Some problems with blues

[christianm77]

Keeping track of beats in a tune is not always that easy without leaning on a backing track or metronome. You have to develop a sense of which beat your on. Counting is one way.

Konakol uses a counting system on the hand while you vocalise rhythms over the top for instance.

For those who are open to improving and don’t think they know it all, record yourself improvising like Lionel and you’ll hear your faults and flaws.

[ragman1]

We're cross-posting. You deleted that other one so I changed my response.

It might be okay for people with no natural sense of timing. They might get something out of it but I don't need it. But I can't say what's good for me is good for everybody.

Konnakol is drumming for tabla. It's Indian. But it can be adapted. Not at my level, though.

[christianm77]

We're cross-posting. You deleted that other one so I changed my response.

It might be okay for people with no natural sense of timing. They might get something out of it but I don't need it. But I can't say what's good for me is good for everybody.

There’s no helping some people lol.

Fine, I’m sure you know best. (BTW the best percussionist I know said ‘no one has perfect time’)

TBF even if you were correct in your self assessment, your advice would still be useless to someone who didn’t have a ‘natural sense of time’ (we all have natural time, it’s just we are subject to psychological and playing issues that interfere with it.)

This is my advice to Lionel, have a go at practicing while counting the beats. It’s very easy to drop one without realising it.

[starjasmine]

What you describe is not a problem with blues. It's a problem with time and pulse. It's something everybody has to work on.

Amen to that. EVERYBODY gets lost in the form of a tune when they begin learning to improvise. Learning to keep your place in the song form is a skill that you need to practice, just like any other skill, such as playing in tune, playing in time, outlining the changes, or playing the melody.

Playing in a small group/ensemble setting is a very effective way to learn to keep your place in the song form. For example, if you play in a trio or quartet with an experienced bassist, drummer, and pianist, it is very unlikely that all three of you will lose your place (though that is not uncommon when all of the players are beginners.) Work with the other musicians to keep your place; ask them to correct you when you get lost.

Singing the melody in your head as you solo will also help you to keep your place. This is kind of like gitman's suggestion; you don't have to know the lyrics, though. Just know the melody.

A variation on this approach is to structure your solo as a variation on the melody. If you first learn to play the melody, then start to add embellishments or variations, but ALWAYS PLAY THE MELODY you won't get lost. Eventually, you will learn to "feel" the song form, so you don't have to depend on quoting the melody.

You mentioned that there are not a lot of other local players that you can work with; in that case, using play-along backing tracks, such as the Aebersold tracks, is the next best thing.

I hope this helps! Good luck...

SJ

[christianm77]

Singing the melody stops being helpful to a sense of pulse when the melody has a gap in it.

Most acapella singers will tend to cut rests short. Listen to people singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and try counting the pulse to see what I mean. This is a deeply rooted psycological tendency - silence/rests freak us out on some level. We tend to jump in on the next phrase. We have to unlearn that tendency as musicians.

A great book (recommended on JGO actually) is Peter Erskine’s Time Awareness for All Musicians.

[starjasmine]

Singing the melody stops being helpful when the melody has a gap in it.

That may be your experience. For most people, in most situations, singing the melody is a useful approach.

[christianm77]

That may be your experience. For most people, in most situations, singing the melody is a useful approach.

Seriously. Have you tried recording yourself singing or playing just the melody of a song acapella without any time reference except your own sense of pulse, and see if you drop any beats?

You may not realise you are doing it.

This is one of the first exercises in the Erskine book. Professional musicians can mess this up. It’s scary.

[Tal_175]

Seriously. Have you tried recording yourself singing or playing just the melody of a song acapella without any time reference except your own sense of pulse, and see if you drop any beats?

I actually do this exercise. The parts of the melody that mess me up the most are where there are long notes or rests over the down beat of a bar. Or when the down beat falls in the middle of a melodic phrase.

What I find helps is paying attention to feeling the down beat of each bar. As I sing the melody, I artificially accent the beat 1's or if there is rest or long notes over the beat 1, twitch my head on the beat 1 or something. Just being mindful of the down beats recalibrates the feel of the melody for me.

[christianm77]

That may be your experience. For most people, in most situations, singing the melody is a useful approach.

