The Madman’s Diaries - The Blues Chapters - Chapter Three - Its Been A long Time Coming

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Huge apologise for ignoring or at least not replying to comments. I’ve had other irons in the fire and a review of 23 had to be conducted.

@CT Thanks man, look forward to you having another digit workout ! :sunglasses:

@Helen0609 Andrea I applaud your stamina. Pushing the acoustics through the POD Go is a new experiment but seems to be working well and to some degrees easier than micing up. I plan to review the 20 and create a mix or two with a few similar “patterns” in each. Certainly #19 will figure, tough to learn especially getting the 5 fret jump back up the neck to land on time. :sunglasses:

@RobDickinson you got that nice new shiny geetaah to exploit. And yes steady thumb Delta Blues is transfer able and a great basis for transferring skills and borrowed melody line for improvs. Thanks for listening. :sunglasses:

@Silvia80 You made me chuckle, I can’t be held responsible for coming up with those bass melody pinches. Its all scripted and I just have to learn to follow the bouncy ball, :rofl: #19 seems to be popular and maybe something to exploit. As for the longer pieces, just take your time and learn bar by bar. The first track in the new course is 28 bars, its taken two weeks to get it in my head and losley in my fingers but all good fun. Appreciate the comments and input. :sunglasses:

@crocodile1 Hey Leo don’t know about winners but its how us old geezer play. We’ll both be 68 soon :wink: so we also need to keep on rockin while we can. More to follow. Take care pal. :metal:

@DavidP Glad I give you a reason to enjoy that malt ! Blooze goes well with a cool Grimbergen as well. Thanks for the tech comments, its all work in progress. :crazy_face:

@Socio Cheers James, likewise you have made great strides this year. Freestyle may have to wait as there still some more cement needed to get the foundation really solid. But at some stage it will be good to catalogue all the tasty bits and create something different and maybe not strictly following the Blues format just its aural heritage. Delta Axis of Evil ? :sunglasses:

@trond Thank you sir, your reply today reminded me of my tardiness in replying. Ha always been a Bluesman as it underpins all my favourite rock music, which is more labelled “Classic” these days but I was into Prog back in the day. First guy I jammed with in the early days of failure back in the 90s played in an Elmore James tribute band with Jeremy Spencer back in the 60s. I learnt earlier on how those old blues master influenced all that followed. So this current journey is like a platform to build on the Blues Rock that I am also working on. Huge crossover so win win ! :sunglasses:

@pkboo3 Hi Pam thanks for taking a listen. The harmonic were just me show boating, I always try and find something a little off piste from the set exercises to spice up the endings :rofl: As to the volume of material, there are a lot of building blocks, so the course is designed to exploit that. The thought of playing 20 tracks did seem daunting to start with but like most things you take them one at a time. Glad you liked it, more to come this year for sure, :sunglasses:

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Toby, hello my friend! As always, you pleased me with very interesting guitar works, blues is just that.
which I need now for many reasons.
I’ll be waiting for a continuation from you!
All the best in 24, take care of yourself
Mike

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Cheers Mike I’ll keep the posts coming to keep your Blues away. Better days ahead one day. Hang in there. :sunglasses:

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It’s in the works. Stay tuned. :guitar: :heart_hands:

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Hey Toby,
Nice work. I think I am partial to possibly #19 or #20. Pretty good tone on that end and wow, your finger work is looking and sounding good!

On the RBS, maybe it is becoming a phobia? Kind of like having a medical issue. “I caught it once and it might come back”, sort of thing? Would it not come down to reps? I mean, if you got it to the point where you could play a part and transcribe a book at the same time, the Red Button may not matter.

One thing I do in Reaper is take a track and turn on the dreaded FIP or Free Item Positioning the manual says not to use. I use it all the time, but with one big caution. I never let it loop over 20 some takes or it can invert and cause all sorts of havoc. I don’t know if you have used this one, but it allows you to record multiple takes in a single track and you don’t have to explode them to work on each track. I often do my solo lead work this way. I suspect though one thing that is happening on your end is the “filming RBS”. For that I think the reps help, but filming is another animal all together. You have more pain with film and audio combined, not to mention it eating disk space. If the goal is to hit the button and basically one off it. Then it would seem more reps is the answer. BTW - What do I know on this one? :confused:

Whatever you are doing is going well as it is hard to tell on this end of your RBS struggles. Maybe part of your 2024 goal should be to ditch the RBS… To that end I wish you well indeed mate!

All the best,
LB

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Thanks for the reply and listen LB and glad you like the last two. I guess that’s how it should go, as the course builds in complexity for each new “song”. Some of the early ones are pretty sweet but certainly there are some selectable passages, to be knitted together !

As for RBS, I am realising its more of an OBS thing or most likely. The frustration of setting out for a one take Wednesday only for it to be a Thousand Take Thursday ! :rofl: And most of the time I am recording direct to OBS and not via Reaper.

These last few weeks I have been recording items for both the new Live Music Theory sessions that Justin has been hosting and for some of the new Justin Guitar Clubs, which you may not have seen. For these I have been solely recording in Reaper and hosting the output on Soundcloud. And the snafus seem less frequent. I am hoping this RBS treatment bodes well and I can get over the OBS hump ! I’ve not used the FIP “tool” as I general don’t get beyond half a dozen loops, which I can then cherry pick and prune out the takes I don’t like.

So fingers crossed. It will be a good few weeks before I have any new material to record but I will certainly be recording RBS or not !! :rofl:

Have a great 2024 and look after yourself.

:sunglasses:

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Makes sense on the RBS being mostly OBS - Lots going on with that setup! I guess I am more a thousand take Thursday guy on this end, most of the time…

On the FIP option, I rarely go to 20 takes. But I mention it for those that might try it. Somewhere over 20 takes it hits a point of no return and mangles your takes!!! I can’t recall if at that point one can explode the takes to new tracks. It has been some time since I tried that one. Also, I forgot to mention that you want to set the track to full height before using FIP to record to.

Your work must be like fine wine. It just needs a bit of time to age… :slightly_smiling_face:

Take good care,
LB

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Some pretty good playing there Toby. Must have been a huge amount of work to learn all those pieces this year. Does it get easier to learn new pieces as you go on? Does that thumb get some real independence? I’ve really only learnt one basic steady thumb piece and it was a challenge.

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Thanks JK. Does it get easier ? Yes in a way as the courses was structured to build in layers. So although you are learning new chord shapes and picking combinations etc, some moves are carried forward, so you get familiar with those sections. But there are some phrases that are unique. The next course is proving more of a challenge, as it moves from 12 & 16 bar pieces to 28 and oh yes more complicated, especially the bass lines ! And yes the thumb does become independent with time but like all things it takes time and practice. But there is a big overlap in a lot of the expressions used here and the more Blues Rock things I have been working on and vice versa. Challenging but all good fun ! Thanks for listening.
:sunglasses:

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