not just the learning how to play but understanding what is being played when and why from a more theoretical perspective.

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That was a good read Serhat. What a stressful situation. Sounds like a decent bunch of people at the jam, though.

Do you do any improv by yourself with a looper? Might be a way to find patterns and sounds that you like.

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Exactly! To continue from that analogy, I feel like I am watching a lot of French movies (I do listen to blues quite a bit), like the sound of them and would like to speak French myself but available are a few people who claim to teach it. When you look at what they teach, it is either translating it to English so you can understand the movie and be fascinated, or they teach you some ‘great’ sentences from the best writers that you can use in your own speech!

It is true that people who speak French the best are those who exposed themselves to French for long hours every day (for most it is since birth), but you can still go to a French course for a few years and become a fluent speaker. I do not seem to be able to find that course for blues.

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Thanks @jkahn. I try to, indeed. It is a very slow progress and I believe I will eventually start making some good sounds.

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That makes sense, thank you. I only know two blues solos in full. I studied them to the best of my theory abilities. I tried to understand which note degrees they choose, what they are doing when the chords change, and the timing of the licks. They inspire what I play the most. I should keep learning more.

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I think this is a good analogy. I’m not one who has learned other languages but I believe one of the recommended strategies is to engage in everyday conversation. I think that would be metaphorically equivalent of jamming the blues with other musicians.

And going back to writing, there are courses that teach you grammar, vocabularly, figures of speech, story structures etc but at the end of the day the only way to become a writer is to write. And if you can get feedback all the better as that will help you to improve as a writer.

I don’t think there is a course that will move you from theory to application. You just have to keep listening and playing. I think true to say that is how the legends learned to play, and they didn’t become legends overnight.

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Yes! But you do not start speaking French by going to France and chatting up random people, you go to a course for a year first (sorry, can’t seem to get off the analogy :).

Blues is a very established genre. In my experience (I try go to blues jams to listen whenever I can), people are either really invested in it, or they ignore completely. Of all the jams I went to listen to, I haven’t seen even one player who I could call intermediate. All seem to be great players who know what they are doing very well. So I could not bring myself to bite bullet and go ip there to sign up yet. I feel I’m getting closer but it’ll take another year or two if I can’t find someone or something to teach me to accelerate that - whereas on the bass I could do that already only thanks to the amazing teaching method of my teacher despite having a lot less physical skills than I have on the guitar.

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Well done on the jamming session. It is amazing what you can do when everything does not go to plan. It sounds like it it all went well in the end and a great learning experience.

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UPDATE

My July, 12 gig is nearing. Today was the second rehearsal from the last. There have been about 7-8 rehearsals and it is a mixture of good musicians, beginners and intermediates.

I previously heard people saying something that I like a lot:

“You may not be the best musician in the room but you can be the most prepared”

With this in mind, I’d like to note down some observations for future reference:

  • Although I like the above advice a lot, I am not following it myself. I am doing too many music things but not doing any of them as well as I like. But I also do not want to drop any of them as I now know how valuable years are. If I delay learning something by years, that’s a massive disadvantage. I need to come to a piece with a balance that works well for me. Haven’t found that yet.

People who sound great at these rehearsals have some common attributes that I’m aiming to learn from:

  • They are on time. Whenever I am at the studio, they are already there and preparing.
  • They are also the most prepared. They know the songs in and out, they do not use rehearsal time to learn the songs. They rarely make mistakes in song structure, counting measures etc.
  • They only pay attention to things that matter. Beginners may worry about things like “the guitar tone here is not exactly like the record”, “Can you play a little quieter there so I can be heard”, “Actually in the 1972 recording there’s a key change here” etc. whereas the good musicians only talk about getting the song structure right, if something is played in a majorly wrong way (like a major chord that needs to be minor or someone playing in wrong key), singer starting at the correct bar etc.
  • They never criticise or point out to mistakes of others. They listen very carefully when they are given feedback.
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AUGUST UPDATE

After July’s pub gig, I decided to stop with gigs and performances for a while (that’s why I’m not signing up for open mics for now) and focus on improving but Justin’s live stream was too good not to give a shot.

I’m not happy with that performance. I should have prepared much more, the other performers put me to shame, all were well prepared and stepped up their game while my performance was similar to a usual open mic. Not that I could have done differently, I used all of my time left from having a full-time job and a toddler left me but I should’ve foreseen that I would not have enough time to practice for what the occasion asked for and maybe not have signed up.

Now that that’s also over, I’m back to practising with an aim to improve several aspects of my playing - clarity, timing and speed. I identified exercises, created a guitar pro file with them and put the file on my desktop. Every day, I open the file whenever I can and do one of the exercises. I think I’ve already seen some improvement.

Also working on vocals - ear training to become better with pitch, and daily singing to become better with projection and conveying emotions.

I intend to continue doing this for a while. Just focus on improving technically on the instrument until I think that I reach ‘the next level’ of playing where I’m happier with how my playing sounds. This means playing chord changes and single notes with a general clarity - it does not need to be perfect but at least easy sections of my playing should have consistent and clean chord changes, muting, the right strings ringing out etc. And it also means being mostly in good sync with the beat - again it does not need to be perfect but 95% of a song I’m playing should not have ear-grabbing timing issues.

Once I hit these goals (presumably somewhere between 3-12 months), I’ll start signing up for performances again. I do want to continue to keep posting here, perhaps I may post recordings of small sections when I think I hit a small goal or something.

On not-so-bright news, during the last pub gig, I lost movement on my left index finger for a couple of seconds and that scared me quite a bit. I did not have it again since but I now have a new anxiety that it may come back and I have a ‘feeling’ on that finger now that’s not pain or tickling, but a sense that it may lose movement again. I looked up finger stretches and started doing them before practising and using the keyboard now. I am also more consciously taking a break and doing short stretches after every 5-10 minutes of playing to reduce the chances of an injury. If it happens again, I’ll book an appointment to have it checked. Look after your health folks, if you haven’t been doing stretches because you haven’t felt the need, I suggest start doing them before you injure yourself. Hopefully, it’ll never happen to you but you won’t see an injury coming, better to minimise the chances now.

That’s it for now.

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Sorry to hear about your finger. As with any stressful exercise and I find playing the guitar is a stressful exercise on my hands, you should always warm up first. I must admit, the opposite was happening to me, I was slowly loosing the dexterity in my hands, but playing the guitar has brought it all back even after just a few months.

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