Hey, how you doing? Justin here. Today we're gonna talk a bit about Blues
improvisation or how to make up your own solo in a Blues. Now, Blues music relies
heavily on 'licks', now I think of a lick as a word in the Blues language, so you
learn loads of licks; you put your words together to form sentences, with which you
tell your story. Now, the problem for beginners is, that there're lot of Blues
licks require a technique called 'String Bending', which is, fairly challenging for
most beginners; at this stage, I'd find, well, NITSUJ can't do a string bend at
all, like, that's way beyond where he's at. So, we would struggle to learn a lot
of the basic Blues vocabulary, the 'the', and 'and', and those kind of words that
occur, all of the times in Blues, 'cause everyone uses the same licks, incase you
realize that, 'Eric Clapton', 'Albert King', 'Stevie Ray Vaughan', they've all got, a
pool of certain Blues phrases and Blues vocabulary that are common between most,
not all Blues players, I suppose, but most of them. Now, the good news is that
you can still have a lot of fun improvising in a Blues, without doing any string
bending. What you wanna think a little bit more about is listening, and about
phrasing. Now, when I'm talking about phrasing, is where you play and where you
stop, and you notice on the set solo that I've given you, there are places where you
play one note and it holds for a little while. So, you would say that the part
where your playing would be the lick, or the idea, and then there's a little rest,
or a breath. Now, it's really important that you get a handle on that because, like I said
that, you know, the Blues language, in language we have full-stops and punctuation,
and if I didn't stop talking, I just kept playing one thing after another, and I
didn't have any gaps, after a little while, you wouldn't really understand what it was
that I was saying. You would have forgotten what I said in the first part, and it just
doesn't start to make...you get the idea! You got to 'phrase' things, play a little
idea, and then stop for a second, for the listener to, kind of, get a hold of what it
was that you just said. So, as a beginner, that works great because it takes some of
the pressure off; you allow yourself to have a little rest and think about what
it is that you're gonna play next, instead of being in this, kind of, treadmill, where
you're chasing yourself, trying to find a new idea, while you're still playing; that
doesn't really work. So, as a beginner, you wanna think about, maybe, playing for
two bars, and resting for two bars...that much gap; that is totally fine; it will
feel a lot longer, when you're, all improvisers have it when they're learning,
that if you take a gap, it feels like forever, and you've left this huge gap,
and you haven't really; the listener won't be minding at all, but it will feel long.
That's the first thing, when you improvise, when you get into grips with improvising
for the first few times, leave plenty of gaps, so play for, maybe, two bars, maybe
three, and then have, at least, one whole bar, where you don't play, or you hardly
play anything at all. Second thing I wanna mention is repetition; again, it's something
you'll notice in the set solo; there's quite a few phrases that are the same
throughout it, and that is okay! In fact, it's good, 'cause when you're listening
to somebody play, if they're using a similar words a lot, what they're talking
about, makes a little bit more sense. It's definitely an idea that you wanna be
developing; just in these early stages, the idea of playing one phrase, repeating
it over and over, with maybe, minor differences towards the end of the phrase,
that kind of thing, but don't be afraid of repetition, it's a wonderful thing. Another
thing to be aware of is that, if you keep playing the same thing, and the chords
change in the Blues, what you're playing would sound different over the different
chords. So, actually it can be, kind of, funky to be playing the same idea while
the chords change, and it will change the effect of what you're playing. So, don't
be afraid of repeating stuff, or taking one little idea and using it lots of
different ways. Another thing I wanna mention, it's really important, is opening
your ears to listen to yourself, and whatever it is that you're playing with;
another person or a backing track. We're all guilty of getting a bit absorbed in
what we're doing; thinking about just us, but remember the listener hears, you
plus whatever it is that you're playing with. So, if you can develop a way of
opening your ears to hear that, to hear the backing track and your guitar the same
time, or another person and your guitar, it'll make, you make better choices, as to
what you're playing. Sometimes, if we're just thinking about and listening to
ourselves, you might be playing a note that, maybe just not the best note, I've
even seen students, when I used to teach at the 'Guitar Institute', play on the
wrong fret, so they'll be playing the whole minor pentatonic but a fret down, because
they're not listening, they're just looking at what they're doing, and listening to
themselves, haven't noticed that everything that they're playing sounds horribly out
of tune, okay? It's really important to develop this sense of listening to you as
part of a musical experience, rather than just totally getting absorbed in your own
thing, although that is totally normal; it's something that you'd probably find
that you have to work through a bit. And on that note, let's talk about wrong notes;
if you happen to play a wrong note, your finger goes on the wrong fret, listen!
Rather than just going like, "oh, yeah...oh it was a wrong note", because, countless
amount times, I've heard students play a wrong note, a note that wasn't in the
scale, that actually sounded great, and they've gone, "ohh, that's bad!" but if
they'd been listening, it'd be like, "oh, it's not in the scale pattern but it sounds
pretty cool!" 'Cause there're lots of other note choices that you can have that
sound good, other than this minor pentatonic; the minor pentatonic is like,
a scale that you can use, where all of the difficult notes have been taken out, I
don't mean difficult like, physically difficult to play but harmonically
difficult, but if you, you might stumble upon one of ones that sounds really
great. So, do try and keep your ears open all the time when you're doing that. Now,
when you're jamming along to the backing track, really important, keep your ears
open; think about the repetitions, think about breaths. Talking about think a lot,
now, grand scheme of things long-term, you don't wanna be thinking at all; you just
wanna be letting it all happen, but in order to get to that point, you got to
consciously practice this stuff; much like learning a language, or learning any
skill. The idea is that you think about it, and you practice it deliberately. You
deliberately leave space, you deliberately think about repetition, you deliberately
listen, and you do it enough that all of that stuff just happens on its own. I
don't think about when I'm playing, deliberately making sure I have enough
space, in what I'm doing, or that I'm using repetition enough, but I've, I have
consciously practiced that stuff a whole lot, so I hope that, when I'm improvising
those things tend to come out. So, to finish off, I'm just gonna play a couple
of rounds through this, and just improvise, but I'm gonna improvise around the set
solo, which is a really good way of doing it. So, I'm gonna take the ideas from the
set solo, I might steal the rhythm, or some of the notes, but I'll start to just
change it up a little bit, so it becomes my own solo, okay? It's a really great way
of doing it; hopefully, this lesson will inspire you to have loads and loads of fun
Blues jams with your friends. Remember, if you can find someone to jam with, it is
the best thing! Backing tracks are great, really effective tool, but man, if you can
find another human being to jam the Blues with you, learn so much faster, and it's
just a great thing to be doing anyway. So, I'll see you for plenty more lessons
very soon, you all take care of yourselves. Bye bye.
[Playing Blues on the Guitar]