The other thing as I did not find this to be reliable way of keeping the pulse does logically means that however useful you personally find it is not a reliable way of doing things. (And for the reasons I outlined above.)

And as dropping beats is a common problem in unaccompanied playing, a reliable method is what’s needed.

Speaking the beat out loud is one good for keeping yourself to account without leaning on a metronome.

[christianm77]

I actually do this exercise. The parts of the melody that mess me up the most are where there are long notes or rests over the down beat of a bar. Or when the down beat falls in the middle of a melodic phrase.

What I find helps is paying attention to feeling the down beat of each bar. As I sing the melody, I artificially accent the beat 1's or if there is rest or long notes over the beat 1, twitch my head on the beat 1 or something. Just being mindful of the down beats recalibrates the feel of the melody for me.

Yep. All of the above. It’s hard because these tendencies are hardwired into us. I would expect most people to have the same problems, and this has been my experience as a teacher.

[KirkP]

Like patting your head and rubbing your tummy, that thing.

Patting your head and rubbing your tummy is the type of skill that’s good for a musician to have—the ability to have multiple rhythms and independent motions with different parts of the body, or between what one is playing and the pulse one is feeling. Simple drumming exercises have helped me over the years—e.g., clave rhythms with the hands while tapping quarter notes with the foot.

[Lionelsax]

There’s no helping some people lol.

Fine, I’m sure you know best. (BTW the best percussionist I know said ‘no one has perfect time’)

TBF even if you were correct in your self assessment, your advice would still be useless to someone who didn’t have a ‘natural sense of time’ (we all have natural time, it’s just we are subject to psychological and playing issues that interfere with it.)

This is my advice to Lionel, have a go at practicing while counting the beats. It’s very easy to drop one without realising it.

Yes and no.
NO because I prefer thinking in "carrure" like we say in French, for example 4 measures.
YES because sometimes like I do, I mess it up, but for a solo of 8 minutes, I realize it's not so bad.

Amen to that. EVERYBODY gets lost in the form of a tune when they begin learning to improvise. Learning to keep your place in the song form is a skill that you need to practice, just like any other skill, such as playing in tune, playing in time, outlining the changes, or playing the melody.

Playing in a small group/ensemble setting is a very effective way to learn to keep your place in the song form. For example, if you play in a trio or quartet with an experienced bassist, drummer, and pianist, it is very unlikely that all three of you will lose your place (though that is not uncommon when all of the players are beginners.) Work with the other musicians to keep your place; ask them to correct you when you get lost.

Singing the melody in your head as you solo will also help you to keep your place. This is kind of like gitman's suggestion; you don't have to know the lyrics, though. Just know the melody.

A variation on this approach is to structure your solo as a variation on the melody. If you first learn to play the melody, then start to add embellishments or variations, but ALWAYS PLAY THE MELODY you won't get lost. Eventually, you will learn to "feel" the song form, so you don't have to depend on quoting the melody.

You mentioned that there are not a lot of other local players that you can work with; in that case, using play-along backing tracks, such as the Aebersold tracks, is the next best thing.

I hope this helps! Good luck...

SJ

Backing tracks are like m.s.u.b.t.o. but playing alone with ourself it's quite the same thing except it's more constructive.
Guitarists have got a goal, accompaniment, they have to manage the structure.
When I am working the saxophone, I'm sometimes my other local player.
You're absolutely right about melody even if it isn't played.

[Lionelsax]

I actually do this exercise. The parts of the melody that mess me up the most are where there are long notes or rests over the down beat of a bar. Or when the down beat falls in the middle of a melodic phrase.

What I find helps is paying attention to feeling the down beat of each bar. As I sing the melody, I artificially accent the beat 1's or if there is rest or long notes over the beat 1, twitch my head on the beat 1 or something. Just being mindful of the down beats recalibrates the feel of the melody for me.

I'm happy to read you've got the same problem than I have.

[Lionelsax]

I am sorry for my thread, I have been inspired by this one : Self evaluation

[Peter C]

Don't write in French, nobody can understand.

Why on earth would you think that, monsieur?

