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Hi there, not sure if there is any blues players here? I find blues improv to be really interesting and musical (Im from Spain) and kinda of bread and butter for jazz improv too, I could be wrong, Id love to share with you few random bluesy improvs I did this weekend so you can please tell me how to improve my groove, prhasing and stuff, cheers.
Lets start with a slow Bb one.
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07-26-2021 08:14 AM
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Originally Posted by Basshead
Blues informs everything i play. Everything. Its the root of the tree.
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Some of my blues tracks with the Revalators can be heard on the Soundcloud address that is part of my signature below. Also the track "The Blues Place" is an original composition in the playlist UTONIA, my 2003 solo album. TBP is also in Bb, as I recall. Waking from a dream, I grabbed my guitar and started playing. That was the genesis of the song. Recording it was a bit more complicated.
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say thank you to the three Kings....
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THANK YOU!
LOL I love Freddie and Albert, BB was amazing too, I think I use too long phrases, any exercise for that? I heard Steve Morse talked about that the other day, he said something about forcing yourself to breath every 2 bars, interesting exercise.
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I was practicing some shufle, which I find really hard as I normally practice over swing loops, a Russian guy with Spanish gypsy background told me one day that before you play a shufle you have to go to Texas and ride a horse... well that might explain why I suck at it LOL
Any tips, constructive criticism is welcome, thanks.
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Get your blues right here from the Philly Blues Kings! I'm on the left playing the 7 string Les Paul and singing. Our second guitarist is a better vocalist, so he does most of the singing - but this tune (Just a Dream) is one of my favorites and I enjoy singing it.
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Thanks for sharing your live performance, sounds clean.
Last edited by Basshead; 07-28-2021 at 06:57 AM.
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I was trying to connect chord tones and triad pair ideas without losing the groove, click on 2 you know, how do you guys practice this jazzy blues stuff?
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Originally Posted by Basshead
Even after 60+ years of active playing, I still listen to at least a few tunes every day to learn and to find new inspiration. There's also nothing wrong with memorizing someone else's solo if you love the way it sounds. Once you get it down, you can play with it to tease out what you love about it and add those licks and that feel to your own playing. Listening is a critical part of practicing.
For me, "the blues" is no tighter a wrapper than "jazz". So I play each tune the way I feel it while I'm playing it, when it's only my band and reputation on stage. I do not do this when I'm a sideman, in which role I'm there to support whoever hired me and play what he or she wants the way he or she wants it. When I was playing for national acts, my job was to help them sound like they sound on their records and in the minds of their fans. This is true for jazz, blues, commercial, and any other setting in which you play. If your name's on the sign out front, you can play it your way. If you're supporting someone else, play it their way.
Remember that a lot of the blues community dislikes "jazzy blues stuff" because they think it's not the essence of the blues. To be honest, I often throw concepts into my solos to see how they sound with my band and to get the spontaneous responses of both the other players and the audience. Here's a solo from a modern classic ("Born Under a Bad Sign" by William Bell and Booker T, first recorded in 1967 by Albert King) in which I went up to the edge of the blues envelope just to see how the ideas sounded in that tune:
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Originally Posted by Basshead
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Thanks John, is a Insta live recording with some funny video fx, anyways... what about focusing on the music? if I suck suck, let me know, thanks.
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Originally Posted by Basshead
Here's an example
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Thanks John, very didactic.
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Originally Posted by Basshead
Much of the essence of the blues is simply and artfully "playing the changes". The tracks we've posted in this thread illustrate that we're just organizing the notes into compositions rather than playing them as simple sequentially arpeggiated chords and scales. This is true for much (most?) of the blues and a lot of jazz as well. It's not too far a stretch to say that much of Miles' improvisation was in this mold, especially before Bitches' Brew but even through his electric period.
Here's an old practice video with a simple approach to the blues (and perhaps a few more good licks for basshead):
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Sorry John and nevershould, I did not want to say this but your solos sound pretty amateur to me, basic boring licks out of the pocket most of the time, dodgy bends, I can tell that you dont hear what you are playing, you just trying to place those memorized cliches and most of them sound rushed, maybe Im crazy here, in that case no worries
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Originally Posted by Basshead
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Originally Posted by Basshead
Those boring licks and dodgy bends are considered by most to be classic expressions of the blues. I don't care if you like my style, but John's playing is both excellent and a fine example of the genre. We both play this way because that's what gets us hired - believe it or not, people pay to hear this stuff. Although none of those licks is a "memorized cliché", they're all part of the vocabulary of the blues. Have you listened to B B King lately?
There's a lot of resistance to jazz forms, chords, and timing among serious blues lovers, even though it's fun to fuse the two forms and play out of the box. But playing modal solos in a blues band can get you fired. I played for about 20 years for a blues great (Louisiana Blues Hall of Famer with a dozen albums, a W C Handy Award, etc) whose other guitarist, bass player, and drummer loved jazz and funk. So we started playing outside the blues box when we opened the show - and the leader went nuts on us. We played Chameleon one night and he hated it - and when we played All Blues in the style of Mike Stern and Miles, he thought we were playing the wrong notes. I didn't get fired, but we stuck to boring licks, dodgy bends, and memorized clichés after that.
You remind me of the story of the woman and the hat maker. A woman was walking down 5th Avenue in New York when she spotted a fancy and beautiful hat in the window of a tiny shop. She went in to buy it, and the hat maker told her it would cost $1000. She was shocked by the high price and exclaimed, "That's ridiculous - it's nothing but a piece of felt!" The hat maker said "I may have something more to your liking in the back", left the room for a minute and returned with a piece of felt. She handed it to the woman and said "The felt will cost you $25 - make the hat yourself." You have the guitar and your own imagination. So improve your own groove, phrasing and stuff - you clearly don't need our help.
In music as in other conversations (such as we're all having in this thread), it's not what you say that expresses your feelings - it's how you say it. I hope you find a way to express your musical ideas as clearly as you've expressed your thoughts about John and me. Since you don't like our playing, maybe you're looking for more of a blues-rock-funk fusion rather than a more traditional approach to electric blues. Here's a Robben Ford / Larry Carlton video with hope that you won't feel you've completely wasted your time reading our posts:
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Just to point out that most of the Spanish people I know (OP says that's where he's from) are pretty chill
¿De qué vas chaval?
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Just telling the truth sorry, thats what I hear, if Im crazy or def, who cares... I have listened to that Carlton/Ford show a million time, Carlton sounds like heaven to me but Ford... boring as hell, flat, grey, not my cup of tea... there, cause there are some other shows where Robben shines way more and plays more in the way I enjoy.
Might be a matter of taste
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Originally Posted by Basshead
Originally Posted by Basshead
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Originally Posted by Basshead
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Originally Posted by John A.
Some people gain confidence by lowering others. The ego can be a terrible thing.
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Sorry I dont take guitar very seriously, at the end of the day we all have to truest our ears, is the only thing we got, peace.
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I've never "ignored" anyone on a forum, but I guess there's a first time for everything...
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