Wish I had seen this before

560sdl

Blues Newbie
I had a pretty busy summer and when SWS came out, I was pretty excited and fairly quickly got thru the course up to Solo 1.  After some practice and work, I got Solo 1 down pretty good (hmmm, don't think I ever recorded or posted).  I get the variations down pretty good as well (no recording or posting either) but then laid off for a while (BGU MA Jam, life in general). 

After our Gig last week, I made a personal commitment to get get back on the track to learning to solo better.  Where to start?  Learning some new songs?, adding solos to my existing songs repertoire?, BGU?, BBG? SWS?.  I am in the middle of all of that but none of it was real fresh.

Anyway, since SWS has the section about learning the notes on the fretboard and not knowing that is still a problem of mine, that is where I started.  Watched the entire first video again and reviewed my solo one variations and then started at the beginning of the learning the note exercises.  Great.

Then I watched the video for the next group of exercises and for Solo Lesson 2.  Holy Crap!  For some reason I had assumed that the rest of the course was just working on skills and phrasing using a single 4 note box, similar the Solo 1 and the original 4 note solo.  When Solo 2 goes into finding the various iterations of  the original 4 notes at every location on the fretboard and tying them together in a solo, WOW, is this ever what I needed! 

So I am diving back into SWS with both feet with the knowledge that this is where I need to be right now.  I am determined to learn the notes on the fretboard this time and to finish this course while working on new band songs and continuing BBG.  After that I am going to finish BGU.

Re inspired I am! :)
 

Cyberthrasher_706

Blues Newbie
Great to hear buddy. I thought I would just keep on working on that "find the notes" exercise and keep working through the course, then I realized I really needed to know them in order to move on (about the same time you realized it). very powerful stuff, even if you just use it to throw a little something extra in to break outside your normal comfort zone for a bar or two.
 

Spencer

Blues Newbie
Awesome stuff man! It starts getting even more fun on the next (BB+1) lesson. I had to watch that video 4-5 days in a rows to "kind of" get what was going on. Looking forward to hearing your progress.
 
E

ErikH

Guest
That's pretty inspirational. Thanks for sharing it. I had asked for SWS as a gift, we'll see what happens...

Erik
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
Thanks for this post Alan, because I've kind of been just messing around and haven't been hitting the course work (in particular learning the fret board). I'm getting back to the fret board and working on SWS Solo #3 now.
 

wgabree

Blues Newbie
That's a great story!  The kicker on the SWS is that it's a BOATLOAD of CLASSIC Blues Licks!!

I've been listening to all the solos in my car as part of my learning process and it's just fantastic what Griff squeezed into the material!

:cool:
 

SunnyOne

Blues Newbie
Good story and knowing what I know about you from being on the forum, once you get your mind set, you'll see it through and get it done!
 
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