OK, I listened to the first 2 minutes of the first video and there were no issues there. If you feel a bit insecure in this regard, just play and play until you internalize it. It ain't rocket surgery, as they say.

[starjasmine]

The other thing as I did not find this to be reliable way of keeping the pulse does logically means that however useful you personally find it is not a reliable way of doing things. (And for the reasons I outlined above.)

And as dropping beats is a common problem in unaccompanied playing, a reliable method is what’s needed.

Speaking the beat out loud is one good for keeping yourself to account without leaning on a metronome.

This discussion seems to be bouncing back and forth between two different concepts: internal pulse and song form. Let's talk about them separately.

@christian, my example about singing the melody applies to song form, not pulse. This example is based on what many jazz players find useful in an ensemble situation. It was a go-to technique in the university jazz program that I completed, and virtually every teacher and student used it. It worked then and it still works now; I've used this technique successfully with many, many private students. Solo guitar performance is probably not the first place one should try to develop this skill, but once one develops a strong sense of song form in an ensemble situation, it will permeate all of one's playing, including solo performance. @Lionelsax, this takes YEARS of effort, so just keep working at it. The goal is to "feel" the song form so clearly that you cannot get lost. Playing with other musicians or with backing tracks will help you learn to keep your place in the song form. I don't really hear you getting lost in the form so much as dropping the beat due to certain problems that distract you from your internal pulse.

IMO playing along with a reliable time source is absolutely critical for developing a strong internal pulse. @Lionelsax, your basic sense of time isn't bad, but it is not super strong yet; it's a bit "lazy". I would recommend that you DO play with a metronome or a drum machine or a drummer regularly to tighten up your sense of steady time. If that's too regimented to be fun for you, take breaks from that to just focus on expressing your many very nice ideas now and then. Strive for a balance between having fun and doing the work it takes to strengthen your sense of time.

I noticed that you often get behind the beat when trying to execute a legato passage. When you try to do a hammer-on or a roll, you almost always slow down; you don't seem to have this problem with picked passages. Perhaps you can try working just on legato technique with the aid of a metronome. Mechanical technique could be part of the problem; perhaps a lesson or two with an experienced teacher might help you to identify and address issues with your fretting hand position or fretting technique that are slowing you down.

I also hear hesitation that is the result of having to think about what to play. This is a really common problem, and two things will help you to get better at avoiding that hesitation and staying on pulse:

- focus more on time than on cool ideas. Avoid dropping the beat at all costs. Again, a metronome will help you to do this. You actually do this somewhat successfully in bars 9-10 of your first chorus of the first video; you drop a couple notes instead of dropping the beat completely. It's like you recognize that you are not going to pull off what you want to do, so you abandon the idea and catch up at the next chord change. Good! Try doing a few choruses with a metronome using this exact technique: keep time and make the changes at all costs. If you can't pull off an idea before the chord changes to another chord, abandon it in favor of keeping your place in the song form and playing with solid time. A place where you do NOT do this is at the beginning of the second chorus. You're playing some really nice ideas there, but time goes completely out the window as you slow down and hesitate multiple times to execute them. It takes a long time for you to "catch up" and settle back into a solid sense of pulse.
- work out those "trouble spots" separately from the efforts to play in time. If you have to stop to think about how to execute some sort of altered dominant or other chord substitution, it'll probably come out behind the beat. Work separately on the ideas you want to express, till they are second nature, till you can pull them off without thinking. Then work on doing them in time.

HTH
SJ

[starjasmine]

Yes and no.
Backing tracks are like m.s.u.b.t.o.

Sorry, I don't understand the acronym... what does this mean?
Thanks

SJ

[Lionelsax]

Why on earth would you think that, monsieur?

OK, I listened to the first 2 minutes of the first video and there were no issues there. If you feel a bit insecure in this regard, just play and play until you internalize it. It ain't rocket surgery, as they say.

Thanks !
I will work on it and I will try to do my best, I don't know why, I know it doesn't seem useful but for me it's very important.
Guitarists have a big mission. I want to play it right, not fancy but functional.
As a sax player, I sometimes complain about what some guitarists do.

[Lionelsax]

Sorry, I don't understand the acronym... what does this mean?
Thanks

SJ

.a.t.r.a.i.n
m.s.u.b.t.o.

