As I mentioned in the youtube thing, I’m trying to learn how to do that thing where you ignore the timing when you’re playing a phrase and then right at the end you make sure you end it on a beat. I haven’t quite got it yet, but it’s the best I can do at this moment, so I recorded it for posterity.
Hey Phil I think there has been some pretty good moments where you managed to jump onto the beat back again so you are definitely closer than you think good stuff really enjoyed it!
@TheCluelessLuthier Same here Mark. I find with the shuffle beat you don’t have any time to think, so unless the phrases are there in your mind ready to go, improvisation is difficult. With a slow blues, even if you miss a bar it doesn’t matter too much, you can put in a simple fill or just strum a chord.
@NicoleKKB@onemanband@Eddie_09 Thank you for the nice comments. The blues is a lifelong learning thing, hopefully I can do some better ones in a few years!
That was amazing Phil. I wish I could play like that. Question do you or anyone really try play the licks over the beat i.e in 4/4 timing you might play a lick that hammer ons/pull offs etc are over the timing precisely. So for example you might have a simple lick that follows 1, 2 & 3 that is precisely played over these beats in the bar. I might be “in” the bar when I play (if I am lucky!) but I am confident that I am not playing over the beats precisely. Just wondering.
@Steve1967 My understanding is yes, you can start the lick on any of the beats in the bar, and it is really good practice to vary the beat that you start on. You can also start the lick on the offbeats i.e. the sub-beat (what do you call it?) between the beats. Sometimes when you do this, if you’ve picked a lick out of tab, or Justin’s blues licks for example, you have to massage the lick a bit to make it fit.
What I was doing some of the time in this clip was a bad example of that because I was trying out that other blues trick where you forget about the timing entirely until the last note in the lick where you aim to end exactly on a beat. The good people usually play the freeform timing bit really fast, which I can’t manage yet.