[gitman]

How about starting with playing the head and then paraphrase that, add embellishments, leave out some notes, etc.
The more you listen and play along with the masters, the better your intuitive grasp will become. TIME and PATIENCE are your best friends .....
There are no shortcuts and no secrets to be revealed here. Only trying to be helpful, mon pote.

[christianm77]

This discussion seems to be bouncing back and forth between two different concepts: internal pulse and song I form. Let's talk about them separately.

@christian, my example about singing the melody applies to song form, not pulse. This example is based on what many jazz players find useful in an ensemble situation. It was a go-to technique in the university jazz program that I completed, and virtually every teacher and student used it. It worked then and it still works now; I've used this technique successfully with many, many private students. Solo guitar performance is probably not the first place one should try to develop this skill, but once one develops a strong sense of song form in an ensemble situation, it will permeate all of one's playing, including solo performance. @Lionelsax, this takes YEARS of effort, so just keep working at it. The goal is to "feel" the song form so clearly that you cannot get lost. Playing with other musicians or with backing tracks will help you learn to keep your place in the song form. I don't really hear you getting lost in the form so much as dropping the beat due to certain problems that distract you from your internal pulse.

IMO playing along with a reliable time source is absolutely critical for developing a strong internal pulse. @Lionelsax, your basic sense of time isn't bad, but it is not super strong yet; it's a bit "lazy". I would recommend that you DO play with a metronome or a drum machine or a drummer regularly to tighten up your sense of steady time. If that's too regimented to be fun for you, take breaks from that to just focus on expressing your many very nice ideas now and then. Strive for a balance between having fun and doing the work it takes to strengthen your sense of time.

I noticed that you often get behind the beat when trying to execute a legato passage. When you try to do a hammer-on or a roll, you almost always slow down; you don't seem to have this problem with picked passages. Perhaps you can try working just on legato technique with the aid of a metronome. Mechanical technique could be part of the problem; perhaps a lesson or two with an experienced teacher might help you to identify and address issues with your fretting hand position or fretting technique that are slowing you down.

I also hear hesitation that is the result of having to think about what to play. This is a really common problem, and two things will help you to get better at avoiding that hesitation and staying on pulse:

- focus more on time than on cool ideas. Avoid dropping the beat at all costs. Again, a metronome will help you to do this. You actually do this somewhat successfully in bars 9-10 of your first chorus of the first video; you drop a couple notes instead of dropping the beat completely. It's like you recognize that you are not going to pull off what you want to do, so you abandon the idea and catch up at the next chord change. Good! Try doing a few choruses with a metronome using this exact technique: keep time and make the changes at all costs. If you can't pull off an idea before the chord changes to another chord, abandon it in favor of keeping your place in the song form and playing with solid time. A place where you do NOT do this is at the beginning of the second chorus. You're playing some really nice ideas there, but time goes completely out the window as you slow down and hesitate multiple times to execute them. It takes a long time for you to "catch up" and settle back into a solid sense of pulse.
- work out those "trouble spots" separately from the efforts to play in time. If you have to stop to think about how to execute some sort of altered dominant or other chord substitution, it'll probably come out behind the beat. Work separately on the ideas you want to express, till they are second nature, till you can pull them off without thinking. Then work on doing them in time.

HTH
SJ

Yeah maybe a bit, in any case audiating the pulse is very important for any situation where the pulse is not provided (for instance a metronome or a drummer.)

There’s a risk here of making more out of this difference in opinion than it is at the expense of what would actually help Lionel (and that’s on me); What you say is all solid advice and Lionel should absolutely follow it.

So, look at this as an alternative exercise that can be used in combination with starjasmine’s suggestions. Heres Adam Neely’s video about speaking the beat. It’s a simple exercise (albeit hard to do at first) that covers a lot of bases

[Lionelsax]

@starjasmine I really thank you for listening, great advice. You're great !

[ragman1]

m.s.u.b.t.o.

I want to know what means too!

I've got 'A Train'

[matt.guitarteacher]

Hi !

I can't play the blues the way I want, I tried with metronome, I can do it but at the end I'm lost.
Without I play an 11 1/2 or an 11 3/4 bar blues...

I made some videos, I didn't want to post them at first... but I do it.

I've got another wondering, fingers or pick ?

Hey, Lionel. Some great sounds. Good tone, good lines/concepts, and you have a lot of variety in your arsenal, with walking bass and good language ideas etc.

I definitely hear what you're talking about with time. To my ears, it's not a fundamental time issue as much as some basic technical issues. Sounds like you lose time slightly on triplet lines and some dotted quarter note -type accent lines etc. When things get slightly more complex, you're losing just a bit of time.

I would personally work on woodshedding triplets pretty heavily for a period of time. I spent a few months really working them a couple of years ago and it made a big difference in my ability to hear. If you're a normal musician, you probably have a hundred times more hours developing ideas over quarter, eighth and sixteenth note type lines, whether in school music as a kid or even just jazz. If you only play triplets as one-offs, they're never going to be as solid as others you play more often. Your 8th note triplet lines are much more solid than the quarter note triplets to my ears. I would spend some time woodshedding entire forms for a substantial amount of time utilizing quarter note triplets until you can hear and execute them solidly.

These are best heard and practiced as double stops on eighth note triplets. One voice or the other can be heard as the quarter note triplet. Try every 4th measure or every other measure until you can hear and execute them cleanly and insert them anywhere by ear. I think if you woodshed triplets this way you'll "get the other threes for free", like the dotted quarter note -type figure around 4:12 in the first video. Dotted quarter notes have the same relationship to eighth notes as quarter-note-triplets have to eighth-note-triplets.

I would slow the metronome way down and woodshed triplets. One aspect which is hard to grasp until you can play them well is that it's not just the attacks. It's the releases of notes which give away lack of feel and result in the most loss of time. That's why to really play quarter note triplet feels well, you have to woodshed 8th-note-triplet-based double-stop language. It's not just the attacks. It's the grace notes, slurs, slides, even the movement of your fingers between notes. Listen to the following everyday for a few months and learn to hear everything in terms of very slow 12/8 feels (that's triplets):

There's so much subdivision and so many instruments present that you can really hear how everything actually "locks" more than you usually think of with Billie and some of these really "loose", "behind" players. Spend a week listening to just the snare or ride. Do the same for all the other players. It also has the double time connection to ballad-12/8 and the trippy out-of-time, non-locked swing of Mulligan (I think). [I honestly don't know why woodshedding triplets helps so much with straighter swing feels, but it's a thing, and advocated by a lot of old pros. (I think it's learning to hear the releases).] Anyway, just listen to it. It's really a Rosetta's stone for understanding what Billie and Lester are doing on more sparse recordings with few instruments. She sounds so locked on this. Really just the context of hearing more subdivisions.

*****************************..
Last thing: integration of soloing, chords etc is really it's own skill. Sounds like you're mostly there with that aspect, but you might dedicate some time to 6 articulations when practicing lines.

For any line, be able to play it:
1. Starting on a chord from the beat.
2. Starting on a chord from the "&" before the beat.
3. Starting on a chord from the "&" after the beat.

4. Ending on a chord from the beat.
5. Ending on a chord from the "&" before the beat.
6. Ending on a chord from the "&" after the beat.

Be able to execute these on 8ths, 8th note triplets, quarter note triplets and sixteenths. Everything else is mostly a variation of these. The complexity of the lines doesn't really matter at ALL. So, play lines/voicings which are basically simple. Again, this is a separate skill from everything else. Once in place, you'll be able to do it with all of the great ideas that everyone can tell you're hearing and can already play. I discovered this by accident while woodshedding a concept and found out later that I could basically apply this integration skill to anything which I could otherwise play. I also found that I was better at the integration skill than other players who could otherwise play much better than me. (You play better than me in several aspects honestly).

But that pointed out to me that this is a big hole in a lot of players' arsenal. Anyway, I'm sure like most, I'm better at hearing things which I've had to work through myself pretty heavily. Again, I think you sound great and have a lot of good ideas and basic language under your belt.

Congrats and keep at it.

[Irishmuso]

.a.t.r.a.i.n
m.s.u.b.t.o.

w.d.t.m.o.i.i.i.f?